Richard Meinertzhagen

Common card · No. 274657

Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, CBE, DSO (3 March 1878 – 17 June 1967) was a British soldier, intelligence officer, and ornithologist. He had a decorated military career spanning Africa and the Middle East. He credited himself with creating and executing the 'Haversack Ruse' in October 1917, during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign of the First World War, but his participation in this matter has since been refuted. While early biographies lionized Meinertzhagen as a master of military strategy and espionage, later works such as The Meinertzhagen Mystery present him as a fraud for fabricating stories of his feats and speculated that he murdered his wife, in addition to mass extrajudicial killings while in the colonial service. The discovery of stolen museum bird specimens resubmitted as original discoveries has raised serious doubts on the veracity of many of his ornithological records.

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