After leaving the King’s Own Reggie spent some time in training soldiers in the U.K.
But then, as he puts it in his own memoirs :-
After about 3 months with the job of training troops at home suddenly another very old friend of mine burst a sort of a mine under me. He had wired home to the War Office to send me out at once to him to take command of the Middlesex Yeomanry in Palestine. Shoved on board a French destroyer I was landed at Alexandria, shot on to Kantara, buzzed up to Derar, & we took Damascus.
It must have been the Desert Mounted Corps that he joined as part of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force under General Allenby because of the quote “we took Damascus”. The book “The Desert Mounted Corps” by Lt.Col. The Hon. R.M.P. Preston D.S.O has an account of their exploits. The Middlesex Yeomanry, mentioned in Reggie’s memoirs, who became the 1st County of London Yeomanry (Middlesex, Duke of Cambridge’s Hussars), are mentioned in the book. However, Reggie is not mentioned by name.
The war diaries of the Desert Mounted Corps are not (yet) digitised and downloadable from the National Archives. However, they are available to personal callers at their headquarters in Kew.
He again picks up in his own memoirs…
Later I rejoined my own Regt. in Baghdad & had a time of it again, under General Haldane, & fighting had only just ceased when my Regt. was ordered home & we were quartered, 1921, in Edinburgh. So I had 6 whole years all but periods in hospital of War. And I’d do it again if only I could use my stupid crippled legs!!
More research to be done!
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