the Sudan, serving under General Kitchener, Commander-in-Chief of the Egyptian Army. In the Sudan, he commanded the British Brigade at the Battle of Atbara in April 1898, and a division of two British brigades at the Battle of Omdurman. Returning to England, he served as General Officer Commanding Eastern District from December 1898 to October 1899. At the outbreak of the Second Boer War, Gatacre was placed at the head of the 3rd division, with the rank of lieutenant-general. He was the commanding general of the Imperial forces at the Battle of Stormberg, during "Black Week", in which 135 men were killed and 696 captured in an ambush. His reputation, high after Omdurman, sank after Stormberg, and he returning to England and to his pre-war posting as General Officer Commanding Eastern District from June 1900 to December 1903. He retired in 1904. In 1906 he embarked on a trading expedition through Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. He died of fever near Gambela, Ethiopia, an Anglo-Sudanese enclave leased by Emperor Menelik II, where Britain was in the process of establishing a port and customs station. Gatacre had a reputation of working his men hard, with his energetic style of leadership leading to subordinate officers often resenting him for not letting them get on with their jobs in their own way. The ordinary soldiers called him "General Backacher" but recognised that his activities were generally benevolent and on the whole thought well of him. Family His elder brother was Major-General Sir John Gatacre who served in the Indian Army. William Gatacre married twice, first in 1876 to Alice Susan Louisa, third daughter of Anthony La Touche Kerwen, Dean of Limerick. After they divorced in 1892, he remarried in 1895 to Beatrix, daughter of Horace Davey, Baron Davey. He had three sons by his first marriage. The youngest, Major John Kirwan Gatacre, who had been educated at Rugby and Sandhurst, and posted to the Indian Army where he served with 11th King Edward's Own Lancers (Probyn's Horse), was killed in action in France on 13 October 1914 whilst attached to 4th Queen's Own Hussars. Gatacre's widow, Lady Beatrix Gatacre wrote his biography in General Gatacre: The story of the life and services of Sir William Forbes Gatacre, K.C.B., D.S.O. 1843-1906 (London, 1910). Awards 7 December 1888: awarded the Distinguished Service Order. 24 January 1896: made Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB). 15 November 1898: