Perim Island

For the next 10 years the Assistant was provided from the resident Indian infantry battalion stationed in Aden, the battalion also providing an Indian officer as OC Detachment. Most of these Assistants held the appointment from four to six months although one, Major Schneider, was there for almost two years (see Perim in 1906). Most of the incumbents were relatively senior and apart from the requirement to appoint an experienced officer one can imagine that a few months away from the Aden climate was a welcome change and seniority may have been an advantage in this respect!

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It will be noted that only two subalterns are in the list, one of whom de W Waller, was about to be a captain. The other, Parkin, looks to have been a short-notice replacement. It is Parkin who is fielding at cover point in the photograph illustrated in Pratt’s ‘Postal History of Aden’. Waller (by now a captain) had been the hard-working and efficient Assistant at the time of the major outbreak of cholera on Perim in January 1911 (See Pilgrim Camp). One cannot help but notice that no-one appears to have been queuing up to replace him!