Lionel Dunsterville

United Kingdom state institutions 1865–1946 ○ Natural death

British general who led Dunsterforce across Persia to defend Baku in 1918

Born in Lausanne in 1865, he went to school with Rudyard Kipling and was the model for “Stalky” in Kipling’s stories. An officer of the British Indian Army, he served on the North-West Frontier and in China. At the end of 1917 he was given command of Dunsterforce, an Allied force of fewer than 1,000 men drawn from the Mesopotamian and other fronts, which left Baghdad in January 1918 and crossed Persia. In August 1918 he took up the defence of Baku, then held by the Centro Caspian Dictatorship, but on 14 September he abandoned the city before the Ottoman assault. He died in Devon, England, in 1946.

Also known as: L. C. Dunsterville · Stalky