Ziehs, or porous native clay-jars to hold cool drinking water, and various other little accessories to lighten the hardships of the trip would surely have been provided. Later on, the officials took care to have ziehs and plenty of cool drinking water in the carriages and trucks of all trains carrying troops, so that the men had at least plenty to drink.
On our way up we pa.s.sed Wauchope"s brigade encamped at Es Selim and Darmali. Colonel Macdonald"s 1st and Colonel Maxwell"s 2nd Khedivial Brigades started to march from Berber to Dakhala about that time, the end of July. Many of the British soldiers, so as not to sleep upon the ground, had built for themselves benches of mud or sun-dried bricks, whereon they spread their blankets. The plan secured some immunity from such crawling things as scorpions and snakes. Sun-baked mud in the Soudan is a hard and decently clean material for bench or bed. The Theatres Royal, Darmali and Es Selim, were in full swing, though it was very "dog-days" weather. Officers liberally patronised the men"s entertainments and occasionally held jollifications of their own.
There were a good many who exercised the cheerful spirit of Mark Tapley under the trials of the Soudan. Lively and original skits and verses were given at these symposiums. Here are a few verses of a topical song on the refractory blacks and fellaheen fallen under the condemnation of either the civil or military law and forced to hard labour. It was written and frequently sung by a clever young engineer officer:--
We"re convicts at work in the Noozle, We carry great loads on our backs, And often our warders bamboozle, And sleep "neath mountains of sacks.
Chorus: Ri-tooral il looral, &c.
(The Noozle is the commissariat depot.)
We convicts start work at day dawning, Boilers we mount about noon, Sleepers we load in the morning, And rails by the light of the moon.
Our warders are blacks, who cry Masha! (march), And strike us if we don"t obey, Or else he"s a Hamla Ombashi, Who allows us to fuddle all day.
Hamla Ombashi is a corporal of the transport service, and "fuddle" is to sit down. It was the chorus with spoken words interlarded that caught on astonishingly, and showed that the men"s lungs were in magnificent condition. Another howler, but by another author, was "Roll on to Khartoum." Here is a specimen verse and the chorus:--
Come, forward march, and do your duty, Though poor your grub, no rum, bad "bacca, Step out, for fighting and no booty, To trace a free red line thro" Africa.
No barney, boys, give over mousing, True Britons are ye from hill and fen, Now rally lads, and drop all grousing, And pull together like soldier-men.
Chorus.
Then roll on, boys, roll on to Khartoum, March ye and fight by night or by day, Hasten the hour of the Dervishes" doom, Gordon avenge in old England"s way.
"Grousing" is Tommy Atkins for grumbling, which is an Englishman"s birthright. As for no rum, subsequently the men were allowed two tots a week; Wednesdays and Sat.u.r.days were, I think, the days of issue.
Less than half a gill was each man"s share. I am inclined to believe had there been a daily issue of the same quant.i.ty of rum it had been better, and the young soldiers might have escaped with less fever.
Dakhala had undergone many changes since March. It was bigger in every respect, but no better as a camping-ground. Truth to tell, it was so bad as to be well-nigh intolerable. The correspondents" quarters were exceptionally vile, the location being the worst possible within the lines. We had no option, and so had to pitch our tents behind the noozle in a ten-acre waste of dirtiest, lightest loam, which swished around in clouds by day and night, making us grimy as coal-heavers, powdering everything, even our food and drink, with gritty dust and covering us in our blankets inches deep. The river breeze was barred from us, and the green and fresher banks of the Atbara and the Nile, beyond the fort, were for other than correspondents" camps. Many rows of mud huts had been built in the interior. As for the sun-dried brick parapets and ramparts of the fortifications, these were already crumbling to ruin or being cast down for use in newer structures. The lofty wooden lookout staging, called the Eiffel Tower, had been removed, and its timbers converted to other purposes. On the completion of the railway to Dakhala, Abadia had become but a secondary workshop centre. Newer and larger shipbuilding yards and engine works were erected by the Atbara. Under Lieutenant Bond, R.N., and Mr Haig gunboats, steamers, barges and sailing craft were put in thorough order, native artisans toiling day and night. The clang of hammermen, riveters, carpenters and caulkers resounded along the river front. The Dakhala noozle was an immense depot, stuffed full of grain, provisions, ammunition boxes, ropes, wires, iron, medical stores and other material, like one of the great London docks. As usual the indefatigable Greek trader had adventured upon the scene. North of the fortified lines, with the help of the natives he had run up a mud town. It consisted of a double row of one-storeyed houses, between which ran a street of nearly 300 yards. The place, known as the bazaar, was a hive of stores, wretched cafes, and the like. As the Sirdar had had all the beer and liquor in the place seized and put under seal before the advent of Mr T. Atkins, there was little to be had in Dakhala bazaar besides a not too pure soda-water, coffee, sardines, beans, maccaroni, oil, tobacco and matches.
[Ill.u.s.tration: STREET IN DAKHALA.]
For six weeks southerly winds blew almost daily. South of 17 degrees, the northerly breeze does not commence to blow before the end of August. It was warm, extremely warm, under the burning tropical sun.
The heat bore down like a load upon head and shoulders and enveloped us like a blast from a roaring furnace. About noontide it was ordinarily 120 degrees Fahr. in my tent. Still, I am sure it was by no means so oppressive as at Korti in March 1885. The Atbara and the Nile helped to temper the fiery glow that radiated from the desert rocks and sands. At best, the heat is a sore trial, but to be borne with more patience than the "devils" and sand storms that bother by night as well as by day. Snow-drifts are mild visitations of Providence compared with a dust storm or whirlwind. These latter would smother you, if you would let them, quicker and less respectably than a shroud of snow. Jack Frost bites mildly, preferring to do his serious work by dulling the nerves; but the Dust Devil is a cruel tormentor from first to last. You may bury your head in folds of cloth and mosquito netting, and sweat and stifle in the attempt, but he snuffs you and powders you all the same. He puffs his finest clouds in your face, and round and round you till you find bedding and clothing are no more protection against him than they are against the Rontgen ray. One particular night he came in great strength to Dakhala, heaped waves of sand over us, dug great hollows around our quarters, and completed his diabolical games by completely overturning two of my colleagues"
tents. I saw my friends emerge from the ruins of canvas, bedding, and boxes, wild, half-clad, terra-cotta figures, such as may have escaped from the destruction of Pompeii. But the human mind is a curious thing. It does not acknowledge defeat easily, and so a victim said to me he had pulled his tent down to keep it from falling. The Dust Devil had nothing to do with it.
Early in August the situation a.s.sumed a peculiar interest to us of the fourth estate. We were told that the troops were shortly going forward to rendezvous at Nasri Island, whereas it was a matter of notoriety that Wad Habeshi, which was further south, had been selected as the advanced camp for the army on leaving Dakhala. Of course, not one word of the true state of matters were we permitted to wire home.
Detachments, true enough, had been sent ahead to "cut wood" and set up a camp upon Nasri Island. But that was merely to have a secure secondary depot and hospital station. It had been ascertained after the occupation of Shendy that the dervishes were in no great strength at Shabluka or the Sixth Cataract. They occasionally sent down about a thousand Baggara hors.e.m.e.n to that place, and their riders scouted around the bluff rocks and hills bordering the Nile on either side of the "bab," or water-gateway and rapids of Shabluka. As a rule, only about two hundred of them ever crossed to the east bank. The others hung around on the west bank, and built low walls for riflemen and dug a number of trenches and then returned to Omdurman. A few hundred only remained to guard the forts and the narrow fairway. Much labour had been expended and considerable rude skill shown by the enemy in building bastions and other defensive works at various places on the river,--particularly in the Shabluka gorge and before Omdurman. Why the Khalifa committed the blunder of making no adequate preparation for defending the pa.s.s at Shabluka it is difficult to understand. Only one conclusion suggests itself. He was probably afraid to trust his followers so far from his sight, lest the negroes should desert. We continually heard from our own blacks that most of Abdullah"s _jehadieh_ Soudani riflemen would come over to us the first chance they got. Major-Generals Hunter and Gatacre, having learned that the dervish infantry had been withdrawn from Shabluka, scouted south up to the cataract and selected Wad Habeshi as a suitable camp and rendezvous. That village, or rather district, is on the west bank, south of Nasri Island and but fifteen miles north of Shabluka.
A big zereba was made at Wad Habeshi and trenches were dug. The place, in short, long before the British troops stirred south beyond Dakhala, was turned into a fortified post and made the real rendezvous of the Sirdar"s army.
[Ill.u.s.tration: TROOPS GOING TO WAD HABESHI.]
On 2nd August, in the face of a strong south wind, the 1st and 2nd Khedivial brigades, respectively Colonel Macdonald"s and Colonel Maxwell"s, embarked in very close order on steamers and gia.s.sas for Wad Habeshi. The distance was about 140 miles by water from Dakhala, but it took the gunboats and their tows over three days to get there, for the craft were deeply ladened with men and stores. The soupy whirling Nile flood washed the decks of the steamers almost from stem to stern. It was little short of the rarest good fortune there was no accident by the way. Everybody turned out to see the brigades off.
Merrily stepped the black battalions, their women-folk raising the usual shrill cry of jubilation, whilst the bands played the favourite air, "O, dem Golden Slippers." Regimental bands do droll things occasionally. I remember in the year of the Dongola Campaign and the cholera visitation, 1896, a grim blunder made by a native battalion"s band. The serious surroundings of those days led me to say nothing of the matter at that time. Military interments, in cholera cases, were ordinarily made very early in the morning or late in the afternoon, just before sunset. A popular native Egyptian officer fell a victim to the epidemic one afternoon. The sun had but set when the funeral party, headed by the full regimental band, were seen hastening towards the cemetery, for there was no time to lose. The tune actually being played was not the "Dead March in Saul" but "Up I came with my little lot." When the gunboats started up the Nile for Wad Habeshi, towing alongside barges and gia.s.sas, all the crafts crammed with men and stores, more than one of the fellaheen battalions were regaled with the full strains of ""E dunno were "e are."
By the end of July the Egyptian cavalry--nine squadrons--under Colonel Broadwood, with the camel corps under Major Tudway, the horse artillery and one or two batteries, had been ferried across from Dakhala to the west bank. On the 4th of August the whole of the mounted force named, about 2000 strong, started to march along the bank to Wad Habeshi. Going along the bank means, at high Nile, leading the troops upon a course half to a full mile from the river so as to avoid creeks and overflows and, at same time, secure the advantage of moving upon the more open ground beyond the zone of cultivation, out upon the edge of the bare desert. It was also early in August that the last of the fourteen double-decked iron barges, designed for the conveyance of troops, was finished at Dakhala. Except the surplus and reserve stores everything was put to instant service. As good a march in its way, if not better in some respects than that of the 5th Egyptian battalion from Suakin to Berber, was the tramp of the 17th Egyptian--also a fellaheen regiment--from Merawi to Dakhala. They made a record rapid tramp, following the Nile, up to Dakhala.
At Dakhala I frequently saw and conversed with the Sirdar, Generals Rundle and Gatacre, Colonels Wingate and Slatin Pasha. There seemed no reason to doubt but that the Khalifa would remain at Omdurman and give us a fight. Abdullah the Taaisha gave out as widely as he could that he meant actual business and dying if necessary at the Mahdi"s tomb.
His women-folk had not then been sent away, and that looked promising for battle. We heard that he was building more stout walls and digging numberless trenches for defence. Of ammunition for small arms and his ordinary bra.s.s rifled guns we were told he had no lack. For the three or four excellent batteries of Krupps he possessed he had but sixty rounds per cannon--enough, with good common and shrapnel sh.e.l.l, had he made right use of his means, to have made matters unpleasant for us until our gunners and Maxims found the range. It was regarded as doubtful whether he would be able to employ any of the machine guns in the dervish armoury. Of all Gordon"s "penny steamers" only one, it was said, was serviceable, and she was kept under steam night and day at Omdurman.
Though he kept a bold front, bl.u.s.tered, and promised his adherents no end of good things, and told them that, as in 1884-85, it was G.o.d"s will to turn the English back at the eleventh hour, Khalifa Abdullah was truly in a parlous state. With all the Sirdar"s care, we could not keep from the dervish leader the extent of our preparations or forwardness for the advance. As usual, Sir Herbert Kitchener was well ahead of the time planned for moving on. We learned that, bar unforeseen accidents and delays, the whole of his army would be in front of Omdurman in a little over one month from the 1st of August.
Two dates in September were given for the fall of that stronghold. It turned out to be neither. Kordofan had become openly rebellious against the Khalifa. A caravan of over 1140 people, with women, children and cattle marching overland, had arrived from that remote region at Korti in the Dongola province. The mult.i.tude, who were accompanied by many influential sheikhs flying from Mahdist misrule, sent a deputation to the Sirdar asking his a.s.sistance to take and hold El Obeid. As if that were not enough in the way of shutting the door behind the Khalifa, sheikhs came down from the Blue Nile provinces, seeking protection. Help was given to them, and bodies of friendlies were got together to seize Senaar and other important places. The Nile was running very swift and full in August, the current moving at fully six miles an hour past Dakhala. In July the Atbara, which had again begun slowly to flow, suddenly rose, the muddy water roaring along in a series of terraced wave-walls. Its 300-yards wide bed, where it joined the Nile, was within a few minutes choked with the tawny flood up to nearly the top of the 30-foot banks on either side. Bursting into the Nile the sea of soup seemed to push its way in a well-defined stream nearly across the 1200-yards broad bosom of the Father of Waters.
The first half of the 2nd Battalion of the Rifle Brigade arrived on the 2nd of August at Dakhala, during a bl.u.s.tering dust-storm. For all that, black and travel-stained, they were glad to detrain, and to plod through the sand, and breast the laden atmosphere, in order to get into camp hard by the Atbara. The following day the remainder of the battalion marched in under somewhat pleasanter conditions. Everybody turned out to cheer the smart, soldierlike detachments. On the 6th inst. the first half of the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards arrived, and later on the remainder. The Sirdar and Generals Rundle and Gatacre, and the staffs went to greet them. A finer and more stalwart body of troops was never seen in the Soudan. Native opinion was more than favourable respecting them, and I heard observations on all sides that the Khalifa had no men he could set against them. The Sirdar and General Gatacre also expressed themselves much pleased with the appearance of the Grenadiers, who looked like seasoned soldiers and came in without a sick man in their ranks.
CHAPTER V.
DAKHALA CAMP: GOSSIP AND DUTY.
Dirt is the essence of savagery, and there is a superfluity of both in the Soudan. I have no desperate wish so to describe the vileness of the surroundings of the correspondents" camp at Dakhala that even casual thinkers will sniff at it. The place was bad enough in all conscience, and, mayhap, therein I have said all that is necessary. As for the worry of our lives, squatted as we were in the least agreeable quarter of the big rectangular fort, long will the memory of those days and nights burden our existence. What a time I had on those sand and dust heaps, where every puff of wind and every footfall raised clouds of pulverised cosmos. For two weeks, amid the wretched scene, hideous by night as by day, I persisted in existing. It was a huge pen with men, horses, camels, donkeys, dogs and poultry hobn.o.bbing amid a daily wreckage of old provision tins, garbage of soiled forage and stable-sweepings and whatnot. All that, with a temperature of 116 degrees to 120 degrees Fahr. in the shade, wore the temper and added amazingly to the consumption of wet things. At the Grenadier Guards"
mess one sultry evening they consumed twenty-eight dozen of sodas, and it was not a record night. Without giving anybody"s secret away, I may say I know a gentleman who could polish off three dozen at a sitting, and unblushingly call for more. These are details of more interest to teetotalers than to the general public. Yet, not to let the subject pa.s.s without a word of caution to afflicted future travellers in the Soudan, the inordinate use of undiluted mineral waters of native manufacture is most dangerous to health.
We correspondents had to wink both eyes in much of our telegraphic news from the front, for military reasons. The press censor was Colonel Wingate, chief of the Intelligence Department. In his absence, Major-General Rundle, chief of staff, usually acted. Personally, either gentleman was all that could be desired. Both were alike ready and courteous in the discharge of their at all times rather onerous duty, giving frequent audience to the numerous contingent of eager newsmen, garrulous and prodigal with pencil and pen. Some of the new-comers to the business felt sorely hit, because they were precluded from writing at large upon all subjects connected with the campaign. The excision of their copy grieved and hurt them as much as if they had been subjected to a real surgical amputation. Yet those two officers but obeyed orders, for after all, and under every circ.u.mstance, the Sirdar, as I am well aware, was the real censor. It is perhaps fairly open to argument whether the course adopted in dealing with correspondents" copy was wise or necessary in a war against an ignorant and savage foe. There was, at least, one official blunder which gave occasion for much annoyance, and ought to have been promptly remedied, or better still, never committed. It was expected of Colonel Wingate, the censor, that amid multifarious important responsibilities as chief of the Intelligence branch he should find time daily to peruse and correct tens of thousands of words, often crabbedly written, in press messages. With the approach of the day of battle, his own department taxed more and more his entire attention, and side by side the correspondents" telegrams grew in length and importance. The task of proper censorship under such conditions was impossible for any human being to discharge adequately. On that account the public interest suffered, for press matters were often neither promptly nor fully despatched. As a rule, the correspondents were left in blissful ignorance of what had been cut out of their copy, as well as of the exact nature of the residuum transmitted.
Besides these grievances there was one of favouritism alleged, but of that there is always more or less in every phase of life and a.s.sociation. All told, it may be thought that the correspondents"
complaints were of no very serious character. That depends on how they are looked at. I have no taste for cavilling or grumbling over events that are past. Surely, however, there is a middle way somewhere to be found between the absolutism of a general in the field, who may gag the correspondents or treat them as camp followers, and the clear right of the British public under our free inst.i.tutions to have news dealing with the progress of their arms rapidly transmitted home. I am well aware of the grave responsibilities that hedge a commander-in-chief, and the cruel injury that an unrestrained non-combatant may do him by recklessly writing on subjects calculated to jeopardise the success of a campaign and hazard countless lives and fortunes. The latter is an remote possibility. A commander-in-chief has to consider that any enemy worth his salt is usually kept informed by spies and deserters, and press-men who are known and cognisant of their duty are no more likely to betray secrets to their country"s enemies than any officer or soldier in the Queen"s service. And nowadays the private correspondence from troops in the field cannot be suppressed, and it is often published. Commanders of armies will either have to accept the presence of recognised writers, over whom they can exercise some control, or instead stand powerless before a dangerous flood of random army letters poured into the public press.
The case can be met with judgment and care--plus penalties where deserved. I am bringing no charges here, but discussing a vexed and withal important question. I am glad to say that during the Omdurman Campaign there was no attempt, within my knowledge, of muzzling the press. This does not bear upon the Fashoda incident, but that came later.
Nasri Island as a base of concentration was, as I have intimated, a blind. Although we correspondents were not permitted to go up the river, or indeed move beyond the Atbara, until the Sirdar and headquarters had started, yet we kept ourselves fully informed of all that was happening at the front. There had been one or two little skirmishes between bands of mounted dervishes and our wood-cutting parties of Khedivial infantry. In these encounters our men had generally the best of the fighting, and the Baggara hors.e.m.e.n invariably retreated with a few empty saddles. In July Major-Generals Hunter and Gatacre had, during a small reconnaissance, proceeded as far up as Shabluka Cataract or Rapid on one of the gunboats. The enemy, it was seen, were in no great strength there, and the seven well-planned, thick-walled mud forts blocking the pa.s.sage were weakly held. Those two officers landed with a small body of troops and surveyed a suitable camping site, at what they called Wad Hamid, but which, in reality, was north of that place and close to Wad Habeshi.
The object was to find a spot easily accessible by river and land, and with not too much bush about. At that season, the Nile having in many places overflowed its lower borders, marshes extended for miles along the ordinarily solid river banks. Wad Habeshi was merely a native wood-cutting station at first, but little by little troops appeared on the scene, and a large entrenched camp, with lines extending for several miles, was duly formed. At the end of July two steamers, which had made the perilous voyage up the Nile from the province of Dongola, came in and made fast alongside the mud bars at Dakhala.
It was still early in August when all the four battalions of Major-General Hon. N. G. Lyttelton"s Second British Brigade reached Dakhala. They were quartered in a cool and cleanly camp by the Atbara, to the south-east of the fortified lines. The 21st Lancers also arrived at Dakhala in due course. Major Williams" Field Battery, the 32nd R.A. of 15-pounders; Major Elmslie"s 37th R.A., with the new 50-pounder Howitzers firing Lyddite sh.e.l.ls; and Lieut. Weymouth"s two 40-pounder Armstrong guns, besides other cannon and Maxims, were likewise on time. Very smartly the batteries and Maxims were stowed aboard native craft, which were taken in tow by gunboats to Wad Hamid.
Detachments of gunners accompanied the pieces and carriages, but the majority of the artillerymen were ferried to the west bank, whence they marched overland to the new camp. It was at Wad Habeshi that the army was first actually marshalled as a concrete force, and forthwith took the field. Not a moment was lost by day or night in moving men and supplies onward. The little paddle steamer captured from the dervishes during the 1896 Dongola Expedition, which had been repaired and sent to Dakhala, was continually carrying troops and stores from the east to the west bank. As the Nile was running at the rate of six miles an hour in its wide bed, the "El Tahara," as the craft was called, had to make a big circuit to effect a pa.s.sage. The "El Tahara"
was one of the boats General Gordon built at Khartoum but never lived to launch. As she was a new craft, the Mahdi changed her name, calling her "The Maid," instead of "Khartoum," as it had been intended to dub her. She was an excellent vessel, with fine engines much too powerful for her frame.
[Ill.u.s.tration: WOOD STATION (EN ROUTE TO OMDURMAN).]
Both Surgeon-General Taylor, on behalf of the British division, and Surgeon-Colonel Gallwey, for the Egyptian troops, completed their arrangements for succouring the sick and wounded upon the march from Shabluka to the attack upon Omdurman. Adequate provision was made for field hospitals, floating hospitals and relief stations, for medical officers, and attendants, with cradlets and stretchers, to follow each military unit into action. For the British infantry it meant, substantially, that behind each battalion a medical officer and two non-commissioned officers should march, accompanied by six camels bearing cacolets, and men with nine stretchers. A somewhat modified scheme was got out for the cavalry and artillery, as well as for the other Khedivial troops. In the antic.i.p.ated action before Omdurman, temporary operating stations were to be set up, out of ordinary rifle-range, and native craft, which had been fitted up with cots, were to be brought as near the scene as practicable to receive the wounded.
An attempt made to lay a cable from Dakhala to the west bank was not over successful. It was found that the great sag, caused by the current, carried the cable down stream, so the whole length ran out before the opposite bank was reached. The steamer "Melik" was the telegraph ship, and paid the cable out from a wooden reel placed on her stern quarter. A few days after the failure she was employed picking up the wire, most of which was recovered by Captain Manifold, R.E., who was the director of military telegraphs in the last as in the three previous expeditions against the dervishes. The recovered line was relaid across the Atbara, which is barely a third of the width of the Nile. From the south bank of the Atbara two land lines pa.s.s up the east sh.o.r.e of the Nile. Upon a lofty corresponding pair of trestles an overhead wire was also hung across the smaller river. A few miles south of Dakhala a cable had been laid to an island and thence to the west bank. From the latter point an ordinary land wire ran along the desert to Metemmeh. Later on it was laid to Omdurman.
The line was put down step by step as the troops advanced. Thus an alternative system of telegraphic communication with Khartoum was early provided for.
It stirred the blood of everybody in our dull camp to see detachment after detachment of the second British brigade detrain. Most of us turned out and like schoolboys followed the drums and fifes as they played the troops to their camping-ground. A half-battalion of the Grenadier Guards, led by Colonel Villiers-Hatton, arrived at Dakhala on the 6th of August. Hale and strong the big fellows looked in their campaigning khaki. "First-cla.s.s fighting material," as Arabs and negroes, who are by no means poor judges, were openly heard to confess in their interchange of confidences. There is always much camp chaff and yarning amongst "Tommies"--and their officers, too, for that matter--at the expense of England"s picked battalions. "Have you seen the "Queen"s Company," my man," asked a subaltern of the Grenadiers one day of a private in the Northumberland Fusiliers. Now the "Queen"s Company" are all over six feet in stature, and there was a friendly rivalry in grenadiership between them and certain Fusilier regiments.
The question was asked when the troops were marching over undulating but rather bare ground where the tufted gra.s.s was little over knee high. It happened the officer had been detached on other duty, and was anxious to rejoin his command. "I think, sir," said the Northumbrian, saluting respectfully, "that they have got lost in the long gra.s.s."
The subaltern looked unutterable things, but the "Tommy" held a stoical face and said not a word more till the officer went off to hunt anew for his men. For all the chaff, every one was glad to see the Guards, and to speak of them as the Queen"s soldiers. Of the second brigade General Gatacre said that a better body of troops could not be wished for by any general.
I rode out to several of the brigade field-days, or rather, mornings, for there was plenty of drilling and field exercises for Lyttelton"s men. The brigade was repeatedly practised in attack formation against imaginary bodies of dervishes, as well as at a.s.saulting supposed works. On more than one of these occasions the gallant Colonel of the Guards, not having his charger up at that date, led his Grenadiers afoot, and once, at any rate, was mounted on donkey-back.
Particularism gets lost in the desert. In the manoeuvres the troops were usually led in line, the flanks being supported by two or three companies in quarter column, and the centre having in rear a few sections of companies ready to fill gaps. Save for a little noise in pa.s.sing orders, the result of a fast-becoming obsolete school of training, even captious criticism could find no actual fault with their work. Advancing across wadies and scaling knolls upon the desert, the troops were instructed to open fire with ball cartridge.
The range given was 500 yards, and the ammunition used was the tip-filed Lee-Metford bullets. As at the Atbara, without halting, the line moved slowly on, the front rank firing as at a battue, each man independently. There were a few section volleys tried, the soldiers pausing for an instant to deliver their fire. Once or twice also, the rear rank was closed up, and joined in the fusilade. One effect was to paralyse the deer and birds within range. I noticed that the tip-filed bullets did not usually spread, and that their man-stopping quality was something of a myth. Even the dum-dum does not invariably "set up"
on striking an object. For the Omdurman Campaign a new hollow-nosed bullet was issued for the Lee-Metfords. So far as I was able to judge, it generally spread on hitting, and made a deadly wound, tearing away bone and flesh at the point of exit.
On the 12th of August the 21st Lancers, together with camel and mule transport animals, were crossed to the west bank in readiness for marching to Wad Hamid. Sat.u.r.day, the 13th August, was a very busy day at Dakhala. On that date the Sirdar went by steamer to the front, direct to Wad Habeshi. It was given out he was merely going on a flying visit for inspection. There was renewed active drilling of troops. Eight steamers that came down were reloaded and sent back with troops and stores in the course of twenty-four hours. General Gatacre went to Darmali, and there a.s.sisted in the embarkation of his old brigade, Major-General A. Wauchope"s. The task was effected within the course of twelve hours, the Camerons, Seaforths, Lincolns and Warwicks, with their kits and supplies, being densely packed upon the steamers "Zafir," "n.a.z.ir," "Fatah," and the barges and gia.s.sas, which these craft towed. Had the Thames Conservancy writs run on the Nile there would have been terrible fines exacted for unlawful overcrowding. On the 14th August these stern-wheelers, heavily laden with Wauchope"s men, steamed at a fast rate past the Atbara camp, on their way south. These craft, the first of which took part in the 1896 Dongola Expedition, turned out to be really the most useful and dependable of the whole Nile flotilla. They steamed remarkably well, towed splendidly, and were, besides, good fighting craft. The three Admiralty-designed twin-screw steamers, "Sheikh" "Sultan" and "Melik,"
were not as fast as had been expected; they could not tow any reasonably big load, and, though they were stuffed with many novelties, few of the innovations were of the least practical value.
They needed all their engine power to steam and when under weigh had none to spare for driving the circular saws to cut firewood for fuel, or to start the dynamos to work the search lights with which they were fitted. Major Collinson, commanding the 4th Khedivial Brigade, left Atbara camp for the front with the 17th and 18th Battalions, or half his force, the 1st and 5th Battalions having preceded him some time previously.