The downfall of Prempeh: a diary of life with the native levy in Ashanti, 1895-96 Paperback – 12 Jun. 2015

An excellent account of a military expedition into the darkest of Africa to suppress a rogue tribe. The column consisted of Eight Companies of the West Yorkshire Regiment and One Company 2nd West India Regiment assisted by 860 friendly local soldiers who were provided by their king who was " asked to make some return for the privilege he now enjoyed of being a British subject." They also employed 10000- 12000 porters, and construction laborers, scouts and camp police etc. It must have been pretty frightening to be a White man in an ocean of Blacks, but they pulled it off with" stiff upper lips" and all that!"When a travelling Briton has returned from roaming among the broad lands of our empire beyond the seas, he finds that his ideas have become enlarged, his bosom swells with pride at his being heritor of this vast prize of generations of British Lions, and he realizes for the first time what it is to be an Englishman, and how there is not much temptation to belong to any other nation so long as our navy rules the seas.