With The Camel Corps Up The Nile: With The Camel Corps Up The Nile

by Edward Gleichen

An intriguing account of the part played by the Camel Corps in the 1885 expedition mounted - too late, in the author’s opinion - by the Gladstone Government in the forlorn hope of saving Khartoum from the forces of the Mahdi, and rescuing General Gordon. Gleichen was an aristocratic officer of the Grenadier Guards seconded - to his great joy - to the Camel Corps from garrison duty in Dublin. His book is a record of battles fought and won, of dangers run and difficulties overcome - and of ultimate frustration when the ‘worst possible news’ arrives of Gordon’s death. En route the reader learns a great deal about the behaviour and management of camels. With four appendices on the Camel Corp’s composition and losses, and illustrated with the author’s own talented and witty drawings and a map.

Genres: Nonfiction

332 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1888

About the author

Major-General Lord Albert Edward Wilifred Gleichen

Reviews

[Patrick]

First hand account of the British expedition "Up the Nile" to relieve Gordon in Karhtoum 1884/85. Author was a Lt (subaltern) in the Grenadier Guard Camel Corps. Excellent detail of the movement of the army under Wolseley with anecdoates and practical explanation of camels and their use in the deserts of the Sudan. As the Nile flows South to North this expedition started in Alexandria Egypt and followed the Nile as far as Metemanah.

[Nigella Blunt]

When they were told: “Settle down in this town and eat wherever you wish in it, and say: ‘Relieve us!’ Enter the gate walking on your knees. We will forgive you your mistakes; We will give even more to those who act kindly, those among them who did wrong changed the statement into something else than what had been told them; so We sent a plague from Heaven upon them because of how long they had been acting.