In this, as in all other Sudan campaigns, some difficulty was experienced by the officers in keeping the soldiers from becoming almost amphibious creatures. If he had his own way, Tommy Atkins would have spent the greater part of his time in floundering about the muddy river. The spirit of sport, so deeply ingrained in the Englishman, found few outlets during the campaign; but now and then, in order to witness a good swimming race, Mr. Atkins would gladly cast a large lump of his rations—bread or biscuit upon the waters. Arab urchins swim admirably, with that quick hand-over-hand stroke which primitive tribes always employ; and they judge their distances so accurately that they rarely miss a crust, even where the stream is running at the rate of many miles an hour.
But the troops were, as a matter of fact, always far too busy to get much time for relaxation, in or out of the water. It is astonishing that the authorities should have found it necessary to assign such an enormous amount of work to the officers and men during the concentration at Wad Hamed. On some days the British troops had no less than twelve hours' fatigue work! Take, for example, the casual record of one day's round of work, got through by a certain battalion in the heat of a Sudan August. The troops were on parade from 4.30 to 8. They then returned to the camp, and, without being allowed any breakfast, were set to cut grass. Ten minutes were then allotted for the morning meal. The next item was wood-cutting, and the digging of trenches for camp purposes. This fatigue continued till the midday dinner, and from two o'clock to dark the men were practised in loading camels. Next morning reveille sounded at four, and then, although the battalion was on the point of leaving the camp, they were actually ordered, before their departure, to cut a number of tree-stumps out of the ground! I do not mention these facts with any intent to dispute their utility or expediency. The British soldier does, under normal conditions during peace, infinitely less work than falls to the lot of his continental brethren. When the Russian soldier has finished his parades he is set to build walls and make roads, while Atkins is disporting himself in the cricket or football field. So it is perhaps not undesirable that our men should learn the meaning of really hard work occasionally. But it was pleasant to see how cheerfully the Tommies bore it, at anyrate outwardly; for I never heard a word of grumbling or "grousing," as they phrase it. Moreover, from a hygienic point of view, their round of heavy fatigues most certainly agreed with them. Wonderfully little sickness prevailed in the ranks, in spite of the fierce heat and the indifferent water, though the wear and tear removed every ounce of superfluous flesh, and reduced our men to the condition of those "lean and wiry dogs" which Plato regarded as a model in the selection of his Republican warriors.
The Sudanese, on the other hand, grumbled a good deal. Their conception of military discipline and obedience are somewhat rudimentary, and manual labour is distasteful to them. The discontent which was caused in their ranks by what they deemed excessive fatigue work culminated finally in a number of desertions. In Wad Hamed alone there were, I believe, no less than twenty cases of desertion, and three at least of the scoundrels were recaptured and shot. The deserters were doubtless making off southwards to join the Khalifa, for the life of a Baggara Dervish in prosperous times—a mere round of eating, sleeping, and fighting—would form an ideal existence in the eyes of an animal like the average Sudanese soldier.
On the other hand, a constant stream of fugitives began to reach the camp from the south; in Wad Hamed there were some thirteen hundred deserters from the Khalifa's dominions. Many of them came down the river, a motley herd of women and children, with a sprinkling of men all packed together in native barges. What these poor creatures lived on I do not know, but I strolled amongst some hundreds of them one evening, and they all seemed in excellent spirits and quite convinced that this time, at anyrate, they had put their money on the right horse. The presence of these uninvited guests caused considerable embarrassment to the Army Service Corps, but the authorities did the best they could for them, and in a big camp there are always a good many pickings which the refugees and vultures might share between them, though our feathered visitors had rather a pull over the other bipeds, as they rose betimes, and, according to the ancient adage, the early bird got the "bully" beef. This beef, by the way, was always to be picked up. It was issued to the men, for greater convenience of transport, in 3-lb. tins, which were trisected with a hammer and chisel for three rations. But, as the men soon got tired of the meat, and it speedily, after being opened, became uneatable from the heat, vast quantities of it were thrown away; and I noticed that the line of railway was often marked for hundreds of yards with tins of "bully" beef more or less full, which were speedily pounced upon by Arabs; if any village chanced to be close at hand.
Occasionally the soldiers got rations of fresh meat, and, what was almost more welcome, fresh bread, with now and then the additional luxury—oh, blissful moment!—of a little marmalade. Once a week, too, a tot of rum was served out, and happy was the orderly whose task it was to convey the rum rations to his superiors; for the officers rarely drank the fiery spirit, and when it was given back it was not wasted. This small weekly allowance was the only strong drink which Tommy Atkins imbibed throughout the campaign. The deadly effects of alcoholic excess in a climate like that of the Sudan are, of course, well known, and in a previous campaign the danger of allowing the men the use of intoxicants had been so unpleasantly demonstrated in the case of a certain British battalion, that the Sirdar very wisely established a system of "total prohibition" amongst the rank and file. Some rascally Greeks brought casks of whisky and beer to the Atbara, but the authorities soon discovered their little game. Most of the alcohol was sent back to Cairo, and of the remainder, some was put under the military seal and the rest simply emptied into the sand!
At Wad Hamed officers and correspondents alike enjoyed a life of comparative comfort and refinement, which was necessarily impossible in our subsequent camps during the final week of the campaign. On ordinary days we woke about five o'clock, when Ali brought us a mug of cocoa and a biscuit. The biscuit supplied to the Egyptian troops was of a dark brown colour, and hard as a brick. On leaving Wad Hamed, Ali went by mistake to the wrong canteen, and brought us a bag of "Gyppy" biscuit, on which Cross and I subsisted for several days, and were thankful at the end that we had only lost one tooth each in that period. The British biscuit was much nicer, comparatively white, and quite free from "weevils"; for I used to shake my biscuits to see if I could extract one of these insects, which I much wished to see. No weevil ever emerged, and I am under the impression that this insect, which figures so prominently in tales about pirates and "sea dogs," must be a semi-fabulous creature, to be placed under the same category as the basilisk and the Barometz lamb.
After dressing we generally strolled about the camp on the banks of the river for an hour or so, and then we were quite ready for breakfast, which ordinarily meant porridge, sardines, bread or biscuit, marmalade, and tea. As at this time of the day one could generally secure a little hot water or the remaining contents of the teapot, I used to devote some time to shaving. This operation was quite an ordeal in the Sudan. Lather manufactured from muddy Nile water spread a layer of fine sand over one's face, which speedily blunted the best steel, and towards the end of the campaign I might as well have used a piece of hoop iron as try to make my razors work with cold water. With warm water the torture was somewhat less acute.
Perhaps it is worth while mentioning in connection with our biscuit supply that any traveller or explorer who cannot secure flour as he proceeds, can easily make certain of having a continual supply of decent bread by the following means. Let him order a quantity of thick, flat cakes to be made of ordinary bread dough. When these are thoroughly baked they must be gradually dried either by artificial heat or by the sun, if its rays are strong enough, until every particle of moisture is dried up. Bread thus desiccated will last for months, and when it is wanted a lump is sprinkled with a little water, and one finds nice spongy bread for breakfast instead of the hard and monotonous biscuit. Mrs. Theodore Bent first taught me this bread-lore, and when I explored Sokotra in company with herself and her husband, we took several sacks of these flat cakes, and were in consequence never without nice fresh bread.
In the interval between breakfast and midday we got through a good deal of work in the way of letter-writing or telegraphing. If one had nothing to do oneself there was always a certain psychological interest attaching to the study of one's fellow-correspondents and their mysterious movements. One of them, after a successful prowl for news, would appear walking towards his tent with an air of nonchalance intended to conceal his eagerness to find telegraph forms. He would dive within the canvas, and then dispatch a servant with a telegram, which five hours afterwards would be received in London, and next morning would be read by thousands of eager eyes; for surely no Sudan campaign has ever possessed a quarter of the interest which, for some reason or other, the present one has aroused in the British public. Of course all telegrams had to be brought to Colonel Wingate and receive his official visé and approval before being put upon the wires. The utmost precautions were taken throughout the campaign against any bad faith on the part of the operatives. All the clerks employed in this service were bound over in sureties of £240 not to divulge the contents of any telegram. This was found necessary, inasmuch as during the last campaign several important telegrams—so I was informed—between the Sirdar and Sir Francis Grenfell were revealed to others than the lawful recipients.
After a light lunch about 12.30, everybody, soldier and civilian alike, lolled about in shirt-sleeves or went to sleep well under cover of his canvas. Outside the sun blazed down in fury on the desert, till the rocks became too hot to be touched, and the rarefied air quivered over the yellow sand. To walk twenty yards in the open without a helmet might mean death, and even inside one's tent the heat which penetrated a double roof of thick green canvas was so intense that a wet towel was very welcome as a protection for the head. Whenever the surrounding temperature exceeds that of the surface of one's body there is always a risk of sunstroke, and it is amazing that during the heat which has prevailed in England during August and September few people took the trouble to protect their heads by any additional covering beyond a straw hat. In fact, Surgeon-Major Parkes states that he had come across many more cases of sunstroke in England than in Africa, where he had spent many years amid the vicissitudes of travel and exploration. Furthermore, a "spinal pad" is almost of as much importance as a good helmet against sunstroke, yet in the Sudan the use of the spinal pad supplied by the Government was rather the exception than the rule, and men walked about in the tropical sun with a helmet on their heads while their back was protected only by a flannel shirt. Sunstroke acts in different ways. I have seen the quartermaster of a P. and O. in the Red Sea suddenly drop as if he had been shot; but, in most cases, the initial stages—loss of appetite, nausea, and headache—give one full warning, and if the patient can at once get under some shade and secure medical assistance, the "touch of the sun," which has upset him for the time being, passes away without leaving any effects behind it except a general lassitude for some time.