Ian Bennett

Background

Ian Bennett was born on October 10, 1924, in Tabora, Tanganyika to the family of an army officer William Bennett, serving with the King's African Rifles, and Mabel-Rosa (Holland) Bennett.

Education

Ian Bennet attended grammar school in London. Due to his father's military service, he grew up with an enduring interest in Africa.

Career

When Ian was eighteen years old, he enlisted in the Royal Berkshire Regiment and was commissioned in the regiment in 1943. Seconded to the Royal West African Frontier Force, he served with the Sierra Leone Regi­ment and Nigeria Regiment in Africa and Southeast Asia during World War II.

Postwar, Ian Bennett was stationed in Sierra Leone and the Gambia. He transferred to the Royal Army Service Corps in 1948 and went on to serve with the Gurkha Army Service Corps and the Royal Corps of Transport. He commanded a transport regiment in the British Army of the Rhine, retiring as a lieutenant colonel in 1977. From the active list Bennett was re-employed to recruit officers for the army.

Forty-seven years with the British Army took him to many parts of Europe, Africa, India, and the Far East, where historic sites and battlefields stimulated a love of military history. Ian Bennett described the result of his campaign experience in Wait for the Waggon. Travels in South Africa, together with the discovery of unpublished archival material motivated a desire to relate the stories of events, places, and people neglected in past histories.

Achievements

• After a long service in the army, Ian Bennett received a position of recruiting officer in the British Ministry of Defence where served till 1989.
  
  Besides, he is the author of Eyewitness in Zululand, Wait for the Waggon, A Rain of Lead: The Siege and Surrender of the British at Potchefstroom, 1880-1881.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Wait for the Waggon: The Story of the Royal Corps of Transport and its Predecessors, 1794-1993

    (Wait for the Wagon is an up to date history of the Army S...)

    1998
  • A Rain of Lead

    (A Rain of Lead tells the dramatic story of the 95-day sie...)

    2001
  • Eyewitness in Zululand 1989

Membership

• Army Historical Research Society

Personality

Ian Bennett can be described as a man with an inquiring mind. This quality allowed him to discover the unpublished and to compose stories from a number of puzzles.

Interests

• Fine art

Connections

On September 7, 1957, Ian Bennett married Mary Elsa Hill. They became parents of the son named David.

Father:

William Bennett

Mother:

Mabel-Rosa (Holland) Bennett

Spouse:

Mary Elsa Hill

Son:

David Bennett

colleague:

John Sutton

colleague:

Mike Young

colleague:

Pip Coan