Wifred The[s]iger's Expedition

It was Wilf[red] Thesiger who was Asst. District Commissioner at Kuttum, and who saw me off on the first leg of my trek on April 12th 1934. He was then newly arrived on his first appointment to the Sudan Political Service, and made up his mind to follow in my tracks one day.

He did this shortly before the Second German War [as educated British then pointedly referred to it], but I was otherwise engaged and did not learn of it until 1954 when I met him at the British Consulate General in Basrah, Iraq, on his return from his latest expedition amongst the Ma'adan in the Khor al Homar. His name meant nothing to me personally, though of course I knew of him from reports of his expedition to Ethiopia and the "Empty Quarter" of S East Arabia which had made him famous. But he greeted me like a long-lost friend and asked whether I remembered him. When I confessed my inability, he reminded me of Khuttum where he had put me up for the night in 1934, and told me that it was then that he took the decision to follow one day in my footsteps: a decision which he carried out some years later and which led eventually to his life of exploration.