Reginald Teague-Jones

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Captain Reginald Teague-Jones MBE (1890–November 22, 1988) was a British political and intelligence officer. He was active in the Caucasus during the Russian Civil War.

[edit] In India

He moved to India in 1910. There at the age of 21, he joined the Indian Police, where he soon found himself engaged in frontier intelligence work. Soon he was transferred to the Foreign and Political Department of the British Indian government, an elite body which had in the past schooled many of the most celebrated players in the Great Game, which took place roughly from 1830 to 1880 and primarily between Britain and Russia in what is roughly known today as Central Asia. It was during his employment in the Foreign and Political Department of the British Indian government when the Russian Revolution in November 1917 and the subsequent Russian Civil War occurred. Again he was transferred to make the best use of his skills in political and military intelligence in the Persian Gulf.

[edit] World War I

The First World War had, as any war, many crisis episodes. As the Azerbaijan-Baku crisis deepened, with the consequent threat to British India, Reginald was seen as the ideal individual to send there to find out the current political and military status of the city, as it was well known that the long expected Turkish offensive was about to occur to capture Baku. It is during this phase of Reginald's career, where he became embroiled after the fact by the Soviet authorities, of allegedly having a hand in the shooting of the 26 Baku Commissars. The 26 Baku Commissars were considered martyrs and held up as Marxist heroes. As a result, it is known that the Soviet authorities had a vendetta against Teague-Jones. Diplomatic overtures between London and Moscow in the 1922 time frame failed at removing Teague-Jones from this status and allowing him to revert to a normal life.

[edit] World War II

Little is known of Reginald's movements during the Second World War. In 1941, at the age of 52, Teague-Jones was posted to the British consulate-general in New York, United States officially as a vice-consul, but in fact as an intelligence officer. After the war, his long career over in intelligence finally at an end, Teagure-Jones and his second wife - for he and his first wife Valya had long been divorced, retired to Florida, United States and then later moved to Spain. But his wife's failing health forced them to return to Britain where shortly afterwards she died.

In approximately 1989 Teague-Jones wartime journal was published under the title, "The Spy Who Disappeared: Diary of a Secret Mission to Russian Central Asia in 1918".