Message #136306

[Bianca]

On the other hand, it was too tempting an item to pass up, so I went to see Adamson - and was
quickly persuaded. For one thing, Adamson has given 1,500 lectures on the subject throughout
England - and had been the guest of Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace twice - in 1968 and again
in 1971 - and once discussed the discovery with the Prince, he says, "from eight in the evening to
three a.m." Then there was the fact that one author, Barry Wynne, said that Lady Evelyn - one of those present at the opening of the tomb - had confirmed that she had known Adamson at Luxor.
Not to mention his trunkful of clippings, letters and photographs about King Tut.


Mostly though, it was Richard Adamson himself. Though he cheerfully admits that he doesn't seem to exist in any records of the expedition, he insists that he was there. "I was only a policeman after all. But I did guard that tomb for seven years"


So, as soon as we could get an okay from the Royal Star and Garter, the home for disabled servicemen, Richard Adamson, for the second time in his life set off for Egypt with me and Mary Lally, an Irish nurse who, we hoped, would counter the "Curse of Tutankhamen" with the "luck of the Irish."


The son of a Yorkshire tailor, Adamson saw action as an infantryman with the Duke of Wellington's regiment at the Somme, one of the bloodiest battles in the First World War, and later was transferred
to Istanbul where the British Empire was supervising what was left of the crumbling Ottoman Empire. There, Lance Corporal Adamson played a small role in history; he arrested Kemal Ataturk, the Turkish army officer who organized the defeat of Allied forces at Gallipoli, and who became the father of
modern Turkey.


At the time, Ataturk was simply under suspicion; the British thought he might be fomenting a revolt. When Adamson and his squad spotted him in a car on his way to Istanbul, therefore, they decided to question him. "We stopped his car as he was approaching Istanbul and I asked him to accompany us
to headquarters," recalls Adamson. "He was very polite and ordered his followers to hand over their guns. I don't know what happened at headquarters, but they eventually let him go."


By then, however, the British were also facing serious trouble in Egypt and Adamson found himself "volunteering" to join the ranks of the Military Police in Cairo. Three weeks later, wearing the distinctive red capband of the police regiment - and the stripes of a full corporal—he boarded a
crowded troop ship and set sail for Port Said.