Once again, Colonel Dan Sandford helped Wilfred to assemble his caravan, while Kathleen gave her son encouragement as well as practical support. Thesiger said: ‘My mother was a naturally possessive woman. She knew very well what the dangers were, and the risks I was running. Yet, in spite of this, she did all she could to help me – getting in touch with people, everything.’41 Kathleen knew that an Egyptian army commanded by Werner Munzinger had been annihilated by Danakil tribesmen in 1875, between Tajura and the eastern border of Aussa. In 1881 Giulietti and Biglieri’s expedition was massacred, and in 1884 a second Italian party led by Bianchi, Diana and Monari suffered the same fate. She and Wilfred had discussed these massacres, and also Ludovico Mariano Nesbitt’s account of his Danakil expedition, published in October 1930 in the Geographical Journal. Although Nesbitt had escaped with his life, only to die in a plane crash in 1935, three of his servants were murdered during the journey he later described in his book Desert and Forest, which Thesiger reviewed favourably after he had returned from his 1933-34 expedition.
Understandably, Kathleen insisted that her son must find a companion. It was the last thing Wilfred wanted, but for his mother’s sake he agreed. Evelyn Waugh had asked ‘at second-hand’ if he could accompany him. Thesiger dramatised his refusal in The Life of My Choice: ‘Had he come, I suspect only one of us would have returned.’42 Apart from mapping the river’s end, among his other tasks Thesiger intended to collect as many bird specimens as possible from the Danakil country. Preferably, the companion he chose needed to be a skilled ornithologist, and to be able to shoot any specimens they required. Thesiger approached Peter Markham Scott, son of the Antarctic explorer, a gifted field naturalist, an ornithologist, a painter of birds and portraits who had trained at the Royal Academy Schools and would exhibit at the Royal Academy from 1933 onwards. Nine months older than Thesiger, Scott had graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge. Thesiger said: ‘Peter’s mother, Lady Kennet, invited me to tea. She asked me a lot of questions: why I wanted to discover where the river ended; who the Danakil were; was there any danger involved, and so on. Well, there it was…I said, yes, it would be dangerous…and that was the point of doing it. Then she said: “I am sorry, Mr Thesiger, but in view of the risk I cannot possibly consent to my son coming with you.” Well, if my mother had said that about me, I’d have been absolutely furious.’43
Robert Robertson, a young Scotsman, had hoped to accompany Thesiger, but his father Sir William Robertson opposed the idea – like Lady Kennet, on the grounds that it was too dangerous.44 In the end, Thesiger agreed that David Haig-Thomas should join him. Haig-Thomas’s credentials, in every respect, seemed ideal. His chief interests included ornithology and photography, and he had boxed at Eton as a bantamweight in the school’s annual competition in March 1925. Perhaps his most important contribution would be persuading Thesiger to buy a Leica II 35mm miniature camera. As a beginner, Wilfred had previously used an old Kodak box camera that once belonged to his father. He took this simpler camera with him to Abyssinia and used it together with his brand-new Leica, unaware that it was faulty, as a result of which many of its negatives were cropped.
David Haig-Thomas’s family contributed £250 to the cost of the expedition, raising Thesiger’s credit balance to £1075. In addition, from his late uncle Lord Chelmsford’s estate he received £50, £30 from Brian, £25 from Kathleen’s brother Ashmead Vigors, and a further £20 from Magdalen College. In a letter from Addis Ababa, dated 23 December 1933, Thesiger stated that the expedition had cost £1500; this meant either that he and his mother between them must have added a further £300 of their own money to the other contributions, or else that he had managed to save this from the annuity left to him after his grandmother, Lady Chelmsford, had died.
While Thesiger continued to read for his final examinations at Oxford, and to raise funds for the Awash expedition, Colonel Sandford commuted between his farm at Mullu and Addis Ababa, arranging temporary accommodation, permits, baggage animals, men and supplies. The letters he wrote between June and August indicate how much trouble he had taken on Wilfred’s behalf. A letter from Addis Ababa dated 8 June 1933 discusses important details of the forthcoming expedition. Having helped to organise Thesiger’s first safari, in 1930, Sandford knew his strengths and weaknesses. He wrote: ‘I came here from the farm yesterday largely in order to get going with your preparations. I saw Barton who told me that…you would get your permits to explore from the Hawash Station to the point where the Hawash disappears into the ground…Sir Sidney…has taken a great deal of trouble for you, and so long as you don’t take too much for granted (which old birds like us resent) he will do all he can to help. That is just a word of warning in season, so don’t get hot under the collar!!’ Assuming that the expedition’s primary objectives were ‘Survey and birds’, Sandford proposed that Thesiger should also collect ‘blood slides, lice, ticks, and so on’ for the Tropical Diseases Hospital, or for the former head of medical services in the Sudan. While accepting that fever was ‘pretty virulent’ in the Awash valley, he reassured Wilfred that if he was careful, carried a good supply of ‘the right medicines’ and learnt how to treat his followers properly for malaria, ‘especially in giving injections’, he ‘needn’t be greatly afraid of it’. Sandford’s headman, Umr, would buy ‘20 good camels’ for £70 and ‘ten riding mules’ costing $80 (Abyssinian thalers) apiece – ‘efficient’, ‘handy’ transport for Thesiger, his interpreter, cook, tent boys and any sick whom ‘you cannot leave…on the roadside’. As for the headman and interpreter, Sandford wrote: ‘I don’t think you will do better than take Umr Wadai…He is a Somali and was headman to Sir G[eoffrey] Archer and Duke of Gloucester. He is expensive but worth the money. He wanted $120 to $150, but I have cut him down to $100 per month plus rations…I am looking around for a suitable No 2 to him – a man with knowledge of the Hawash valley and of all the languages there. Umr speaks English, Amharic and Galla perfectly but doesn’t know the Danakil language.’45 Thesiger noted: ‘Umar had been with [the Sandfords] since he was a boy.’46
Colonel Sandford added a rough estimate of the cost of the expedition for the first four months, not counting provisions, camp equipment, weapons, ammunition and travelling expenses between England and Abyssinia: ‘I should think £300 would cover your expenses in this country…But I am not prepared to be called to book if it costs more! You