At 6.15 a.m. on the 12th, 3,000 Dervishes attacked a fort constructed at Mograkeh, near Kosheh, and got within 100 yards of it. The garrison of the fort, consisting of 300 men of the Egyptian army, behaved with great steadiness, and repulsed the attack. After the skirmish, the enemy moved to the village of Ferket, a place on the river north of Ginnis, and occupied it, From this point they retired to the hills. Two men killed and half a dozen wounded represented the Egyptian loss.
This was followed, on the night of the 15th, by a further attack on Kosheh from a battery erected on sand hills on the western bank, which was silenced, and the attacking force driven off on the 16th.
All the posts were now rapidly reinforced. General Grenfell had already arrived at Wady Halfa on the 4th December, and on the 19th December General Stephenson came from Cairo and assumed the command of the frontier force, with Grenfell as Chief of the Staff.
Arrangements were promptly made to inflict a crushing blow on the enemy, who, encouraged by the slight resistance to their advance hitherto made, had pushed their foremost troops north of the village of Ginnis, where the main body was established.
At the same time, about 1,000 men, with a gun, threatened the zeriba on the west bank, held by the Egyptian troops.
On the 29th, Generals Stephenson and Grenfell marched from Ferket and bivouacked on the east bank below the fort of Kosheh, where the whole of the fighting force was by this time concentrated.
The troops consisted of—Cavalry,20th Hussars; British Mounted Infantry and Camel Corps; Egyptian Cavalry and Camel Corps: Artillery, 1 battery Royal Artillery; 1 Egyptian camel battery and Gardner guns: Royal Engineers, 1 company: Infantry, 1st Brigade, under General Butler—Berkshire Regiment, West Kent Regiment, and Durham Regiment; 2nd Brigade, under Colonel Huyshe—Cameron Highlanders; Yorkshire Regiment; 1st and 9th Battalions (part only) of the Egyptian army. Total, about 5,000 men.
On the morning of the 30th, Stephenson attacked and defeated the Khalifa's forces at Kosheh and the neighbouring village of Ginnis.
On the two preceding days, artillery fire had been kept up on the enemy's position. At 5 a.m. on the 30th, the whole force advanced.
By daylight the 2nd Brigade and the 1st Egyptian Battalion had taken up a strong position on the heights above Kosheh, at a distance of about 1,200 yards from, and directly opposite, the village. At 6.10 a.m. the British battery attached to this brigade began to shell Kosheh. A quarter of an hour later the Cameron Highlanders and two companies of the 9th Soudanese rushed the houses in gallant style.