Khartoum Campaign, 1898; or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan

by Bennet Burleigh

Each day our cavalry had seen slowly retiring before them a few of the mounted dervish patrols. Nearing Um Terif, the enemy's scouts became more numerous and inquisitive. Whilst a company of the Lancashire Fusiliers stood on guard during the making of the zereba the infantry had their first encounter with a dervish. From the desert there came a rush and rattling over the gravel and loose stones, as from a stampeded horse or mule. It was coming in their direction but neither sentry nor main body thought of challenging. In an instant a mounted Baggara dashed past the sentries and ran plump against a corner of the company bowling over two or three men. Whether it was a deliberate madcap charge, or the fellow was bolting from the other battalions and lost his way is never likely to be known. Possibly he did not anticipate finding British troops three-quarters of a mile from the river. At any rate he dropped or threw his spear wildly, then, wheeling about, galloped back into darkness almost before the fact that he was an enemy had been realised. The men's rifles were unloaded, so the dervish was not fired upon. And had they been loaded, under the circumstances even then the officer, as he informed me, would have hesitated to shoot, lest he should unnecessarily alarm the whole camp. The spear left behind by the dervish horseman was one of the lighter barbed-edge kind.

Um Terif camp was not a pleasant location. There was overflowed land between the troops and the river, and the ground we had to bivouac upon was rough. On Monday morning, the 29th August, before full dawn, four squadrons of Egyptian horse and four companies of Tudway's Camel Corps proceeded on a reconnaissance towards the Kerreri. The twin-screw gunboat "Melik" also steamed up the river a few miles, but neither quest resulted in adding much to the information already possessed as to the Khalifa's intentions and exact whereabouts. Whether or not we were to have our first battle at Kerreri none knew. The fact was that during the night there had been a violent thunderstorm accompanied by wind and rain. Daylight came with a cessation of rain but the gale blew steadily from the south, raising quite a sea on the Nile and a fog of sand and dust on land. It was impossible to see or move any distance with security, and that was no doubt the cause why the reconnaissances in both instances drew blank.

Formal councils of war were rare events during the campaign. A chat with his officers, the eliciting of their opinions off-hand and a watchful pair of eyes in every direction early and late, was enough for the Sirdar. The delays caused by the storms however were becoming embarrassing, and it was certain the men's health would suffer if they were compelled to linger much longer en route. Still it was well to be quite ready before pushing in to attack the Khalifa whose large army, it was reported, would fight desperately. At a council of war held on Monday, August 29th, at which all the Generals, including the Brigadiers, were present, it was decided to remain until the next day in Um Terif. The flotilla had been unable to concentrate in time, the strong current and head wind making most of the vessels unduly late in arriving from El Hejir. A piece of good news came to us from the friendlies over the river. They were wont to march abreast with us, moving up the east bank. We could usually see them across the half mile or more of water that intervened, streaming along in their conspicuous garments under the mimosa and palms, or treading through the bush and long grass. On their way to their encampment opposite they had fallen in with a small band of dervishes who were busily looting a village. The natives of the place had offended the Khalifa by absenting themselves from Omdurman, and so were being cruelly maltreated. Major Stuart-Wortley's Arabs ran forward and opened a sharp rifle fire upon the raiders, who replied with a few shots and then bolted. A hot pursuit was instituted and five of the dervish footmen were caught. The friendlies also had the luck to capture a dervish sailing boat laden with grain. That evening at sunset, a few Baggara horsemen and footmen were seen upon the nearest hills watching the Sirdar's camp.

It was at Um Terif that the army, with all its equipment, was for the first time got together within the confines of the same encampment. From there also it set out next day in battle array, ready to encounter the Khalifa's full strength. In the clear atmosphere of the early morning and in the late afternoon when the bewildering mirage and dancing haze had vanished, from any knoll could be seen the large village of Kerreri. There the Mahdists had built a strong mud-walled fort by the bank of the Nile. They had besides blocked the road with a military camp big enough to shelter in huts and tukals several thousand men. Information brought us by natives, spies and deserters, was to the effect, that only a small body of dervishes had been left at Kerreri under Emir Yunis for the purpose of observing the movements of our army. Kerreri, which the Arabs pronounce with a prolonged Doric or Northumbrian roll of the r's, as though there were at least a dozen of them in the word, is upon the margin of a belt of rough gravel, stone, and low detached hills that extend to the southward, to Omdurman and beyond. The alluvial strip by the Nile, along which we had marched so many days, gave place to ridges and hummocks of sand, gravel, and rock.

So we waited impatiently at Um Terif for the flotilla with the fifteen days' supplies on board. Meanwhile the axes of an army of soldier wood-choppers were clanging upon the hard timber, which was being felled for firewood. The ruin of agriculture had meant the growth of bush, and there was an abundance of useful mimosa and sunt growing on the alluvial lands by the river.

I ought to reproach myself, but I don't, for not having written of the aggravating southern gale with its accompaniment of drifts of horrid dust and sand as the "terrible khamseen" or sirocco. Travellers' tales about having to bury yourself in the sand, or at least swathe head and body in folds of cloth, in order to avoid being choked with grit, I know. The real thing is bad enough without resorting to poetic or journalistic licence, though some will do that anyhow. It is sufficiently trying to grow hot and perspire so freely that the driving dust, the scavenger drift of chaos and the ages, caught by the moisture, courses down the features and trickles from the hands in so many miniature turbid streamlets. During a dust-storm everybody has the appearance of a toiling hodman. Feminine relations would have wept had they seen and recognised their soldier lads in that sorry state. Even the dashing officers and men of the Grenadier Guards ceased to be objects of admiration, and the War Office would have howled with exquisite torture at sight of their hair and clothes. Speak of wrapping clothes around head or body to keep out the dust? It is sheer nonsense to prate so. Why it is hard enough to gape and gasp and catch a mouthful of sanded breath, without that added worry. There is nothing for it, but to grin and bear it and get through with the swallowing of that proverbial peck of dust in a life-time, as quickly and quietly as possible.

The fighting gunboats or armed flotilla consisted of the "Sultan," Lieutenant Cowan, R.N.; "Sheik," Lieutenant Sparks, R.N.; "Melik," Major Gordon, R.E.; "Fatah," Lieutenant Beatty, R.N.; "Nazir," Lieutenant Hon. Hood, R.N.; "El Hafir" ("El Teb"), Lieutenant Stavely, R.N.; "Tamai," Lieutenant Talbot, R.N.; "Metemmeh," Lieutenant Stevenson, R.E.; and "Abu Klea," Captain Newcombe, R.E. On the loss of the "Zafir," Commander Keppel, R.N., transferred his flag to the "Sultan," one of the new twin-screw gunboats.

CHAPTER IX.

Advance to Kerreri—Skirmishing with the Enemy.