54 Facts About Richard Meinertzhagen

Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, CBE, DSO was a British soldier, intelligence officer, and ornithologist.

Richard Meinertzhagen had a decorated military career spanning Africa and the Middle East.

Richard Meinertzhagen was credited with creating and executing the Haversack Ruse in October 1917, during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign of the First World War, but his participation in this matter has since been refuted.

Richard Meinertzhagen was born into a wealthy, socially connected British family.

Richard Meinertzhagen's mother was Georgina Potter, sister of Beatrice Webb, a co-founder of the London School of Economics.

Richard Meinertzhagen's surname derives from Meinerzhagen in Germany, the home of an ancestor.

Richard Meinertzhagen's nephew, Daniel Meinertzhagen, was a chairman of Lazard.

Young Richard Meinertzhagen was sent as a boarding student to Aysgarth School in the north of England, then was enrolled at Fonthill in Sussex, and finally at Harrow School, where his stay overlapped with that of Winston Churchill.

Richard Meinertzhagen was assigned to offices in Cologne and Bremen.

Richard Meinertzhagen's brother Daniel and he were encouraged by a family friend, the philosopher Herbert Spencer, who, like another family friend, Charles Darwin, was an ardent empiricist.

The first serious ornithologist whom Richard Meinertzhagen met was Brian Hodgson.

Richard Meinertzhagen was sent to India to join a battalion of his regiment.

Richard Meinertzhagen then started his "zealous campaign" for a transfer to Africa, and in April 1902, was seconded for service with the Foreign Office, which attached him to the 3rd Battalion of the King's African Rifles.

Richard Meinertzhagen was assigned as a staff officer with the King's African Rifles.

In 1902 and 1903 when Richard Meinertzhagen travelled through Northern Gikuyuland, it is believed on British imperial missions, he is credited to have given the name Nyeri to the place where modern day Nyeri Town stands today.

Richard Meinertzhagen ordered his soldiers to burn Gikuyu villages in the night, without warning.

Richard Meinertzhagen arranged a meeting to negotiate by Koitalel's home on 19 October 1905, at which he planned to kill him.

Richard Meinertzhagen shot Koitalel at point-blank range while shaking his hand and his men killed Koitatlel's accompanying entourage, including most of his advisors.

However, after news of what had actually happened became known, Richard Meinertzhagen claimed self-defense and eventually, after a third court of inquiry, he was cleared by the presiding officer, Brig.

Richard Meinertzhagen served there in 1908 and 1909, then on Mauritius.

From January 1915 through August 1916, Richard Meinertzhagen served as chief of British military intelligence for the East Africa theatre at Nairobi.

Richard Meinertzhagen was awarded the Distinguished Service Order in February 1916.

Richard Meinertzhagen made contact with Nili, a Jewish spy network headed by the agronomist Aaron Aaronsohn.

Richard Meinertzhagen later asserted that he respected Aaronsohn more than anyone else he ever met.

Richard Meinertzhagen's department produced regular maps from the data showing the dispositions of enemy forces in the desert.

Richard Meinertzhagen is frequently credited with a surprise attack known as the Haversack Ruse in October 1917; during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign of the First World War, according to his diary, he let a haversack containing false British battle plans fall into Ottoman military hands, thereby bringing about the British victory in the Battle of Beersheba and Gaza.

Research conducted by Brian Garfield, author of The Richard Meinertzhagen Mystery, has proven that the idea was actually that of Lieutenant Colonel JD Belgrave, a member of Allenby's general staff, and the rider who dropped the satchel was Arthur Neate.

Richard Meinertzhagen caught a couple of Arabs and extracted the identity of their Ottoman paymaster, a merchant who lived in Beersheba.

Richard Meinertzhagen sent him money with an Arab he knew would talk.

Richard Meinertzhagen was outraged by the continual sorties to bomb the enemy camp, given the bombs always missed their target and invaluable reconnaissance planes were shot down with lives lost.

Richard Meinertzhagen hated the notion that the Holy City of Jerusalem would be bombed from the air, and expressed outrage when this occurred, for example, the bombing of the enemy's HQ at Mount of Olives.

Richard Meinertzhagen is wholly unable to appreciate the justice of the native case, which he dismisses contemptuously as "superficially justifiable", because in his view, the Arab is a very inferior person.

Richard Meinertzhagen was a prolific diarist and published four books based on these diaries.

Authors Lockman and Garfield show that Richard Meinertzhagen later falsified his entries.

In 1939, Richard Meinertzhagen was reinstated as a lieutenant colonel for service during World War II.

Richard Meinertzhagen has inspired three biographies since his death in 1967.

Richard Meinertzhagen was logical, an idealist of the deepest, and so possessed by his convictions that he was willing to harness evil to the chariot of good.

Richard Meinertzhagen was a strategist, a geographer, and a silent laughing masterful man; who took as blithe a pleasure in deceiving his enemy by some unscrupulous jest, as in spattering the brains of a cornered mob of Germans one by one with his African knob-kerri.

Richard Meinertzhagen's instincts were abetted by an immensely powerful body and a savage brain.

Richard Meinertzhagen himself traced the "evil" side of his personality to a period during his childhood when he was subjected to severe physical abuse at the hands of a sadistic schoolmaster when he was at Fonthill boarding school in Sussex:.

The book argues many of Richard Meinertzhagen's accomplishments were myths, including the famous haversack incident, which Garfield claims Richard Meinertzhagen neither came up with nor carried out.

Richard Meinertzhagen died in 1928 at age 40 in a remote Scottish village in an incident that was officially ruled a shooting accident.

The finding was that she accidentally shot herself in the head with a revolver during target practice alone with Richard, but Garfield argues Meinertzhagen shot her out of fear that she would expose him and his fraudulent activities.

Richard Meinertzhagen has been referred to as a "serial psychopath" in relation to his acts in Kenya.

Richard Meinertzhagen became a chairman of the British Ornithologists' Club and a recipient in 1951 of the Godman-Salvin Medal; the British Museum named a room after him.

Richard Meinertzhagen later discovered the Afghan snowfinch or Montifringilla theresae, and the Moroccan Riparia rupestris theresae and named them, and ten others, after Theresa Clay.

The birds claimed as specimens collected by Richard Meinertzhagen matched with the ones that had been reported missing and the examination of the style of specimen preparation and the DNA sequences of the cotton used inside them matched the cotton used in other specimens prepared by the collectors of the stolen specimens.

In 1911, Richard Meinertzhagen married Armorel, the daughter of Colonel Herman Le Roy-Lewis, who commanded the Hampshire Yeomanry.

In 1921, Richard Meinertzhagen married Anne Constance Jackson, a fellow ornithologist and the daughter of Major Randle Jackson of Swordale, Ross-shire in Scotland.

From about 1926, Richard Meinertzhagen started to have a cold relationship with his wife and became increasingly close with his cousin Tess Clay, then aged 15, spending much time with her sisters and her.

Richard Meinertzhagen never remarried; however he had a lasting relationship with Tess Clay, more than three decades his junior.

Richard Meinertzhagen introduced her as his housekeeper or cousin or sometimes, inaccurately, as his niece.

Richard Meinertzhagen was played by Anthony Andrews in the film The Lighthorsemen.

Richard Meinertzhagen wrote numerous papers for scientific journals such as the Ibis, as well as reports on intelligence work while in the army.