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
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
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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. 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 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.