Henry Francis Brooke

author

Henry Francis Brooke

1836–1880

An Irish army officer whose wartime journal offers a vivid, first-hand glimpse of the Second Anglo-Afghan War, he wrote with the immediacy of someone living through danger rather than looking back on it. His surviving journal has become a valuable historical record of the Kandahar campaign in 1880.

1 Audiobook

Private Journal of Henry Francis Brooke Late Brigadier-General Commanding 2nd Infantry Brigade, Kandahar Field Force, Southern Afghanistan, from April 22nd to August 16th, 1880

Private Journal of Henry Francis Brooke Late Brigadier-General Commanding 2nd Infantry Brigade, Kandahar Field Force, Southern Afghanistan, from April 22nd to August 16th, 1880

by Henry Francis Brooke

About the author

Born on August 3, 1836, Henry Francis Brooke was an Irish officer in the British Army who rose to the rank of brigadier-general. He served in several 19th-century conflicts, including the Crimean War, the Indian Rebellion, and the Second Anglo-Afghan War.

Brooke is remembered in literary and historical circles for his Private Journal of Henry Francis Brooke, a record of his time commanding the 2nd Infantry Brigade of the Kandahar Field Force in southern Afghanistan. Covering the final months of his life in 1880, the journal stands out for its direct, personal view of campaigning, military leadership, and daily life during the war.

He was killed in action at Kandahar on August 16, 1880, while trying to save a fellow officer during a sortie. Because of that, his journal carries an added weight: it is not just a military account, but the voice of a man writing in the midst of events he would not survive.