On 21 May 1979, Conrad Wood of the Imperial War Museum travelled to Suffolk to record General Gregson’s memories of the Sudan Defence Force. Guy was seventy-three, living at Bears Farm, Hundon. What Wood captured across three reels of tape — approximately sixty minutes — is the only known recording of Guy Patrick Gregson’s voice.
The interview covers the Sudan years exclusively: his arrival in 1937, service with the Sudan Horse at Shendi, the transfer to Nyala in Darfur, the outbreak of war, the improvised conversion of cavalry into artillery, the Battle of Keren in 1941, and a handful of vivid peacetime stories — ibex shooting in the Red Sea hills, a leopard attack, and the day he took three hundred men to play dervishes for Alexander Korda’s The Four Feathers. These three reels are the foundation of Chapter One of the biography.
The voice you hear is that of a man remembering his thirties from the distance of forty years — measured, self-deprecating, occasionally very funny. He calls himself “scared stiff” at Keren, praises the Sudanese troops unreservedly, and describes converting horsemen into gunners with a mix of pride and amusement that never quite settles into either.
Why he went to Sudan, the journey out, the cavalry compound at Shendi on the Nile, daily life at 118°F, the Jakdul Wells desert expedition retracing the 1884 Gordon relief route, and the transfer to Nyala in Darfur where there were four Europeans and no telephone.
Learning Arabic, the SDF’s peacetime role and recruiting, the declaration of war, forming and training his improvised artillery troop from cavalrymen, the first firing (“a frightful bang”), the Battle of Keren, filming The Four Feathers, a near-mutiny over pay, and his assessment of the Sudanese troops he led.
A short final reel: ibex shooting in the Red Sea hills, an encounter with a leopard, and the TCP treatment for the claw wounds. The tape ends abruptly — the interview was over.
“There was a frightful bang, and they all ran like rabbits.”Reel 2 — On the first time his converted cavalry troop fired the pack howitzers
“You knew directly he went to sleep because he started pouring with sweat again.”Reel 1 — On the heat at Shendi, where men only stopped sweating when awake and moving
“All you’ve got to do is look like dervishes…”Reel 2 — Briefing his SDF men before filming The Four Feathers at Shabluka Gorge
“Scared stiff myself…”Reel 2 — At Keren, telling his Sudanese soldiers to behave like the steady British battery next to them
“I thought they were marvellous. I’ve never felt more secure than I did with them.”Reel 2 — His assessment of the Sudanese troops he trained and led into battle
“He had eyes like a gimlet, and he was a hell of a good shot too.”Reel 3 — On a hunting companion in the Red Sea hills
All three reels have been transcribed verbatim and are held in the Source Library as document A05. The transcripts preserve Guy’s speech patterns, pauses, and self-corrections — the texture of a man thinking aloud about events forty years past. They form the primary source for Chapter One of the biography.