Arnold Keppel

Arnold Joost William Keppel (1884–1964) was an English journalist, writer and landowner. He served in the Royal Flying Corps, and during the 1920s was selected as a Labour Party parliamentary candidate. Early life He was the second son of Arnold Keppel, 8th Earl of Albemarle, and was educated at Eton College and abroad. Times correspondent Keppel was a special correspondent to The Times in 1911, covering the Makran Field Force. This was a naval expedition to the Makran region on the coast of the Gulf of Oman, straddling the modern border between Iran and Pakistan. A large-scale operation of its kind under the British Raj, it involved a thousand men of the 6th (Poona) Division. The naval commander was Edmond Slade, Commander in Chief, East Indies Station, who from 1909 escalated efforts in the region to prevent the Makran coast from being used for the smuggling of guns destined for Afghanistan. In October 1910, Keppel arrived in India, looking for a gun-running story. He was in the North-West Frontier district in December of that year when the first engagement of the campaign occurred in Dubai. He made his way there by sea but was unable to land there. At Basra, he heard of the Field Force and went back to India to join it. He left India in April 1911. An engagement that was dubbed the Battle of Pashak Pass took place on 28 April between troops landed by Slade and commanded by Walter Sinclair Delamain, and Baluchi tribesmen, inland in the foothills of the Bashagard Mountains.