ON SAFARI. Experiences of a Gunner in the East African Campaign (1917) & KHAKI CRUSADERS. With the SA Artillery (1919)

Two scarce WWI titles by the same author documenting the SA Artillery's exploits during WWI.

1.) ON SAFARI. Experiences of a Gunner in the East African Campaign by F. C. [F. H. Cooper].

First edition published by in Cape Town by J. C. Juta & Co. in 1917.

90 pp., frontispiece, 5 illustrations. Original printed pictorial paper wraps. Internally in good condition. Wraps have significant wear with loss along the spine.

Cooper vividly describes the rigours and privation experienced by those on campaign in the tropics. A scarce personal account of the East African Campaign.

2.) KHAKI CRUSADERS. With the South African Artillery in Egypt and Palestine by F. H. Cooper.

Fine unread first edition! Published in Cape Town by Central News Agency in 1919.

Publisher's pictorial card covers. 92pp + 7 illustrations in text and fold out air-photograph (captured from Germans) as frontispiece.

From the author's foreword: 'This little collection of sketches was written at irregular intervals during the Palestine campaign, and sent back to South Africa to interest rather than instruct the people at home. Fortune favoured the manuscripts at a time when far more valuable documents were being lost every week, and only one of the series was torpedoed en route.'

'Herein will be found no succession of lurid battle pictures; for our lives were not always spent in daily conflict with the infidel. But shot and shell and forced march were blended with periods of utter stagnation in soaking rain and oppressive heat, brightened at long intervals by briefs spells of leave to Egypt or Jerusalem. In such proportion have I attempted to portray our life in the Egyptian Expeditionary Force.

A rare document of daily South African military life during WWI.