My first week in Cairo was spent in conferences with His Highness the Khedive, Lord Dufferin, the principal Ministers of the Khedive who had interests in the Army, and with Sir Auckland Colvin, the Financial adviser of the Government.
As regards the creation of an Army I had an absolutely free hand, being informed by Lord Dufferin that I might do anything I liked, provided I did not spend more than £200,000. This sum, however, was to include the pay of officers, Europeans and Turks, or Egyptians, and the pay and rations of the men, but not the upkeep of barracks and hospital arrangements, which were provided by other Departments. I was told to select uniforms, and was later given a sum to buy Field artillery, and to replace the Remington rifle, by the pattern in use in the British Army.
I had put the conscription arrangements in motion immediately on my arrival, and within a fortnight got the first recruits, and had set the officers to work in creating and training the Force which has since proved to be a satisfactory instrument for war. I had obtained the services of 25 officers, of whom the following have risen in the Army:—Major Fraser, Royal Engineers,[242] Chief Staff officer; Captain Slade,[243] as Aide-de-Camp, replacing him on arrival by Stuart Wortley,[244] when Slade went to work under Fraser. Somewhat later I got Lieutenant Wingate,[245] Royal Artillery; Major Grenfell[246] commanded a brigade of four battalions, each of which had three British officers. The first battalion was organised and commanded by Captain Chermside;[247] the 2nd Battalion by Captain Holled Smith;[248] the 3rd Battalion by Captain Parr;[249] the 4th, by Major Wynne.[250] Major Duncan[251] commanded the Artillery, the English Batteries of which were commanded by Lieutenant Wodehouse,[252] Lieutenant Rundle,[253] and somewhat later by Lieutenant Parsons.[254] Captain Kitchener[255] was second in command of the Cavalry Regiment. Captains H. S. Smith-Dorrien[256] and Archibald Hunter[257] joined later.
There was an Infantry Brigade under a Turkish General, Schudi Pasha. There were no Engineers, and no Departmental Corps.
The men conscripted were in physique superior to any European army, and their aptitude for the perfunctory parts of drill was remarkable. Their progress was indeed so rapid that the Khedive’s guard at the Abdin Palace was taken over from British troops on the 14th February. Two days later, on parade of all troops then available, I returned £9 which had been given to a doctor to induce him to say a recruit was unfit for the service, and awarded the recruit twenty-one days’ imprisonment for offering bribes.
On the 31st March we had our first parade, before the Khedive, Lord Dufferin, all the Ministers, and a large crowd, including all the European residents in Cairo. The cavalry were not fit to do more than “keep the ground,” which was done by some of the men who had learned enough to remain on their horses. The artillery had made most progress, but that Arm was the best before Arabi’s rebellion, and we had kept several of the officers, and some of the non-commissioned officers came back voluntarily; moreover, the men were conscripted in Upper Egypt, and all such are more virile than the Delta Fellaheen. I showed eight battalions, and four batteries after six weeks’ instruction, and they marched past in the stereotyped Aldershot fashion.
Schudi Pasha, the Egyptian Brigadier, had been educated in Berlin, and as Major Grenfell knew some German, it happened that the few orders I, as Commander of the Force, had to give on the ceremonial parade were spoken in the one language common to my Brigadiers, i.e. German; Schudi giving his words in Arabic; Grenfell, in English; and the four English Commanders in Turkish, as was the custom in the Egyptian Army. This I endeavoured to alter, but the Arabic language does not lend itself to the sharp monosyllables, which are most suitable for getting men to move with clock-like regularity.
Major Wynne not only compiled a Clothing warrant and Signalling manual, but also took in hand our Drill book, and Lieutenant Mantle, Royal Engineers, who was an accomplished Arabic scholar, put as much of it as I thought necessary into Arabic. By a strange coincidence, in 1887, Wynne, then in the War Office, followed my precedent and reduced the English Drill book by cutting out many superfluous exercises, which were appropriate to the movements practised before rifles were used. The Code Napoleon put into Arabic did not deal with some crimes common in the East, and so the Army Discipline Act of 1881, with the Khedive’s name substituted for our Queen’s, became in Arabic, our penal Code.
Lord Dufferin supported me most thoroughly, but while fully satisfied, warned me before he left, early in May, that I was working the officers too hard, and this was probably accurate.[258] Before his lordship departed he asked me to hand back £10,000 in the first instance, and then another £10,000, but this latter sum I gave up provisionally on the understanding that I could reclaim it if necessary. I did not do so, spending thus in my first year only £180,000.
Colonel Hicks, who arrived at Cairo from India in January, had gone to Khartoum, and the following June, having telegraphed for reinforcements, the Ministers collected soldiers who had served in and prior to the Egyptian outbreak in 1882, and I was directed by the Premier, Cherif Pasha, to inspect them, and pass for service only such as I considered fit. Out of the first thousand I felt bound to reject over six hundred, and those who were not rejected, being aware that few Egyptians ever returned from Khartoum, were most unwilling to go, two men actually putting lime into their eyes to destroy their sight while on parade. These poor creatures who preferred life without eyesight in the Delta to probable death in the Sudan, were the fathers and uncles of those whom we were to teach to take a pride in themselves, and in the Army.