100-YEAR-OLD photographs depicting a Meirionnydd soldier dealing with the harsh realities of desert warfare are available for public viewing.

The previously unseen personal photographs of a Welsh soldier who served in Egypt during the First World War are being published online by the National Army Museum.

Corporal Joseph Egerton’s extraordinary collection documents the British campaign in the Sinai Peninsula, which culminated in an Allied victory at the Battle of Rafa on 9 January 1917, exactly a century ago.

Egerton, who was born in Blaenau Ffestiniog in 1884, served in Egypt between 1916 and 1918.

His evocative photographs from his time in Egypt depict a range of local people and street scenes, as well as evidence of the bleak desert warfare faced by British soldiers in the Sinai Peninsula.

In August 1914, Egerton signed up for service with the 1/1st Shropshire Yeomanry, part of the Welsh Mounted Division.

After a year spent on home defence duties in East Anglia during 1915, he was sent to the Middle East.

Now promoted to corporal, he arrived in Egypt on 15 May 1916, and was sent to Minia, as a vice-cook to the Camel Corps.

Egerton spent much of his time in Sinai and Palestine suffering from ailments and diseases brought on by the desert conditions, and was admitted to hospital four times in his first year in Egypt.

Armed with his camera, he took numerous photographs of Egyptian street scenes and people, and he captured the deathly desert conditions faced by the British Army working in the area.

Egerton’s story and photographs are being published by the National Army Museum on its commemorative website First World War in Focus.

Read the full story in this week’s north editions of the Cambrian News