# Warriors (1971) by Gerald Hanley: a British officer among Somali herders in the Second World War

> Gerald Hanley's Warriors (1971): his wartime posting in the Somali interior, what the memoir describes, its reissue by Eland, and how reviewers have read it.

Source page: https://calankii.com/en/books/warriors-hanley/
Last checked: 2026-11-12
Publisher: Calankii (https://calankii.com)

## The book

**Warriors** is a memoir by **Gerald Hanley** (1916 to 1992), an Irish novelist best known for *The Consul at Sunset*, *The Year of the Lion* and *Gilligan's Last Elephant*. It was first published in 1971 as **Warriors and Strangers**. The travel publisher Eland later reissued it as **Warriors: Life and Death Among the Somalis** (ISBN 9780907871835), the title under which it is usually read today ([Irish Catholic, 2013](https://irishcatholic.com/a-critque-of-imperialism)).

## The war years it recalls

During the Second World War Hanley served with the British Army in Somalia, after the British took the Italian colony in 1941. He was one of a small group of officers sent to remote districts of the interior to stop fighting between clans over water and grazing. In the memoir he describes the heat and isolation of these postings, the struggle to find money and food to keep his locally recruited soldiers paid and fed, and the strain on the officers themselves: he records that seven of his fellow officers took their own lives ([Frontline Club](https://www.frontlineclub.com/?p=3839); [Irish Catholic](https://irishcatholic.com/a-critque-of-imperialism)). The period is described on [British Military Administration, 1941 to 1950](/en/history/british-military-administration-1941-1950/), and the war that led to it on [Fascist rule and the war, 1923 to 1941](/en/history/fascist-rule-and-the-war-1923-1941/).

Much of the book is about the Somali herders he came to know and their attitudes to life and death. Hanley writes as a soldier who made friends among nomads, not as a missionary or an aid worker ([Frontline Club](https://www.frontlineclub.com/?p=3839)). Background on herding life is on [Clans and lineage](/en/society/clans-and-lineage/) and [Xeer customary law](/en/society/xeer-customary-law/).

## The return

The memoir also describes Hanley's return to Somalia about thirty years after the war, when he found Mogadishu with Italian-style restaurants and a cathedral where he attended Mass. He wrote with optimism about a new national feeling he saw among Somalis, a sense of being Somali first, and said there could not be "anywhere in Africa such ready and hungry people, with such swift minds" ([Frontline Club](https://www.frontlineclub.com/?p=3839)). The national movement of those years is described on [Somali Youth League](/en/history/somali-youth-league/) and the young state on [Independence and union, 1960](/en/history/independence-and-union-26-june-1-july-1960/).

## How it has been read

The historian and travel writer Justin Marozzi has called it Hanley's finest work and praised its prose ([Justin Marozzi](https://www.justinmarozzi.com/?p=281)). A review for the Frontline Club called it "utterly readable", praised it for showing affection for the land and people without romanticising them, and added that the hopes Hanley expressed about the country's future were not met in the decades after he wrote ([Frontline Club](https://www.frontlineclub.com/?p=3839)). Peter Costello, in the Irish Catholic in 2013, described it as "a devastating critique of imperialism", and noted that Hanley respected the warriors he lived among and their outlook on life and death ([Irish Catholic](https://irishcatholic.com/a-critque-of-imperialism)). Some readers have pointed out that its picture of Somali men is drawn from a British army officer's point of view.

## Where to read it

The Eland paperback is in print and widely held by libraries. Related reading from the same colonial period includes [The Prophet's Camel Bell](/en/books/the-prophets-camel-bell-laurence/) by Margaret Laurence, who lived in [British Somaliland](/en/history/british-somaliland-1884-1960/) in 1951 and 1952.

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