Julius Stanley de Vere Alexander

Biography

The Times obituary is as follows: "Lieutenant-Colonel Stanley de Vere Julius, who died last week at Millbank Military Hospital, at the age of 54, was educated at St. Laurence College, joined The Royal Sussex Regiment from Sandhurst i n 1896, and served throughout the Tirah campaign. He passed through the Staff College, Quetta, and a pamphlet of his, "Notes on Striking Natives," attracted the favourable notice of Lord Kitchener. D uring hostilities in Mesopotamia he served on General Townshend's staff, and, after the fall of Kut, was a prisoner of war at Yazgad, Affiam Kara Hissar, and Broussa. In 1919 he was appointed to th e British Military Mission to Russia as G.S.O.1, and served with General Denikin's forces. He was wont to say that fate had decreed him an expert on retreats. Later, service with his regiment took h im to Chanak. There, an enthusiast in the sport of pig sticking in India, he was the first to enjoy it on the plains of Troy, where, with the still hostile Turks acting as beaters, he duly stuck hi s pig. Command of his battalion at Singapore and Rawal Pindi was followed by retirement in 1927. Many years of service in India, and subsequently in the Malay States, gave Julius the opportunity, which he eagerly took, to study the Eastern mind, of which, both by personal and sympathetic contac t with Orientals and by wide reading in their literature and philosophies, he attained a remarkable understanding. While a prisoner of war he discovered a talent for poetry in which, supported by muc h past study of the great poets, he found comfort and a mental outlet. A selection of his verse from among much that, written on minute pieces of paper and secreted in the buttons of his uniform he wa s able to bring home with him, was published in 1929. He leaves a widow, Maude, daughter of the late Mr. H. H. Lake, M.Inst.C.E., chief Engineer to the State of Gwalior, C.I., and one daughter." I am grateful to his second cousin, Edward Fenn, living in New Zealand (September 11, 2005), for information that Julius endorsed a copy of his Verse (1924) to his sister Muriel, and that he died in 1930.

• Obituary. The Times. London, September 18, 1930. 17.