Daniel Sandford

Brigadier Daniel Arthur Sandford, (18 June 1882 – 22 January 1972) was a senior officer in the British Army during the Second World War, who served an advisor to Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia. Early life Sandford was born in Barnstaple, Devon, on 18 June 1882, the son of the Venerable Ernest Grey Sandford, Archdeacon of Exeter. His great-grandfather was Daniel Sandford and his brother was Lieutenant Richard Douglas Sandford, a recipient of the Victoria Cross. Sandford was commissioned into the Royal Garrison Artillery (RGA) as a second lieutenant on 18 August 1900, and was promoted to lieutenant on 22 May 1902. He saw imperial service in both India and the Sudan. Significantly, he visited Ethiopia in 1907, and by 1914 was serving at the British Consulate in Addis Adaba. First World War Sandford arrived on the Western Front in France as a captain in February 1915, and by May 1916 had been promoted to the rank of major and was Officer Commanding the 94th Siege Battery, Royal Garrison Artillery, leading it in action from the attack on the Gommecourt Salient on the First day on the Somme (1 July 1916) until he was posted to command the 355th Siege Battery in September 1918. During the 'Great Retreat' caused by the German spring offensive in March 1918, Sandford later wrote that the 94th Siege Battery "not only saved our guns from the forefront of our broken line, but, refusing to understand that 9.2's were not field guns, turned them again and again on the enemy along that never-to-be-forgotten road back to Amiens". Following the war, he resigned his commission and moved to Ethiopia in 1920, where he became an advisor to Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie.