Biddy Chambers in Egypt

Biddy Chambers served with her husband in Egypt during World War I.

Oswald was accepted as a chaplain in the YMCA as the first year of WWI drew to a close.

He and Biddy shut down the Bible Training College in Clapham Common, London, took a holiday to Scotland, and then Oswald sailed to Alexandria in October 1915.

Biddy and daughter Kathleen stayed behind until the British Expeditionary Forces (BEF) gave them permission to join Oswald outside of Cairo.

Biddy, Kathleen, and trusted friend Mary Riley sailed to Egypt in December 1915.

They settled right into ministry work.

Daily life with Biddy

They lived a simple life on a sandy compound alongside the Egypt General Mission. Oswald lectured and visited recuperating soldiers.

Biddy joined Oswald in the lecture hut each night where she took down, verbatim, everything he said. She also managed the correspondence.

Mary oversaw the cooking with the assistance of native workers. The “ministry of interruption” continued and they always anticipated unexpected guests for meals.

They hosted supper parties. One visitor wrote of them “taking place with such hilarity as might have shocked the respectably religious into believing what the Jews believed of the Apostles on the Day of Pentecost!”

Soldiers loved to play and watch Kathleen, particularly those homesick for their own children. Kathleen, the little girl in the YMCA camp, was a great favorite.

They spent one summer closer to the Suez Canal at Ismailia Camp, where Mary Riley and Biddy ran a weekly canteen that served tea, cookies, and cakes. The two women had several soldiers and Egyptian helpers, but the first “free tea,” brought 400 men.

Fun and companionship

While everyday life had its challenges, the Chambers family did have time for fun. Biddy and Oswald visited the pyramids several times–at least once traveling by camel. They enjoyed taking tea at Shepheard’s Hotel and their favorite restaurant was Groppis in Cairo.

During those busy years, she and Oswald found time alone in the late evening after the camp shut down. They would walk out into the desert under the bright stars most nights.

Twice they took trips to the Mediterranean Sea. It got up to 120 degrees in the summer.

Over the four and a half years Biddy spent at Zeitoun,  a variety of former students from the Bible Training College came out to Egypt to minister with the YMCA camps. Biddy oversaw romances, heartbreak and wrote many, many letters.

Through it all, she maintained her own personal relationship with God, writing out her prayers in shorthand, and drawing on the deep faith implanted in her soul. She needed it in November 1917.

Oswald Chambers’ death

Oswald Chambers’ signature reference to being “broken bread and poured out wine,” well described him in the fall of 1917. The war dragged on, but there were hopes the BEF could take Jerusalem (which they did in December 1917).

Oswald, however, worked himself pretty much to death to ensure the spiritual and physical well-being of the soldiers he loved.

After an emergency appendectomy from which he seemed to rally (and with much prayer at the YMCA camp), Oswald Chambers died on November 15, 1917.

(I’ve written in detail about his death here.)

Biddy and Kathleen attended the military burial the next day in the Old Cairo cemetery. Immediately afterward they left with old friend Eva Spinks to spend two weeks mourning at Luxor and Wasta.

YMCA head William Jessop asked Biddy to remain at Zeitoun for the duration of the war. She did so, taking Sunday morning services bi-monthly, and teaching two classes a week.

The ministry of the books begins

Two months after Oswald’s death, Biddy received his first book, Baffled to Fight Better. She gave away copies for free to YMCA visitors, family, and friends.

Biddy began putting together leaflet sermons taken from her copious notes.

For the rest of the war, the YMCA printed 10,000 copies of Oswald’s talks given at Zeitoun and sent them to camps in Egypt, Palestine, and France.

The ministry of Oswald Chambers’ books began in Egypt.

While World War I fighting ended with the November 11, 1918 armistice, Biddy remained in Zeitoun as the troops demobilized from Cairo.

She and Kathleen returned to England in June 1919.

As Kathleen said of her mother years later, “She was never hurried; she was relaxed and often said, ‘Let’s see what God does next.”

Who was Biddy Chambers? You can read part 1 here.

Who was Biddy Chambers?  Here’s the link to Part 3.

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Interested in Oswald and Biddy Chambers? I’ve written about the amazing ways God led me through the writing of two books about them in a free Ebook available by signing up for my newsletter here.