Letter from 'H' [Harry Delamere Dansey], Zeitoun Camp, Cairo [Egypt], to 'My dear dear Sweetheart' [Winifred Patience Barter], dated 22 November 1915

Extracts from the text read as follows:

Extract 1

[Page 2]

"Well dear heart - let me say once more that the moment I spent last Saturday afternoon perusing your letter were quite the most delightful since I came to this awful country of sand, sand & its billions of maddening flies. The school is quite a big camp under canvas... The lectures are given in wooden sheds which are of course most suited for this climate."

Extract 2

[Page 4]

"...for miles round is our huge Camp. I have never seen one eighth of it. Nothing but soldiers. As one knows their number probably [is] 250,000. A continual stream pours into Cairo & out of it again. Cairo is the great base for the struggle against Turkey & the others on the Mediterranean Sea."

Extract 3

[Page 20]

"O’Neill & I visited the Cairo Museum. It was absorbingly interesting. It is the finest Egyptological museum in the world. You may be interested to know that the earliest forms of female jewellery known dating back to 4700 years before Christ are to be seen there. The workmanship displayed in the manufacture of the jewellery belonging to princesses who lived a few thousand years B.C. is simply exquisite & impresses one with the grandeur of old, old Egypt. However the most

[Page 21]

interesting objects of the whole museum to me was the mummies of the ancient sovereigns of Egypt."

Extract 4

[Page 21]

"I am sending you a photograph of myself, Rice, Kohere (you remember the grey-haired officer from the East Coast) & Kaa taken on camels on a visit to the Pyramids. You have read so much of these wonderful ancient monuments that I shall not say anything beyond the deep impression they made upon me purely from an Engineering point of view.

The enormous proportions of this huge monument are better realised when

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it is known that it actually covers at its base an area of 13 acres, or, say the distance from your place to the Post Office is 1.5 miles...

The engineering skill shown in the construction of the foundations is little short of a miracle."

Extract 5

[Page 24]

"I live in order that you & I may make a little world of our very own..."