BENNETT, Ian (Hamilton William) 1924-

PERSONAL: Born October 10, 1924, in Tabora, Tanganyika; son of William (an army officer) and Mabel-Rosa (Holland) Bennett; married Mary Elsa Hill, September 7, 1957; children: David. Education: Attended grammar school in London, England, 1936-42. Religion: Church of England. Hobbies and other interests: Fine art.

ADDRESSES: Home—38 Winston Rise, Four Marks, Alton, Hampshire GU34 5HP, England.

CAREER: British Army, career officer, 1942-77, retiring as lieutenant colonel; British Ministry of Defence, recruiting officer, 1977-89; retired, 1989.

MEMBER: Army Historical Research Society.

WRITINGS:

Eyewitness in Zululand, Greenhill Books (London, England), 1989.

(With John Sutton, Mike Young, and Pip Coan) Wait for the Waggon, Pen and Sword (London, England), 1998.

A Rain of Lead: The Siege and Surrender of the British at Potchefstroom, 1880-1881, Stackpole Books (Mechanicsburg, PA), 2001.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Research on logistics in the Anglo-Boer War, 1899-1902.

SIDELIGHTS: Ian Bennett told CA: "Born in 1924 in Tanganyika, the son of a British Army officer serving with the King's African Rifles, I grew up with an enduring interest in Africa. Educated in England, I enlisted in the Royal Berkshire Regiment on my eighteenth birthday and was commissioned in the regiment in 1943. Seconded to the Royal West African Frontier Force, I served with the Sierra Leone Regiment and Nigeria Regiment in Africa and Southeast Asia during World War II. Postwar I was stationed in Sierra Leone and the Gambia. I transferred to the Royal Army Service Corps in 1948 and went on to serve with the Gurkha Army Service Corps and the Royal Corps of Transport. I commanded a transport regiment in the British Army of the Rhine, retiring as a lieutenant colonel in 1977. From the active list I was re-employed to recruit officers for the army.

"Forty-seven years with the British Army took me to many parts of Europe, Africa, India, and the Far East, where historic sites and battlefields stimulated a love of military history. Tours of duty as an instructor at the RASC Officers School required in-depth research, which led to my becoming an authority on the evolution of the British Army Supply and Transport services during the Victorian era. I describe these developments, the result of campaign experience in South Africa, Egypt, and the Sudan, in Wait for the Waggon. Travels in South Africa, together with the discovery of unpublished archival material motivated a desire to relate the stories of events, places, and people neglected in past histories."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

African Armed Forces Journal, December-January, 2002, review of A Rain of Lead: The Siege and Surrender of the British at Potchefstroom, 1880-1881.

Daily Telegraph (London, England), July 7, 2001, Andrew Roberts, review of A Rain of Lead.

Journal of Military History, April, 2002, M. W. Hester, review of A Rain of Lead, p. 580.

Scottish Legion News, August-September, 2001, review of A Rain of Lead.

Soldier, January, 2002, Brian Jewell, review of A Rain of Lead,

Spectator, July 28, 2001, James Delingpole, review of A Rain of Lead, p. 36.