Gerald Henry Summers

Gerald Henry Summers was born on 12 October 1885. He was educated at Bradfield College and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. In 1904, he entered the army, and served with the Royal Sussex Regiment, the 93rd Burma Infantry and the 26th King George’s Own Light Cavalry.^[2]

Summers joined the Indian contingent of the King's African Rifles in Somaliland in 1912. He fought against a Dervish force in the battle of Dul Madoba in August 1913, when he was severely injured three times.^[1][2] In 1920, in an action planned by the Governor Geoffrey Francis Archer and carried out by Lieutenant Colonel Summers, almost the whole Dervish force was destroyed. The dervishes had a king named Diiriye Guure whose emir Mohammed Abdullah Hassan, known as the "Mad Mullah" to the British, fled to Abyssinian Somaliland, where, at the town of Imi, he died in January 1921.^[3]

He was made a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George in 1920 and a Knight Commander of the same order in the 1925 Birthday Honours.

On 17 August 1922, Summers was appointed Governor of British Somaliland, holding office until his death.

In 1916, Summers married Margaret Frances Troath, daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Swinburne. They had one son and one daughter.^[1]

In November 1925, Summers died in Sussex of the injuries sustained in 1913.^[1][2]