Henry Evered Haymes

Captain and Bimbashi Henry Evered Haymes (17 March 1872 – 15 March 1904), was a British surgeon in the Royal Army Medical Corps, known chiefly for his service in Egypt and the Sudan. He was Senior Medical Officer and one of the original explorers of the Bahr-el-Ghazal region in what is now South Sudan, instrumental in containing a cholera pandemic in Alexandria in 1902, and later Inspector of the Bahr el Ghazal.

Early life Henry Evered Haymes was born on 17 March 1872, the third son of the Rev. Robert Evered Haymes who was 17th in direct lineal descent from King Edward III. He was educated at Bedford Modern School, Oxford Military College and St Thomas's Hospital where he qualified as MRCS and LRCP in 1896. He later joined the Egyptian Army at Khartoum (September 1899) where he looked after the wounded from battles in the Upper Sudan for which he was awarded the Khedive's Sudan Medal.

The Nyam Nyam ambush In February 1904, as Principal Medical Officer and Staff Officer, Haymes joined ‘a patrol of 100 men (with two Maxim machine guns) in an attempt to reopen negotiations with Chief Yambio’ and avenge the murder of a British officer, Captain Scott-Barbour. As the patrol:

‘approached Rikta’s village gunfire was suddenly opened up on them at a few yards range and almost simultaneously a number of spear and bowmen lying concealed in the Khor, charged the government troops.