Royal Exodus Hunt Presentation Hunting Horn, 1954

Royal Exodus Hunt was a formed in 1920 by officers from the Indian Army Service Corps stationed in Iraq, and was based at RAF Habbaniyah. A pre-war Master was Colonel John Frost of Arnhem fame who used an REH hunting horn to rally his paratroopers during Operation Market Garden. The REH hunted jackal along the banks of the Euphrates, between Ramadi and Fallujah. with irrigation ditches and mud banks for obstacles. Notwithstanding the alien environment and the heat, hunt staff and followers were turned out in full hunting kit. The REH were regularly accompanied by members of the Iraqi royal family. Group Captain Riall was the REH’s last Master as such received the present horn at disbandment in 1955, from the Royal Harrthiya Hunt which hunted the country around Bagdad. The REH was set up in 1946 with foxhounds imported from England under the patronage of the HRH Amir Abdul Illah, Regent of Iraq. Abdul Illah (1913-1958) was a cousin and brother-in-law of King Ghazi of the Hashemite Kingdom of Iraq and was regent for his first-cousin once removed, King Faisal II. Abd al-Ilah was killed along with the rest of the Iraqi royal family in the 14 July Revolution in 1958 that ended the Hashemite monarchy in Iraq.

Air Commodore Arthur Bookey Riall, CBE, (1911-1984) was commissioned into the East Yorkshire Regiment in 1932 and soldiered in India before the Second World War. He held various staff appointments before rejoining 2nd Battalion East Yorks and serving in North West Europe in 1944-45. He was seconded to the RAF Iraq Levies in 1947 and the following year transferred to the RAF Regiment.  Whilst OC of the Iraq Levies he was the Master of the Royal Exodus from 1953 to 1955.