Camel transport in the Tank Zam, Waziristan, 1919

Photograph by Randolph Bezzant Holmes (1888-1973), North West Frontier, 1919.

The Tank Zam river valley was one of the few routes into the Mahsud heartland of South Waziristan. Major-General Sir Andrew Skeen's British force advanced into the Tank Zam on 18 December 1919 and in the weeks that followed were involved in some of the fiercest fighting of the campaign. The need to protect supply convoys from Mahsud snipers greatly reduced the speed of the British advance and they struggled to establish piquets along the valley heights in order to secure their lines of communication. In 1922 the British partly remedied these problems by building a road through the Tank Zam that was linked to their nearby garrisons.

From an album of 73 photographs by Randolph Bezzant Holmes.