The Lean, Brown Men

Lean men, brown men, men from overseas,

Men from all the outer world; shy and ill at ease


There were Canadian Mounties, American cowboys, Arctic explorers, adventurers, rogues, big game hunters and sportsmen. There were famous men like Cherry Kearton, the naturalist and explorer and the grand old man of Africa-Frederick Selous himself. All these men had come together under the Union Flag to do battle against colonial Imperial Germany in East Africa. They came under the command of Driscoll of Driscoll's Scouts who performed with renown during the Boer War. These were the men of the 25th Royal Fusiliers-The Legion of Frontiersmen-and their battlegrounds were to be the great plains of Africa rich in wildlife and elemental danger. This is their story through the years of the Great War told by one of their own officers in vivid detail. It is a story of campaigns and hardship which would be equal to the best of them and lay many a 'lean, brown man' in a shallow grave in the red earth before it was concluded.