They began the laying of a railway from Suakim to Berber, but afterward they pulled the rails up. The soldiers cursed Gladstone for the laxity of his foreign policy. Gordon, we knew, was in Khartoum, and hard pressed, and outside were the Mahdi and his multitude; and why the Government should hold us back, we could not understand. The desert life was so deadening that any kind of a change would have been welcome. Every man would have been glad of even a repetition of the charge at Balaklava, though only few men would come out. Anything was preferable to rotting in the desert!
The sun was striking dead one out of every two men. I thought my time had come when I had a sunstroke. Being the only man on the General's staff stricken, I was well looked after. The General had ice, and I was privileged to have the luxury of it. I was also given a glass of the finest French brandy. I asked the attendant to put it by my side, and when he disappeared out of my tent—my tent was so small that it barely covered my body—I went through a fierce battle with my prejudices. I was a fanatic on the drink question. I had sworn eternal hostility to it, and with good reason. The use of it was partly responsible for my lack of early schooling. It had robbed me of a great deal of the life of my kind-hearted old mother, and I had determined to put up a tremendous fight against it. Here the thing was in my hands, ordered by the doctor; but I tipped it into the sand and made them believe that I had drunk it. I had seen so many stricken men with sunstroke die during the same day, that I had little hope of my own recovery; but inside of twelve hours, I was on my feet again, and, though weak, at work.
It was recorded that we lost fifty per cent. of our strength by sunstroke and enteric fever. It was very noticeable that the men of intemperate habits were the first to go. They dropped like sheep in the heat of the day, and by sundown they lay beneath a winding sheet of desert sand. The actual conflict of civilized with savage forces was responsible for the loss of very few men. The sun was our arch enemy!
To break the monotony, we tried whatever sport was possible in the sand. The national game, cricket, came in for a trial, but was more laughter-provoking than recreative: a bundle of rags tightly rolled up in a sphere served as a ball, and pieces of boards of old packing-cases served as bats and wickets. Leapfrog and the three-cornered game of "cat" were favourite pastimes, but nothing broke the monotony. It was depressing, and it was not an unusual sight to see men weeping from homesickness—utterly unable to keep back the tears. There were attempts at suicide also, and men eagerly sought opportunity to endanger themselves. Actual fighting on the desert was to us the greatest possible godsend, for it meant either death or relief from the game of waiting.
Despite the fact that the love of Gordon had brought me there, I was not enamoured of the way in which the campaign was carried on. Of course, when in actual conflict, I wanted this black horde wiped off the face of the earth; but when I saw boys and girls, ranging from six to ten years of age, approaching the phalanx of British bayonets with their little assagais ready to do battle, I was thrilled with admiration for them. Some of our officers described this as fanaticism, and I remember a discussion that took place between two of them as to whether it was fanaticism or courage, and a unique experiment was tried. We had with us always a contingent of friendly natives, and in order to test the question, one of them was to bare his back (for a shilling) and an officer applied to it, with all his strength, a horsewhip. I saw the black man's body writhe for an instant as he puckered his mouth; but it was only for an instant—then he smiled and asked for another stroke for another shilling. This seemed to indicate to the officers that there was something more than fanaticism in the Soudanese. Their warriors were tall, powerfully built men—we used to say they were dressed in palm oil and mosquitoes. Their hair stood straight up, and their bodies were greased. I think it was the general opinion of our officers that if these men could be disciplined and drilled as European soldiers are, they would make the finest fighters in the world. Perhaps Kipling has described this opinion better than anybody else when he says:
So 'ere's to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, at your 'ome in the Soudan;
You're a pore benighted 'eathen but a first-class fightin' man;
An' 'ere's to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, with your 'ayrick 'ead of 'air—
You big black boundin' beggar—for you broke a British square!
There was somewhat of a mixture of my sentiment and feeling on this war. I wanted Gordon released, I wanted the war ended and the Soudanese beaten; but when I contrasted the spirit of the campaign with the spirit of Jesus, I often wished that I could lend my assistance to these black men of the desert who were fighting for the thing under their feet, and the home life of their tribe. But it was not until I was completely out of the desert that I was possessed of a loathing and disgust for the game of war, as such. This disgust grew until I had completely ridden myself not only of the war spirit, but of the paraphernalia of the soldier. The officer whose servant I was, was so hated by everybody who knew him that if he had ever gotten in front of the ranks, as was the ancient custom in war, he would have been the first man to drop, and he would have dropped by a bullet from one of his own men. But leaders no longer lead on the field of battle—they follow!
I had some books with me, but the power to interest myself in them had almost completely vanished. I occupied my mind very largely with military tactics. On a large sheet of brown paper I outlined the plan of campaign. On it I had the position of every regiment in our army. The dynamite mines, the region of broken glass, the furze bushes, fort and redoubts were all minutely detailed, and one night an exigency arose in which this paper plan of campaign was called into evidence. Tired of waiting, and very restive and discontented under the privations of the desert, Graham determined to move. The electric-light apparatus was out of order, and the advance forts were too far away to be touched with any less powerful signal of the night. A non-commissioned officer was ordered to take a corporal's guard and deliver marching orders to the advanced forts. When questioned as to the route he was not quite certain as to the exact location of the dynamite mines or broken glass, and as I overheard the entire conversation, I produced my brown-paper map and begged the honour of carrying the dispatch. This was not granted me until several others had been questioned and failed. I was so sure of every inch of the ground, that I was commissioned to take two men with me and deliver the orders. This made my heart leap with joy—it was a relief, an excitement, an opportunity!
Osman Digna's men were stealthy. They hid behind the furze bushes in the darkness so often, and so many of our men had been hamstrung, that, of course, we were on the alert; but every furze bush we approached covered an imaginery "Fuzzy-Wuzzy," and this, often repeated, created an unutterable fear, so that by the time we reached our destination, our khaki clothing was black with sweat, and we were literally drenched with fear. Of course, we put on a brave front and smiled complacently as we delivered the orders, and when it was suggested that we remain overnight in the fort, I nonchalantly refused the offer under the pretence that we were expected back. The same thing happened on the return journey, and when the thing was over, we were the most pitiful-looking objects—fear-stricken soldiers!
Some months later when it was announced to me that we had been mentioned in dispatches, the absurdity of the thing became for the first time fully apparent. According to the ethics of military life, I had done a brave thing—something worth mentioning; but to my own soul, I had been panic-stricken with physical fear, and, turn it over as I might, I could not discover a vestige of either courage or fortitude in the entire transaction.