Lionel Dunsterville


Lionel Charles Dunsterville, was a British Army officer, who led Dunsterforce across present-day Iraq and Iran towards Caucasus and oil-rich Baku during the First World War.

Early life

Lionel Charles Dunsterville was born in Lausanne, Switzerland on 9 November 1865, the son of Lieutenant General Lionel D'Arcy Dunsterville of the Indian Army and his wife, Susan Ellen. He went to school with Rudyard Kipling and George Charles Beresford at The United Services College, a public school later absorbed into Haileybury and Imperial Service College, which prepared British young men for careers in Her Majesty's Army. He served as the inspiration for the character "Stalky" in Kipling's collection of school stories Stalky & Co. He was also uncle to H.D. Harvey-Kelly, the first Royal Flying Corps pilot to land in France in during the First World War.

Military career

Dunsterville was commissioned into the British Army in 1884. Later he transferred to the Indian Army and served on the North-West Frontier, in Waziristan and in China. He was promoted to major on 23 August 1902.
In the First World War Dunsterville held a posting in India. At the end of 1917 the army appointed Dunsterville to lead an Allied force of under 1,000 Australian, British, Canadian and New Zealand troops, drawn from the Mesopotamian and Western Fronts, accompanied by armoured cars, from Hamadan some 350 km across Qajar Persia. His mission was to gather information, train and command local forces, and prevent the spread of German propaganda. On his way to Enzeli he also fought Mirza Kuchik Khan and his Jangali forces in Manjil.
Dunsterville was assigned to occupy the key oil-field and port of Baku, held by the Centro Caspian Dictatorship. However, the British and their allies had to abandon Baku on 14 September 1918 in the face of an onslaught by 14,000 Turkish troops, who took the city the next day. The allies regained Baku within two months as a result of the Turkish armistice of 30 October 1918.
Promoted to major general in 1918, Dunsterville died in 1946 at Torquay, Devon, England.

Family

Captain Lionel Charles Dunsterville of the Indian Staff Corps married Margaret Emily, daughter of Captain John Walter Keyworth late 48th Regiment, in November 1897 at Bishopsteignton, Devon, England.
Their elder son, Lionel Walter Dunsterville, was born on 9 September 1902 at Tientsin, China; their younger son Galfrid Charles Keyworth was born on 18 February 1905; and their daughter Susannah Margaret on 14 July 1911. Galfrid co-authored various books on Venezuelan orchids with L. A. Garay. Susannah's second husband was Damiaen Joan van Doorninck, whom she met in Switzerland during the Second World War as a Resistance worker.