The Campaign in Tirah, 1897–1898

• Complete text of the 1898 first edition, word for word
• Twenty illustrations, reconstructed from the plates of 1898
• Seven original plans of the actions at Dargai and in the passes
• Publisher’s foreword and afterword, author and commander profiles
• Order of battle, the Dargai Victoria Crosses and the India Medal
• Historical timeline, glossary and note on this edition

Best qualified to gather instructive morals from the object-lessons of the campaign. Nature, 2 February 1899

One of the great contemporary military narratives of the Victorian North-West Frontier.

In 1897 a major rising spread across India’s frontier. Afridi and Orakzai fighters seized positions in the Khyber and challenged British authority throughout the mountain districts.

The answer was the Tirah Expeditionary Force under General Sir William S. A. Lockhart: more than thirty thousand British and Indian troops supported by cavalry, mountain artillery, Gurkhas, Sikh regiments, Punjabi infantry, pioneers, engineers, hospitals and an immense transport organisation.

Their campaign produced one of the most celebrated infantry actions of the Victorian Army—the storming of the Dargai Heights—but Tirah was far more than Dargai. Hutchinson follows the forcing of the mountain passes, operations in the Maidan and Mastura valleys, convoy and rear-guard fighting, severe winter marches and the tactical and logistical problems of keeping a large army alive in hostile high country.

At Dargai alone four Victoria Crosses were won.

Originally written from Hutchinson’s contemporary letters to The Times, the book was praised by Nature for the author’s unusual ability to extract professional military lessons from the campaign. Hutchinson was not merely an observer: he was an Indian Army officer and Director of Military Education in India.

GREEN SERIES · AETERNUS

GREEN SERIES annotated edition: the complete text of the first edition (London, Macmillan and Co., 1898), word for word, with its illustrations and maps and a publisher’s apparatus.