A warm letter from Sandbach to his mother largely describing life at base camp—the heat, the Nile, days off, exercise—during the failed expedition to relieve General Charles Gordon at Khartoum. Sandbach served as assistant adjutant general in the Egyptian army during the expedition.
He advises that they now receive mail three time per week “as the railway runs through from Cairo by Luxor into Asswan.” The expedition was in something of a lull at this point, Sandbach notes that even the journalists have moved on.
Nonetheless, and this was before the official secrets act, he notes that Kitchener “is going today from Berber up to Shendy and then he returns here for some days & may be weeks. General Hunter which is next in command is also coming down here: so Haifa will be the resort of generals again instead of ordinary majors.”
Sandbach (1859-1928) was commissioned into the Royal Engineers in April 1879 and one of his first actions was to serve in the Anglo- Egyptian War of 1882. He fought at the Battle of Tel-el-Kebir and was also involved in the 1885 Sudan campaign. Sanbach would eventually reach the rank of Major General. At the time of writ- ing the two letters below, he was assistant adjutant general in the Egyptian army during the Gordon Relief expedition.
