Hicks William

Hicks, William, Colonel, known as Hicks Pasha, was born in 1830, and entered the Bombay army at the age of nineteen. After active service in Beloochistan, the Punjaub, Rohilcund, and under Lord Clyde during the Mutiny, he took part in the Abyssinian campaign of 1867-68. Baker Pasha selected him as chief of the staff in 1883, when organising an expedition against the Mahdi. In September of that year he set out with 10,000 men on his march from Om-Durmah to El Obeid, but the column was surrounded and utterly destroyed in the desert through the treachery of native guides about November 3-4. A few of the survivors were taken by the Mahdi to Khartoum, but Colonel Hicks perished on the field.