On the last day of the previous year, the Intelligence Department learnt that Mahmoud, pressed, it was said, by the Khalifa, either to advance and destroy the Egyptians, or to fall back upon Omdurman, contemplated moving down the Nile on Berber. The 10,000 highly trained Egyptian soldiers, whom the Sirdar was able to put in the field, being deemed insufficiently strong to meet Mahmoud's undisciplined savages, a brigade of British troops was telegraphed for. In reply, Sir Francis Grenfell, commanding the Army of Occupation, gave orders on the 2nd January for the 1st Battalion of the Warwickshire Regiment, from Alexandria, and the 1st Battalions of the Lincolnshire and the Cameron Highlanders, from Cairo, to proceed up the river at once. The Seaforth Highlanders were also ordered to Egypt, from Malta. No time was lost in sending forward the reinforcements, and before the end of the month they had reached Wady Halfa, with the exception of the Seaforths, which it was intended to station, in the first instance, at Assouan. Major-General Gatacre, an officer who had seen much service in Burmah, was despatched from Aldershot to take command of the British brigade.
Whilst the British troops were finding their way to the front, the Nile Valley railway from Kermeh was being utilized for the purpose of bringing down as many of the Egyptian soldiers as could be spared from the Dongola district to Wady Halfa, whence they were rapidly transported across the desert by the military railway to Abu Hamid, and thence to Abu Dis.[161]
To give warning of Mahmoud's advance, the gunboats made frequent reconnaissances to Shendy and Metammeh, and parties of "friendlies" also patrolled the river banks above Ed-Damer, and the adjacent desert. The Dervishes, on their part, were not wholly inactive, and occasionally indulged in a little raiding, as opportunities offered.
On the 10th February, Mahmoud, probably considering that if he were to advance at all, he should do so before the Egyptian force was strengthened by the arrival of the British soldiers, commenced to move his army across the Nile to Shendy preparatory to marching them to attack Berber. The Dervishes having only a few native boats and some hurriedly constructed rafts as a means of transport, the crossing occupied an entire fortnight. During this period, Commander Keppel, with two gunboats, steamed to Metammeh, and on one occasion dispersed with his Maxims a party of riflemen stationed to cover the crossing. No serious attempt, however, was made to oppose the movement of Mahmoud's force across the river, and by the 25th February the operation was completed. Apparently a great opportunity was thus lost. With the absolute command of the river which the Egyptians possessed in the gunboat flotilla, nothing would have been easier than to have taken advantage of the moment when Mahmoud's army was divided into two sections by the Nile, to fall upon and destroy each section separately. That something of the kind was not attempted has been explained on the supposition that it formed part of the Sirdar's strategy to encourage Mahmoud to leave his fortified position at Metammeh, and attack the Egyptians on open ground.
Thanks to the facilities afforded by the railway, Gatacre's British brigade was, by this time, getting well forward. In the middle of February, the Warwicks, Lincolns, and Camerons were all assembled at Abu Dis, where they went into camp for some weeks. During this period, everything was done to get the men into good condition by means of route marching and field exercises. Following the precedent established by Lord Wolseley in previous campaigns, the most rigid abstinence in the matter of alcohol was enforced, even the use of the harmless and comforting beer being forbidden.[162] The result was that the men were in excellent condition, and, as Gatacre in one of his addresses to the soldiers told them, "there was an almost total absence of crime, and, he might say, of drunkenness also," the latter observation provoking roars of laughter.
The brigade was armed with the Lee-Metford magazine rifle. This weapon, though possessing great range and penetrating power, had, by reason of its small diameter (·303), the disadvantage of making so small a hole as to render it more than doubtful if it would be effectual in stopping the headlong rush which forms the principal feature of a Dervish attack. To remedy this defect, the tips of the bullets were scooped out at the pointed end to the depth of about half an inch. Experiments showed that a bullet treated in this manner expands like an umbrella on striking an object, and thus makes a sufficiently large hole for the purpose required. Whilst in camp at Abu Dis, details from each regiment were told off to conduct this operation, and over a million of bullets were subjected to this treatment. The result was that a thoroughly effective missile, appropriately named a "man-stopper," was created.
Curiously enough, at the moment when General Gatacre was preparing his dum-dum bullets for use against the Dervishes General Kitchener decided to discontinue the use of the dumb-dumb missiles which he had been employing against the correspondents of the press. These weapons, which were equally "man-stoppers," were in the form of general orders by which correspondents were forbidden to go beyond that ever-changing point known as "rail head." As "rail head" was necessarily always somewhat in the rear of the operations, the prohibition was considered a great hardship, as it curtailed the power of the correspondents to send the earliest intelligence of what was going on at the front. A great agitation was made in the English journals at the time, and before further operations were proceeded with the Sirdar modified the restrictions within certain reasonable limits. The prohibition thenceforth extended only to going out on reconnaissances, to going near the Sirdar, not in itself a serious privation considering the past friction between him and the pressmen, and to standing in front of the firing line during general actions. This last, however, was, according to one writer, Mr. G. W. Steevens, the author of "With Kitchener to Khartoum," not strictly insisted upon.
Space does not allow of entering into the merits of the controversy on the subject of the relations between newspaper correspondents and military authorities. At the same time it may be observed that a general who puts unnecessary obstacles in the way of the press, or exercises too rigid a censorship, always lays himself open to the remark that, like Cæsar, he prefers to write his own "Commentaries."
On the 25th February, when Mahmoud had completed his crossing to the east bank, General Gatacre received orders to proceed at once with his brigade to Berber. The orders reached him after the troops had been out all day exercising in the desert. Nevertheless, tents were at once struck, and the same evening the advance began. As far as "rail head," now at Sheriek, the men were transported by train, after which they proceeded on foot, and marching partly by night and partly by day, on the 2nd March they reached Berber, where, in the absence of the Sirdar at Wady Halfa, General Hunter had his head-quarters with two Egyptian brigades.
