Album containing 44 black-and-white photographs, 5.5x8.5 cm (2¼x3"), inserted into windows in heavy, gray card stock, two per page, with handwritten captions. Four of the 48 windows are empty. Also laid in is a two-page handwritten letter from M. Bird to “Dear Thompson,” datelined HQ, HMS Aragon, 1 February 1916, as well as a photograph of the troops aboard ship. (8vo), bound in green buckram.
The HMS Aragon in which the troops left Egypt would be torpedoed in 1917. Thompson’s photographs show the Ammunition Column, the men at work and at play (for example, bareback wrestling while mounted on horses). Other images are of the barrages used to raise the water level along the Nile River, the Hotel de Sinai, canals, gardens, a mud village on the banks of the Nile, Officer Thomson, his horse for playing polo at Heliopolis, birds-eye view of Heliopolis, Column camp at Ismailia, &c., &c.
The handwritten letter reads in part: in part: “...Here's the Lurada troup....Things are only just beginning to slacken off a bit....and then England for me--I hope!...I came straight here and have been DAQMC here ever since 10.10. Very interesting it has been too....”