TYPESCRPT. – Albert DE LIEGE. A Few Impressions and Experiences of Active Service in East Africa and Other Places During the First World War. [N.p.: circa 1950.] 150pp., typescript, 8vo (203 x 161mm.) Comprising 80pp. of typed descriptions of the 1st A.M.B. [‘Armoured Motor Battery’] manoeuvres in East Africa between May 1916- July 1917, then 70pp. typed reminiscences of ‘A Padre in East Africa’ by ‘R.G.’ which had been published in the Cornhill Magazine, and 27 mounted photographs from the campaign, 72 mounted photographic postcards from East Africa and Egypt, and several pieces of N.C.O. Albert de Liege’s war-time paperwork including disability and demobilisation certificates, also loosely inserted Albert de Liege’s driving license and Soldier’s Pay Book, and ‘Soldier’s Prayer’ card. (Toned.) Contemporary grey and brown cloth, embossed tape lettering to upper cover (some discolouring, stain to lower cover). Note: under Sir John Willoughby the 1st A.M.B. spent just over a year in Africa as part of the four year guerilla campaign against a small German force led by Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck. The German plan was to enact a defensive campaign that would draw Allied forces from European fronts towards Africa. With only 3000 German soldiers and 11,000 ‘Askaris’ (African soldiers), the plan succeeded for several years against significantly larger Allied forces. Albert de Liege’s account is a torrid description of how the A.M.B. lost half its contingent of 113 soldiers to the tropical diseases, accidents, land-mines. The conditions, the heat and the terrain, food shortages and lack of basic provisions (‘using water from the car radiator to wash’), fever and ‘Bubonic Plague’, all made worse by a lack of medical supplies. While Albert is mainly behind the front lines, there are descriptions of skirmishes and guerilla warfare and fighting at ‘Salaita Hill’. Although he didn’t think ‘the game worth the candle’, he was surprised by the Africans: ‘They practice a sort of socialism… they share any food, not only for their own tribe but also to strangers’.