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76, Portland Place, London, W.
28th March, 1916.
John Edgar, Esq., The Turf Club, CAIRO.
My dear John
I was very glad to hear from you to-day. Sandy Gillon turned up last Friday and told me he had seen you for a few minutes. Egypt sounds very pleasant, and I am very glad that at last you have got the kind of work you like. I am glad to hear that your wife is enjoying living in Switzerland.
I doubt very much whether you will see me in Egypt for some time, as, like a stormy petrel, I follow the chief war zone, and the centre of gravity seems to be shifting rapidly from the Near East. Verdun has been a magnificent fight, and the German attempt has completely failed in every respect. It will hang up the big Spring offensive a little, but that is all to the good. I should have been out at Verdun, for the French asked me to go, but I am so busy here I could not get away. I have been up with the Fleet lately in the far Northern seas and also the Channel - a most interesting experience.
Sandy is home on a week's leave. His Division is now in France. As I always expected, he finds ordinary soldiering under an O.C. he does not like, far more irksome than any trench work in Gallipoli. I wish we coud get him in his proper niche.
Johnnie [Jameson] is a Major in the the 3rd Regiment of Scottish Horse
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in Lincolnshire, and expects to remain there till the end of the war. Ian Nelson, after such a year's fighting as few can have equalled, is coming back to the reserve of officers, and Tommie [Nelson] is on the Staff of his Division.
I have got a new son. He is now nine weeks old. He is called after my brother William. Alastair, who is in Winston Churchill's battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers, was wounded the other day, quite slightly, and is home for six weeks.
We must try and write to each other more regularly, because I am always hankering for news of you.
Be sure to keep true to the principles of the Reformed Presbyterian Faith.
Best luck to you.
Yours ever
John Buchan
The sight of your address "Turf Club, Cairo" recalls 1900 & my first year in S. Africa.
