n 1876, Baden-Powell joined the 13th Hussars in India with the rank of lieutenant. In 1880 he was charged with the task of drawing maps of the Battle of Maiwand. He enhanced and honed his military scouting skills amidst the Zulu in the early 1880s in the Natal Province of South Africa, where his regiment had been posted, and where he was mentioned in dispatches. In 1890, he was brevetted Major as military secretary and senior aide-de-camp to the Commander-in-Chief and Governor of Malta, his uncle General Sir Henry Augustus Smyth.[14] He was posted to Malta for three years, also working as an intelligence officer for the Mediterranean for the Director of Military Intelligence.[14] He wrote that he once travelled disguised as a butterfly collector, incorporating plans of military installations into his drawings of butterfly wings.[22] In 1884 he published Reconnaissance and Scouting.[23]

Baden-Powell returned to Africa in 1896, and served in the Second Matabele War, in the expedition to relieve British South Africa Company personnel under siege in Bulawayo.[24] This was a formative experience for him not only because he commanded reconnaissance missions into enemy territory in the Matopos Hills, but because many of his later Boy Scout ideas took hold here.[25] It was during this campaign that he first met and befriended the American scout Frederick Russell Burnham, who introduced Baden-Powell to stories of the American Old West and woodcraft (i.e., Scoutcraft), and here that he was introduced to Montana Peaked version of a western cowboy hat, of which Stetson was a prolific manufacturer, and which also came to be known as a campaign hat and the many versatile and practical uses of a neckerchief.[14]

Baden-Powell was accused of illegally executing a prisoner of war in 1896, the Matabele chief Uwini, who had been promised his life would be spared if he surrendered.[26] Uwini was sentenced to be shot by firing squad by a military court, a sentence Baden-Powell confirmed. Baden-Powell was cleared by a military court of inquiry, but the colonial civil authorities wanted a civil investigation and trial. Baden-Powell later claimed he was "released without a stain on my character".[27]

After Rhodesia, Baden-Powell served in the Fourth Ashanti War on the Gold Coast. In 1897, at the age of 40, he was brevetted colonel (the youngest colonel in the British Army) and given command of the 5th Dragoon Guards in India...

Oh the Zulu king with the big nose-ring
Fell in love with a sweet young queen
And every night by the pale moon light
In the forest he would sing
A hug and a kiss for the Zulu Miss
Underneath the shining stars
And every night by the pale moon light
In the forest he would sing...