Our Soldiers Part 20

"The Gordon Highlanders went straight up the hill without check or hesitation. Headed by their pipers, and led by Lieutenant-Colonel Mathias, C.B., with Major Macbean on his right and Lieutenant A.F.

Gordon on his left, this splendid battalion marched across the open. It dashed through a murderous fire, and in forty minutes had won the heights, leaving 3 officers and 30 men killed or wounded on its way.

The first rush of the Gordon Highlanders was deserving of the highest praise, for they had just undergone a very severe climb and had reached a point beyond which other troops had been unable to advance for over three hours.

"The first rush was followed at short intervals by a second and a third, each led by officers, and as the leading companies went up the path for the final a.s.sault the remainder of the troops, among whom the 3rd Sikhs were conspicuous, streamed on in support. But few of the enemy waited for the bayonet, many of them being shot down as they fled in confusion.

The position was won at 3:15."

Amongst the losses of this day were--

_Dorsets.h.i.+re_.--Nine men killed; Captain Arnold, Lieutenant Hewitt, and thirty-nine men wounded.

_Gordon Highlanders_.--Lieutenant Lamont and two men killed; Colonel Mathias, Major Macbean, Captain Uniacke, Lieutenants Dingwall, Meiklejohn, Craufurd, and thirty-five men wounded.

_Derbys.h.i.+re_.--Captain Smith and three men killed, eight wounded.

The Victoria Cross was awarded to Lieutenant Pennell, who endeavoured under fire to bring in Captain Smith; to Piper Findlater, who though wounded in both legs still continued to blow his pipes; to Private Lawson for carrying Lieutenant Dingwall out of fire and returning to bring in another, being himself twice wounded; to Private Vickery and Colonel Mathias.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

THE RE-CONQUEST OF THE SUDAN--1898.

Once more our attention is directed to the doings of our soldiers in Egypt. All the toil, all the bloodshed, and all the treasure expended against Mahdism had been in vain. General Gordon n.o.bly holding out at Khartoum waiting for the relief which the vacillating and divided counsels of the British Cabinet had delayed until it was too late, had been slain, and the inhabitants of Khartoum despoiled and ma.s.sacred by the savage followers of the Mahdi. Berber, Dongola, and Tokar had shared the same fate; and the Anglo-Egyptian army, leaving the Sudan to its fate, had fallen back to Wady Haifa, at which the southern frontier of Egypt was fixed, and which became a barrier against which the tide of Mahdism was to rush in vain. Suakin was also strongly held, and the Mahdi's forces came no farther south; but the whole of the immense territory from the Second Cataract to the Equatorial Lakes was overrun by his fanatic hordes, who carried "fire, the sword, and desolation" far and wide over that unhappy land. It is not to the British administrators in Egypt that the blame of all this failure, and of the purposeless bloodshed of the two expeditions from Suakin, is to be laid, nor can it be said that after the fall of Khartoum any other course could have been adopted than to retire for a time; but it is to the British administrators in Egypt, and not to the Home Government, that belongs the credit of years of patient perseverance, of restoring the finances and resources of Egypt, and of instilling so much character into an oppressed race that at length the poor fallaheen were able to hold their own against the Sudanese, and to wipe out the disgrace of the defeat at El-Teb and the slaughter of the army of Hicks Pasha in 1883.

And it may be said that it was these same English rulers in Egypt-- administrators, engineers, military officers, and drill sergeants--that made it possible for the English to march in triumph through Khartoum and to avenge the death of Gordon, to some extent to wipe out the humiliations and blunders of past years.

The original Mahdi died within six months of General Gordon, and was succeeded by the chief Khalifa, Abdullah. Abdullah was an ignorant and wholly abominable person, and by his unspeakable cruelty and rapacity soon alienated vast numbers of the followers of his predecessor, and by 1889 Mahdism could no longer be looked upon as an aggressive but as a decaying force; yet, though dwindling, it still existed as a strong military power, with its headquarters at Omdurman.

Meantime the English had been making soldiers of the fallaheen, to whom successful skirmishes under their English officers and drill instructors were yearly giving confidence and self-reliance; and in addition to the fallaheen regiments, Sudanese regiments were formed of the very men who fought so bravely against our squares at Abu Klea, the "Fuzzywuzzy" of Kipling, "a first-cla.s.s fighting man." Whilst the British campaigns in the Sudan, though affording many a brilliant fight, and many an example of the heroism and endurance of the British soldiers, were fruitless in result, the Egyptian campaigns were from 1885 onwards one continual success,--the fruit of steady effort and perseverance directed to one end through every kind of difficulty and disappointment, but which nothing could turn aside from its object, never faltering or swerving for fourteen years, the credit of which is wholly due to Sir Evelyn Baring (now Lord Cromer), Sir H. Kitchener (Lord Kitchener), Sir F.

Grenfell, Colonel Wingate, Colonel H.A. Macdonald, and many others; and their subordinates, among whom must be remembered the English drill sergeants.

In 1888 Osman Digna again threatened Suakin, and threw up trenches against the town, but was defeated by Sir F. Grenfell, the Sirdar or Commander-in-Chief of the Egyptian forces, on December 20th. Next, Wad-en-Nejunii, the great Emir who had defeated Hicks Pasha, came south in 1889, attempting to get to the Nile at Toski behind Wady Haifa, the garrison of which, under Sir F. Grenfell, attacked him at Toski, with the result that he was killed and his army annihilated, and Egypt freed from fear of invasion.

After this Egypt began to advance; Sarras, beyond Wady Haifa, was reoccupied, and a railway laid between the two places. In February 1891 Colonel Holled Smith, commanding the Egyptian garrison at Suakin, marched out against Osman Digna's men with only Egyptian and Sudanese troops, and defeated them after a good fight and occupied Tokar. In this action Captain Barrow was killed, and of the enemy a large number of Emirs; but Osman as usual got away. The effect of this battle was to clear away the dervishes from the Eastern Sudan and re-establish Egyptian government there.

In 1892 the dervishes again gave trouble both on the Nile and in the Eastern Sudan, and there were many skirmishes. A serious attempt was made in January 1893 to cut the railway between Wady Haifa and Sarras, but without success; in the fight Captain Pyne, commanding the Egyptian force, was killed. Osman Digna again turned up near Suakin, but had no success except in his usual flight.

In this year Sir Horatio Kitchener, who had had a long experience both of Egypt and the Sudan, having been on active service in one or the other since 1882, became Sirdar in succession to Sir F. Grenfell, who was appointed to the command of the British forces in Egypt, and he set himself to the task of the re-conquest of the Sudan. He had not the British tax-payer to draw upon, but the very meagre Egyptian Treasury, and he had therefore to work with very limited means. His plan was not to raise a costly army for the purpose of winning victories glorious but fruitless, slaughtering Arabs by the thousand and then retiring till they gathered head and then slaughtering more, after the manner of the peace-loving Government of 1885, but to make sure of each stage of his progress as he went along, driving back the Mahdi and bringing confidence and commerce in his train, never retiring from ground once occupied, but never advancing till his course was clear; and his chief instrument for effecting his purpose was, as it will be seen, the railway.

THE ADVANCE TO DONGOLA.

During all these years, as has been said, the Egyptian army was in the making; and in 1896 it was decided to put it to the test, and to make an advance on Dongola. On March 21st the Sirdar left Cairo for Wady Haifa, taking with him a British regiment, the 1st Staffords.h.i.+re, to join the Egyptians already at the front; Indian troops having taken the place of the Egyptian garrisons of Tokar and Suakin. Meantime, railway making had been pushed on apace, and the line reached Kosheh, a distance of 76 miles, by the end of April; but rapid as this was, it was as nothing to the achievements of the following year. On June 7th a considerable force of dervishes was attacked and utterly defeated by the Egyptian army, whose conduct delighted their officers and gave them all confidence in the future. A further advance was made in September, and Dongola was occupied. The campaign had been entirely successful, the character of the Egyptian soldiery was established, the fertile province of Dongola rescued from the devastating rule of the Khalifa, and the frontier pushed back as far as Mirawi and Abu Dis,--the steamboats could pa.s.s to this point up the Nile, and thus a great step was taken upon the road to Khartoum.

The Sirdar now conceived, and at once began to carry out, the bold idea of laying a railway from Wady Haifa across the desert to Abu Hamed, and thence to Berber and to Dakhala, and the junction of the Nile and the Atbara, a distance of nearly 400 miles. A bold idea indeed, for not only had every rail and every sleeper to be brought up to Wady Haifa, and thence along the rail itself as it disappeared into the trackless desert, but every mile the railway advanced the work was getting farther away from its base and penetrating deeper into the enemy's country, for at this time Abu Hamed was still held by the dervishes. Water was bored for and actually found along the route; and before the line arrived there Abu Hamed had been captured, and by the end of the year the railway reached the Nile again, at a point 234 miles from Haifa, and above the Third Cataract. General Hunter, after a sharp fight in which Major Sidney and Lieutenant Fitzclarence were killed, had seized Abu Hamed; and by the end of the campaign, Dongola, Debbet, Khorti, and Berber were held by Egypt, while the Nile was patrolled even up to Metammeh by the six steamers which, despite all difficulties, had been pa.s.sed over the cataracts.

The railway making did not pause at Abu Hamed, but at once set out towards the junction of the Atbara with the Nile, a point 150 miles farther, and just south of the Fifth Cataract; the object being not only to provide for the rapid transport of provisions and stores, but also to get on to the Nile the three new steamers which had been brought from England in sections, so that they might be ready for the final advance.

THE ATBARA CAMPAIGN.

At the beginning of 1897 the Sirdar's force at the front was in four brigades, three Egyptian and one British. The Egyptian division of three brigades was under Major-General Hunter; the first brigade, three regiments of black hoofs, Sudanese, and splendid soldiers, and one of Egyptian, was commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel H.A. Macdonald, and quartered at Berber. The second brigade, also consisting of three Sudanese and one Egyptian regiment, and under the command of Lieutenant--Colonel Maxwell, was about half-way between Berber and the Atbara River; while the third brigade, under Lieutenant-Colonel Lewis, consisting entirely of Egyptians, was at the Atbara. The British brigade, commanded by Major-General Gatacre, had its camp about a mile away from the second brigade, and consisted of the 1st Lincolns.h.i.+re, Colonel Verner; the 1st Cameron Highlanders, Colonel Money; 1st Warwicks.h.i.+re, under Lieutenant-Colonel Onagle Jones, and was afterwards joined by the 1st Seaforth Highlanders, Colonel Murray. The whole force in the field, exclusive of the railway battalion and the crews of the gunboats, but including four batteries of artillery under Lieutenant-Colonel Long and eight squadrons of Egyptian cavalry under Lieutenant-Colonel Broadwood, amounted to about 14,000 men.

About the end of February it was known that Mahmoud was concentrating at Shendy, and preparing to make an attack upon Berber, which being held only by Egyptian troops he hoped to capture before the Sirdar could come to its relief. Nor was this by any means an impracticable plan, for Mahmoud's force consisted of some 20,000 horse and foot, with ample supplies of arms and ammunition, guns, and transport animals; but Mahmoud reckoned without the Sirdar.

On the 25th February the British brigade was ordered to proceed from Abu Dis, to which point they had recently advanced, to Debeker, a village 10 miles or so south of Berber. The men had but just returned from a 16-mile route march, but the start was made without delay. The railway, which was always being pushed ahead, was available for 17 miles out, and by the evening of the 27th the whole force was on the march; while by the evening of 3rd March they had reached their destination,--as good a performance as even the records of British Infantry can show. To quote the Special Army Order issued from the Horse Guards at the end of the campaign, "The march of the British Brigade to the Atbara, when in six days--for one of which it was halted--it covered 140 miles in a most trying climate, shows what British troops can do when called upon."

On the 20th of March the entire force marched to Ras-el-Hudi, a point on the bend of the river which Mahmoud would have to pa.s.s if he decided to attack Berber. But Mahmoud, finding now that he would have the British as well as Egyptians to deal with, changed his plans, and instead of advancing intrenched his position, hoping to receive a.s.sistance from the Khalifa. On the 26th a raid was made on Shendy by the steamboats, under command of Commander Keppel and Lieutenants Beatty and Hood, R.N.; the troops being commanded by Majors Hickman and Sitwell, Captain Sloman, and Lieutenant Graham. This was completely successful: the dervishes fled; Shendy, where was Mahmoud's reserve depot, was occupied, and the forts and depot destroyed, and a large number of female prisoners released. Attempts to draw Mahmoud out of his cover were unsuccessful, and the Sirdar decided to attack him.

On April 7th the force, with the British leading, made a night-march, and after a short rest took up a position about one and a half miles from the enemy's camp, and about 4:30 a.m. a general advance in attack formation was made. The British brigade was on the left, Macdonald's in the centre, Maxwell's on the right, and Lewis's Egyptians were held in reserve. The enemy were in a large irregular enclosure, with its rear on the now dry bed of the river. The position was defended by trenches, and in part by palisades; and was surrounded by a strong zareba, the inside being full of shelter trenches and pits. After a bombardment by 12 guns and the rocket detachment, at 7:10 the general advance was sounded, and with pipes and bands playing the infantry bore down upon the zareba. In front of the British were the Camerons in line, and behind them the Warwicks on the left, Seaforths in the centre, and Lincolns on the right; General Gatacre, the Staff, and Colonel Money in front. The zareba was soon reached and torn aside, and in a few minutes our men were in the enclosure. The enemy fought bravely, and, refusing quarter, died fighting. In every hut and trench the dervishes were hid, and slashed and fired at their enemy till bayoneted, or shot themselves.

There were many hand-to-hand fights and many narrow escapes, but in forty minutes the firing was over and the dervish army scattered and annihilated. With the exception of Osman Digna, who with his usual luck escaped, and three others, all the important leaders were killed, and Mahmoud himself taken prisoner. He was found in a hole under his bed! a rare instance of cowardice among dervishes. Of the British, Captains Urquhart and Findlay of the Camerons, and Lieutenant Gore of the Seaforths, who had only recently joined, were killed leading their men over the trenches, besides 22 non-commissioned officers and men; and 10 officers and 82 non-commissioned officers and men wounded. The Egyptian army lost 57 officers and men, and 5 British and 16 native officers and 365 non-commissioned officers and men wounded. The dervish losses were estimated at over 3000 killed at and around the zareba; but of the whole dervish army but very few, and none of the wounded, could have escaped to Omdurman,--in fact the army was practically annihilated.

Among the many escapes from spear or bullet that occurred, none are more curious than those of Corporal Lawrie of the Seaforths, which he related in a letter home, afterwards published in a daily paper. A bullet took off the toe of his shoe, his bayonet was bent by a shot; a shot pa.s.sed through his sleeve, his rifle was struck by a bullet; a dervish striking at him with a spear only split his haversack; a shot entered the lid of his ammunition pouch, pa.s.sed into his coat pocket, smas.h.i.+ng a penknife and two pencils, tore four holes in his s.h.i.+rt, made a surface wound on his left breast, and came out near his left shoulder through his coat and pouch braces.

THE ADVANCE TO KHARTOUM.

After the battle of the Atbara the troops returned to the Nile and went into summer quarters, waiting for the time of high Nile, when the advance would be made.

The British troops settled down for a time in camp as in times of peace, for there was no fear of any dervish force, and were made as comfortable as possible; and the men, who were all well seasoned and inured to the climate, spared as much as possible during the heat. But it was a very busy time with the Egyptians, and especially with the railway brigade, which, under the able direction of the director of railways, Major Gerouard, R.E., laboured incessantly to complete the track to Dakhala, which now became the base and depot of the autumn campaign.

The new gunboats were brought up by rail in sections, and put together, as well as the barges for transport, and launched at Abadieh on the Nile, a village between Berber and the Fifth Cataract. Camping-grounds were prepared, commissariat stores and ammunition forwarded to the front, wood cut and stacked for fuel, and every preparation made, so that there might be no delay or hitch at the critical moment.

From the 17th of July, everything being in readiness to receive them, reinforcements for the British command, now to be raised to a division and commanded by Major-General Gatacre, were moved up from Cairo; amongst these were Royal Artillery, Royal Engineers, Army Service Corps, Medical Corps, and the 21st Lancers under Colonel Martin, a regiment which had never yet been in action, and was therefore burning to distinguish itself, as indeed it did, as we shall presently see.

A second British brigade had been formed, under the command of Colonel Lyttleton; it was comprised of 1st Northumberland Fusiliers, Lieutenant--Colonel Money; 2nd Lancas.h.i.+re Fusiliers, Lieutenant-Colonel Collingwood, from the Army of Occupation at Cairo; 2nd Rifle Brigade, Colonel Howard; and 1st Grenadier Guards, Colonel Hatton; which last two regiments had come direct to the front from Malta and Gibraltar respectively. There was also a detachment of Royal Irish Fusiliers, with Maxims, making in all about 7500 men.

The 21st Lancers numbered 500, the rest of the cavalry being Broadwood's Egyptians, about 1000 sabres. There was also an addition to the artillery of the 32nd Field-Battery R.A., Major Williams; 37th Field-Battery with the new 5-inch howitzers firing Lyddite sh.e.l.ls, and two siege-guns, besides some twenty or more Maxims.

The first British division was composed, as before, of the Camerons, Seaforths, Lincolns, and Warwicks; the last two having changed colonels, Lieutenant-Colonel Louth now leading the Lincolns, and Lieutenant-Colonel Forbes the Warwicks. The brigade was commanded by Colonel Wauchope; General Gatacre, as has been said, being now in command of the division.

The land forces numbered over 8000 British troops and about 15,000 Egyptian; in addition to this the Sirdar had a river flotilla of eleven steamboats well armed, besides iron barges especially made for transport of troops, and innumerable native craft.

THE BATTLE OF OMDURMAN.

On 15th August the final advance began, and on the 22nd the whole force was concentrated at Wad Hamed, some 50 miles from Omdurman, a brilliant achievement even for the Sirdar, for it meant that 23,000 men, with all impedimenta, stores, and ammunition, had been moved within ten days 150 miles across the desert into the enemy's country by means of marching and the use of the flotilla on the Nile.

"The task before them is one of the most arduous that an army has ever been called upon to perform, being at a distance of something like 1200 miles from the real base of operations, on the sea, in a climate the conditions of which are trying, and amidst deserts devoid of all resources--even of those few which existed in 1884 when the British forces under Lord Wolseley advanced to Metammeh, and which have since been utterly destroyed by the complete devastation of the villages on the banks of the Nile and the murder or despoliation of their inhabitants."--Field-Marshal Sir J.L.A. Simmons, in a letter to the _Times_.

On the 2nd September the army lay encamped at Agaiga on the Nile, a few miles only from Khartoum, having already come into touch with he Khalifa's outposts, the main body of whose army, some 40,000 or 50,000, had come out of Omdurman, and was intrenched between them and the city.

The Sirdar's camp was in the form of a semicircle, with about one mile of the Nile for its diameter. On the extreme left was the 32nd Field-Battery R.A.; and next them, with their left on the Nile, and on the right of the guns, lay the second British brigade (Rifles, Lancas.h.i.+re, Northumberland, and Grenadier Guards); then the first British brigade (Wauchope's), Warwicks, Seaforths, Camerons, and Lincolns; then Maxwell's 2nd Egyptian; Macdonald's, and then Lewis with his right on the Nile. On the left, and extending close down to the lines, was a small hill, Gabel Surgham; and on the right, some way off, the rising ground of Kerrin. The camp was protected by a zareba and trench, with s.p.a.ces at intervals, and all along the river were the flotilla of gunboats.

At an early hour the whole army was armed and everything in readiness for the advance, when the scouts and the pickets of the 21st Lancers came galloping in with the astounding but most welcome news that the Khalifa, instead of waiting to be attacked behind his intrenchments, as did Mahmoud at Atbara, was rapidly advancing with his whole army upon the zareba. Nothing could have been more fortunate for the Sirdar or more foolish on the part of the Khalifa; had he even remained in his position he would have caused his a.s.sailants heavy loss, while had he awaited our attack in Omdurman the siege might have presented many difficulties. As it was, over-confident in the fanatic courage of his followers, and their superior numbers, he threw his host upon our fire, verily "Quem deus vult perdere prius dementat" was true in his case.

The black flag of the Khalifa and the huge host of the Arabs was soon seen approaching, and at 6:30 a.m. the firing commenced. First the Maxims and 15-pounder field-guns, 2800 yards; then the Lee-Metford rifles. The air was full of shot and bullet, shrapnel and sh.e.l.l, mowing out great gaps in the charging ma.s.ses, who never faltered in their movement. Thousands upon thousands fell, and were succeeded by thousands upon thousands who likewise fell; and of all that host never a man reached the zareba. Nothing could exceed the courage of the dervishes. Following their old tactics, they meant to rush the zareba, piercing, as they hoped, the line of fire by sheer force of numbers.

"Stormed at by shot and sh.e.l.l, Bravely they fought and fell."

A large body of horse tried to break through the centre, and were annihilated. At length human endurance could do no more, and the shattered remnants of what had been but an hour before a mighty host, withdrew behind Gabel Surgham. So ended the first act, with a loss of a few hundred in killed and wounded; 10,000 dervishes were slain.

It was at first thought when the last dervish disappeared behind the high ground that the fight was over, and that Omdurman lay open; and after a delay occupied in removing the wounded to the steamers, and replenis.h.i.+ng ammunition, the army, about 9:30, re-formed for marching, moved out of the camp. Lyttleton's and Wauchope's brigade, turning by the left, moved round the bottom of Gabel Surgham; Maxwell pa.s.sing on their right, while Lewis and Macdonald moved away much farther on the right; and thus the brigades became at some distance apart.