Hubert Latham

It is a generally-accepted fact that Hubert Latham's met his end by being gored and trampled to death by a wounded Cape buffalo while hunting in French Equitorial Africa in July, 1912. What is not so well known is
that when his bearers reported his death to the commanding officer at a French Colonial Army outpost just outside Ft. Archambault (now called Sarh, located in present-day Tchad, close to the border of the Central African Republic (CAR)), the commanding officer and the bearers set out on foot to find Latham's body. After a 3-hour walk, his remains were discovered. Latham was lying on his back with his gun, some spent shells and his pith helmet surrounding him. According to the bearers, Latham had fired several shots at the charging buffalo which failed to stop him, had been gored, tossed, and trampled to death. The animal then disappeared into the brush.  

The commanding officer examined the site and found no evidence of any violence on the ground - it was entirely smooth, no hoof marks, no torn-up earth. Furthermore, Latham's body had no marks on it other than a massive head wound, hardly what it should have looked like after being trampled. The commanding officer was tempted to open an official enquiry since he was half-convinced that Latham had not been gored by the buffalo but, rather, had died as the result of foul play, for whatever reason. The commanding officer did not, in fact, open an enquiry for unknown reasons, and put out the story that he had been killed while hunting a Cape buffalo. He had Latham buried in Bangui (present-day capital of the CAR) and 18 months later, Latham's family had his body transferred to Le Havre, France, for burial in the family plot (January 15, 1914). 

This information was found in an article in the Journal du Havre of January 15, 1914.

It is true, however, that Latham was out hunting a wounded buffalo -- the last entry in his diary he kept while he was in Africa (January-June, 1912) read "tomorrow I am going out to track down the buffalo I wounded
today."