GLEICHEN, Alfred Edward Wilfred, Lord.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Report on the Nile and Country between Dongola, Suakin, Kassala and Omdurman. Rare first edition of this painstakingly compiled guide for Kitchener's invading Anglo-Egyptian army in its advance on Khartoum to avenge Gordon. Classified as CONFIDENTIAL, and produced in a print run of just 300 on Harrison and Sons secure press at the War Office. Only three copies traced institutionally: National Army Museum, Durham and Oxford. As the country had been under the Mahdi's rule since 1885 there had been "no possibility of obtaining route reports and sketches of the country to be traversed on a future expedition to Omdurman". In the absence of fresh intelligence, the War Office was compelled to analyse more minutely existing reports from earlier campaigns and surveys, as well as traveller's accounts; routes reported here are credited to such as Eduard Rüppel, Frank James, G. A. Schweinfurth, and James Grant. Having seen service with the Guards Camel Regiment in the Sudan campaign of 1884-5, with the Egyptian army in the Dongola campaign in 1896, and as Rennell Rodd's intelligence officer on his mission to Menelik in Ethiopia in 1897, Gleichen was far and away the most suitable officer to carry out the task.

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