CHAPTER XXVII

THE SOUDAN WAR (_Continued_)

V. THE DESERT MARCH OF THE FORLORN HOPE

"When years ago I 'listed, lads,

To serve our Gracious Queen,

The sergeant made me understand

I was a 'Royal Marine.'

He said we sometimes served in ships,

And sometimes on the shore;

But did not say I should wear spurs,

Or be in the Camel Corps."

_Songs of the Camel Corps_ (Sergt. H. EAGLE, R.M.C.C.)

Korti was a city of tents arrayed amid groves of fronded palm

overhanging the broad river; beyond, the illimitable coloured spaces of

the desert, barred with plains of tawny grass set with mimosa, and

green fields of _dhura_, and merging into the far rose-hued hills. All

day long the strong sun smote upon its yellow avenues, and the bugles

called, and the north wind, steady and cool, blew the boats up the

river, and the men, ragged and cheery and tanned saddle-colour, came

marching in and were absorbed into the great armed camp. Thence were

to spring two long arms of fighting men, one to encircle the river, the

other to reach across the desert, strike at Khartoum and save Gordon.

The day after I arrived at Korti, 5th January, 1885, the desert arm had

bent back to obtain reinforcements; because there were not enough

camels to furnish transport for the first march.

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The first division of the Naval Brigade, under Lieutenant Alfred

Pigott, also arrived on the 5th. Officers and men alike were covered

with little black pustules, due to the poison carried by the flies.

Nevertheless, they were fit and well and all a-taunto. They were

brigaded under my command with Sir Herbert Stewart's Desert Column.

The intention was that Gordon's steamers, then waiting for us somewhere

between Metemmeh and Khartoum, should be manned with the sailors and a

detachment of infantry, and should take Sir Charles Wilson up to

Khartoum. The second division of the Naval Brigade was still on its

way up. It eventually joined us at Gubat. I may here say, for the

sake of clearness, that Gubat is close to Metemmeh and that Shendi lies

on the farther, or east, bank of the Nile, so that Gubat, Metemmeh and

Shendi were really all within the area of the rendezvous at which the

River Column under General Earle was intended to join forces with the

Desert Column.

Sir Herbert Stewart arrived at Korti on the 5th and left that place on

the 8th, the intervening days being occupied in preparations. An

essential part of my own arrangements consisted in obtaining spare

boiler-plates, rivets, oakum, lubricating oil, and engineers' stores

generally, as I foresaw that these would be needed for the steamers,

which had already been knocking about the Nile in a hostile country for

some three months. At first, Sir Redvers Buller refused to let me have

either the stores or the camels upon which to carry them. He was most

good-natured and sympathetic, but he did not immediately perceive the

necessity.

"What do you want boiler-plates for?" he said. "Are you going to mend

the camels with them?"

But he let me have what I wanted. (I did mend the camels with oakum.)

With other stores, I took eight boiler-plates, and a quantity of

rivets. One of those plates, and a couple of dozen of those rivets,

saved the Column.

The Gardner gun of the Naval Brigade was carried in pieces on four

camels. Number one carried the barrels, {253} number two training and

elevating gear and wheels, number three the trail, number four, four

boxes of hoppers. The limber was abolished for the sake of handiness.

The gun was unloaded, mounted, feed-plate full, and ready to march in

under four minutes. When marching with the gun, the men hauled it with

drag-ropes, muzzle first, the trail being lifted and carried upon a

light pole. Upon going into action the trail was dropped and the gun

was ready, all the confusion and delay caused by unlimbering in a

crowded space being thus avoided.

At midday the 8th January, the Desert Column paraded for its second and

final march, behind the village of Korti, and was inspected by Lord

Wolseley. The same thought inspired every officer and man: we are

getting to the real business at last.

The Desert Column, quoting from the figures given in Sir Charles

Wilson's excellent work, _From Korti to Khartoum_, was composed as

follows:

N.-C. Officers

Officers and Men

Staff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 6

Naval Brigade . . . . . . . . . . . 5 53

19th Hussars . . . . . . . . . . . 9 121

Heavy Camel Regiment . . . . . . . 24 376

M. I. Camel Regiment . . . . . . . 21 336

Royal Artillery . . . . . . . . . . 4 39

Royal Sussex Regiment . . . . . . . 16 401

Essex Regiment . . . . . . . . . . 3 55

Commissariat and Transport . . . . 5 72

Medical Staff . . . . . . . . . . . 3 50

-- ----

98 1509

== ====

And four guns (one Gardner, three 7-pr. screw guns), 304 natives, 2228

camels, and 155 horses. Already there were along the route at the

wells of Howeiyat (left on the first march) 33 officers and men of the

M. I. Camel Regiment and 33 camels; and at Jakdul 422 officers and men

of the Guards' Camel Regiment (including Royal Marines), Royal

Engineers, and Medical Staff, and 20 camels. {254} The Desert Column

picked up these detachments as it went along, leaving others in their

places.

The Column rode off at 2 o'clock p.m. amid a chorus of good wishes from

our comrades. I rode my white donkey, County Waterford, which had been

sent up to Korti by boat, We marched ten miles; halted at sunset and

bivouacked, and started again half an hour after midnight. The moon

rode high, and it was very cold; but the cold was invigorating; and the

hard gravel or sand of the track made good going. Desert marching with

camels demands perpetual attention; the loads slip on the camels and

must be adjusted; a native driver unships the load and drops it to save

himself trouble; camels stray or break loose. By means of perpetual

driving, the unwieldy herd creeps forward with noiseless footsteps, at

something under three miles an hour.

Although the camels were so numerous, their numbers had been reduced to

the bare requirements of that small mobile column, which alone could

hope to achieve the enterprise.

At 10 o'clock a.m. on the 9th, we halted for four hours in a valley of

grass and mimosa trees; marched till sunset and came to another grassy

valley and bivouacked. On the 10th we started before daylight, and

reached the wells of El Howeiyat at noon, very thirsty, and drank muddy

water and breakfasted; marched on until long after dark over rough

ground, the men very thirsty, the camels slipping and falling all over

the place, and at length bivouacked. Starting again before daylight on

the 11th, we came to the wooded valley set among granite hills, where

are the wells of Abu Halfa, men and animals suffering greatly from

thirst. The wells consisted of a muddy pond and a few small pools of

bitter water. More holes were dug, and the watering went on all the

afternoon and all night.

Next morning, 12th January, we loaded up at daylight, and marched

across the plain lying beneath the range of yellow hills, broken by

black rocks, called Jebel Jelif; entered a grassy and wide valley,

ending in a wall of rock; turned {255} the corner of the wall, and came

into a narrower valley, full of large round stones, and closed in at

the upper end by precipices, riven into clefts, within which were the

pools of Jakdul. We beheld roads cleared of stones, and the

sign-boards of a camp, and the forts of the garrison, and stone walls

crowning the hills, one high on the left, two high on the right hand.

In ten days the little detachment of Guards, Royal Marines and

Engineers under Major Dorward, R.E., had performed an incredible amount

of work: road-making, wall-building, laying-out, canal-digging and

reservoir-making. All was ready for Sir Herbert Stewart's force, which

took up its quarters at once.

That evening the Guards gave an excellent dinner to the Staff,

substituting fresh gazelle and sand-grouse for bully-beef. All night

the men were drawing water from the upper pool of the wells, in which

was the best water, by the light of lanterns.

The next day, 13th January, all were hard at work watering the camels

and preparing for the advance on the morrow. The camels were already

suffering severely: some thirty had dropped dead on the way; and owing

to the impossibility of obtaining enough animals to carry the requisite

grain, they were growing thin. It will be observed that the whole

progress of the expedition depended upon camels as the sole means of

transport.

When a camel falls from exhaustion, it rolls over upon its side, and is

unable to rise. But it is not going to die unless it stretches its

head back; and it has still a store of latent energy; for a beast will

seldom of its own accord go on to the last. It may sound cruel; but in

that expedition it was a case of a man's life or a camel's suffering.

When I came across a fallen camel, I had it hove upright with a

gun-pole, loaded men upon it, and so got them over another thirty or

forty miles. By the exercise of care and forethought, I succeeded in

bringing back from the expedition more camels, in the proportion of

those in my control, than others, much to the interest of my old friend

Sir Redvers {256} Buller. He asked me how it was done; and I told him

that I superintended the feeding of the camels myself. If a camel was

exhausted, I treated it as I would treat a tired hunter, which, after a

long day, refuses its food. I gave the exhausted camels food by

handfuls, putting them upon a piece of cloth or canvas, instead of

throwing the whole ration upon the ground at once.

Major Kitchener (now Lord Kitchener of Khartoum), who was dwelling in a

cave in the hillside, reported that Khashm-el-Mus Bey, Malik (King) of

the Shagiyeh tribe, was at Shendi with three of Gordon's steamers. (He

was actually at Nasri Island.) Lieutenant E. J.

Montagu-Stuart-Wortley, King's Royal Rifles, joined the column for

service with Sir Charles Wilson in Khartoum. Little did we anticipate

in what his plucky service would consist. Colonel Burnaby came in with

a supply of grain, most of which was left at Jakdul, as the camels

which had brought it were needed to carry stores for the Column. There

were 800 Commissariat camels, carrying provisions for 1500 men for a

month, the first instalment of the depot it was intended to form at

Metemmeh, as the base camp from which to advance upon Khartoum.

With Burnaby came Captain Gascoigne, who had special knowledge of the

Eastern Soudan, and who afterwards went up to Khartoum with Sir Charles

Wilson.

The Column left Jakdul at 2 o'clock p.m. on 14th January, and marched

for three hours. It was generally supposed that we might be attacked

between Jakdul and Metemmeh, a distance of between 70 and 80 miles;

although the only intelligence we had was Major Kitchener's report that

3000 men under the Mahdi's Emir were at Metemmeh. We did not know that

the occupation of Jakdul by Sir Herbert Stewart on the 2nd of January,

had moved the Mahdi to determine upon the destruction of the Desert

Column between Jakdul and Metemmeh. The news of the occupation of

Jakdul had travelled with extraordinary swiftness. It was known on the

4th January, or two {257} days after the event, in Berber, nearly 90

miles from Jakdul as the crow flies; and on that day the Emir of Berber

dispatched his men to reinforce the Emir of Metemmeh. If the news were

known in Berber and Metemmeh it must have run through the whole

surrounding area of desert. The ten days occupied by the Column in

returning to Korti and returning again to Jakdul, gave the enemy the

time they needed to concentrate in front of us. Moreover, Omdurman had

fallen during the second week in January, setting free a number of the

Mahdi's soldiers. But of these things we were ignorant when we pushed

out of Jakdul. We picked up a Remington rifle, and saw some

horse-tracks, and that was all.

During the second night out from Jakdul (the 15th-16th) the camels were

knee-lashed and dispositions were made in case of attack, but nothing

happened. It was the last night's rest we were to have for some time.

On the morning of the 16th we started as usual in the dark. When the

light came, we saw the hills of Abu Klea in the distance, and after

marching nearly to them, halted for breakfast, In the meantime

Lieutenant-Colonel Barrow, with his squadron of the 19th Hussars, had

gone ahead to occupy the wells of Abu Klea. About 11 a.m. Barrow

returned to report that there was a large force of the enemy between us

and the wells. The column was then lying in a shallow valley, whence

the track led uphill over rough ground towards a pass cleft in the

range of hills, beyond which were the wells.

The Column fell in and mounted at once. Through glasses we could

clearly distinguish innumerable white-robed figures of Arabs, relieved

upon the black cliffs dominating the pass, leaping and gesticulating.

Here and there were puffs of smoke, followed after an interval by a

faint report; but the range was too far, and no bullet arrived. Nearer

hand, were swiftly jerking the isolated flags of the signallers,

communicating from the advanced scouts to the main body. The Naval

Brigade with the {258} Mounted Infantry, which were on the left of the

Column, were ordered to ascend the hill on the left of the line of

advance, to guard the flank of the Column.

We dragged up the Gardner gun, placed it in position, and built a

breastwork of loose stones. By the time we had finished, it was about

4 o'clock. Beyond and beneath us, a line of green and white flags was

strung across the valley, fluttering above the scrub, and these, with a

large tent, denoted the headquarters of the enemy.

The rest of the Column were hurriedly building a zeriba in the valley.

As the twilight fell, a party of the enemy crept to the summit of the

hill on the right flank, opposite to our fort, and dropped bullets at

long range into the Column below, which replied with a couple of screw

guns. As the darkness thickened, there arose that maddening noise of

tom-toms, whose hollow and menacing beat, endlessly and pitilessly

repeated, haunts those who have heard it to the last day of their

lives. Swelling and falling, it sounds now hard at hand, and again far

away. That night, we lay behind the breastwork, sleepless and very

cold; and the deadly throbbing of the drums filled the air, mingled

with the murmur of many voices and the rustle as of many feet, and

punctuated with the sullen crack of rifles, now firing singly, now in a

volley, and the whine of bullets. At intervals, thinking the enemy

were upon us, we stood to arms.

When at last the day broke, there were thousands of white-robed figures

clustering nearer upon the hills, and the bullets thickened, so that,

chilled as we were, rather than attempt to warm ourselves by exercise

we were fain to lie behind the breastwork. The Naval Brigade had no

casualties.

Our detachment was speedily called in, so that we had no time for

breakfast, which was being hastily eaten under fire by the rest of the

Column. All we had was a biscuit and a drink of water. We took up our

position on the right front. Sir Herbert Stewart waited for a time in

case the {259} enemy should attack. Major Gough, commanding the

Mounted Infantry, was knocked senseless by a bullet graze; Major

Dickson of the Royals was shot through the knee; Lieutenant Lyall of

the Royal Artillery was hit in the back.

Sir Herbert Stewart and Colonel Burnaby were riding about on high

ground, a mark for the enemy. I saw the general's bugler drop close

beside him, and running up, implored both him and Burnaby to dismount,

but they would not. I had hardly returned to my place when I heard

another bullet strike, and saw Burnaby's horse fall, throwing its

rider. I went to help Burnaby to his feet, and as I picked him up, he

said a curious thing. He said, "I'm not in luck to-day, Charlie."

When it became evident that the enemy would not attack, Sir Herbert

Stewart decided to take the initiative. He ordered a square to be

formed outside the zeriba, in which the baggage and the camels were to

be left in charge of a small garrison.

In the centre of the square were to be camels, carrying water,

ammunition, and cacolets (litters) for the wounded. I do not know how

many camels there were. Count Gleichen says about 30; Colonel

Colville, in the official history, gives the figure as 150. In the

front of the square (looking from the rear of the square forward),

left, and nearly all down the left flank, were Mounted Infantry; on the

right front, and half-way down the right flank, Guards' Camel Regiment.

Beginning on the left flank where Mounted Infantry ended, and

continuing round the rear face, were the Heavy Camel Regiment. Then,

in the centre of the rear, was the Naval Brigade with Gardner gun. On

the right of rear face, the Heavy Camel Regiment extended to the angle.

Round the corner, lower right flank, were the Royal Sussex, then came

the Royal Marines, continuing to the Guards' Camel Regiment. Behind

the centre of the front ranks were the three screw guns. In case of

attack, I was directed to use my own judgment as to placing the Gardner

gun.

{260}

The square was thus formed under fire. Bear in mind that the column

was upon the floor of a valley commanded by slopes and hill-tops

occupied by the enemy. The route of the square lay over the lower

slopes of the hills on the right, thus avoiding the hollow way on the

left commanded by the enemy's breastworks. Captain Campbell's company

of Mounted Infantry, and Colonel Barrow with his Hussars, went ahead to

skirmish on the front and on the left flank, and somewhat checked the

fire, while Lieutenant Romilly and a detachment of Scots Guards

skirmished ahead on the right.

It was about 10 a.m. when the square began to move. The enemy,

increasing their fire, kept pace with it. The route, studded with

rocky knolls, furrowed with watercourses, and sharply rising and

falling, was almost impassable for the camels. They lagged behind,

slipping and falling, and we of the rear face were all tangled up with

a grunting, squealing, reeking mass of struggling animals. Their

drivers, terrified by the murderous fire coming from the right, were

pressing back towards the left rear angle. By dint of the most

splendid exertions, the sailors kept up, dragging the Gardner gun. Men

were dropping, and halts must be made while they were hoisted into the

cacolets and their camels forced into the square. Surgeon J. Magill,

attending a wounded skirmisher outside the square, was hit in the leg.

During the halts the enemy's fire was returned, driving off large

numbers on the hills to the right. In about an hour we covered two

miles.

Then we saw, on the left front, about 600 yards away, a line of green

and white flags twinkling on long poles planted in the grass and scrub.

No one knew what these might portend. As the fire was hottest on the

right, we thought that the main body would attack from that quarter.

Suddenly, as we halted, more and yet more flags flashed above the

green; and the next moment the valley was alive with black and white

figures, and resounding with their cries. The whole body of them moved

swiftly and in {261} perfect order across our left front, disappearing

behind rocks and herbage.

The square was instantly moved forward some thirty yards on the slope,

in order to gain a better position. Ere the movement was completed,

the enemy reappeared.

{262}