25th (Frontiersmen) Battalion, Royal Fusiliers

Amongst these occupations were English big-game hunters, a British millionaire, several American cowboys, a Scottish light-house keeper, a naturalist, a circus clown, an Arctic explorer, an opera singer, a photographer, and a lion tamer.

[1] Another noted serving officer (and eventually the Second in Command of the battalion) was Frederick Courteney Selous, a veteran of various small African wars and skirmishes, a big-game hunter and friend of Theodore Roosevelt.

Selous is also known for having served as the inspiration for Sir H. Rider Haggard to create his fictional Allan Quatermain character, a 19th-century African explorer and hunter of big-game beasts.

The unit gained the nickname "Old and the Bold", due to its members' ages, their veteran status, and reputation for endurance and daring against the enemy, even though the majority of volunteers were young men.

[5] The exploits of "The Old and the Bold" were later the loose basis of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles episode "The Phantom Train of Doom" (German East Africa, November 1916).