Richard Bell-Davies (later a VC recipient, then a lieutenant on the battleship HMS Swiftsure) met him at the time and gives an account in his autobiography Sailor in the Air (1967).

Doughty-Wylie then went to Adana, forty miles away, where he persuaded the local Vali (Governor) to give him a small escort of Ottoman troops and a bugler; with these he managed to restore order.

He was awarded the Medjidie "in recognition of valuable services rendered by him while in charge of the British Red Cross Hospitals in Turkey" during the Balkan Wars.

[6][7] Doughty-Wylie was 46 years old, and a lieutenant colonel in The Royal Welch Fusiliers, British Army when, "owing to his great knowledge of things Turkish" according to Bell-Davies, he was attached to General Sir Ian Hamilton's headquarters staff of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force during the Gallipoli Campaign.

On 26 April 1915, following the landing at Cape Helles on the Gallipoli peninsula of the SS River Clyde, Lieutenant Colonel Doughty-Wylie and Captain Garth Neville Walford organised and made an attack through and on both sides of the village of Sedd-el-Bahr on the Old Fort at the top of the hill.

The enemy's position was very strongly entrenched and defended, but mainly due to the initiative, skill and great gallantry of the two officers the attack was a complete success.

[9] His Victoria Cross, posthumously awarded for bravery[10] during a beach landing at Gallipoli in April 1915,[11] is displayed at the Royal Welch Fusiliers Museum in Caernarfon Castle, Gwynedd, Wales.

Bell was an eminent English writer, traveller, political officer, administrator, and archaeologist who explored in the region of Syria, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, and Arabia.