On the Atbara
It was steady, plodding work; slow, perhaps, as a fighting campaign, but every mile of advance the army made sure of its position, and was kept within touch of Cairo. The campaign of 1897 found the greater part of the Sirdar's force as far as Ed-Damer, seven miles beyond the junction of the Nile and the Atbara river.
Here a strong camp was formed and preparations were made for encountering the enemy who were massing some distance up the Nile at Matemneh, under Mahmoud, the son of the Khalifa, and old Osman Digna. These joined forces at Shendi, about half-way between Berber and Khartoum, their strength being about eighteen thousand men.
General Kitchener, leading and directing every movement, returned from Cairo in December 1897, having arranged with the British Government for the sending out of a small British force to assist the Egyptian troops already in the field.
These were at once granted, and the reserve British force at Cairo, consisting of the 1st Warwicks, 1st Lincolns, and 1st Cameron Highlanders, left for the front, their places being taken by several regiments sent out from England.
With such generals as Hunter and Hector Macdonald the Sirdar had worked his way up the Nile valley, overcoming all difficulties, with his Egyptian force of some ten thousand men and forty-six guns. The arrival of the British Division in two brigades under General Gatacre in March and April added largely to the strength of the force. The command of the First Brigade was afterwards given to Colonel Wauchope, now promoted to the rank of Brigadier-General. How different his journey up the Nile on this occasion from his experience fourteen years before with the weary whale-boats! Now, thanks to the energy of the Sirdar, he could travel to Berber in a saloon carriage. Speaking of this afterwards, he said he was never so struck in his life as when he saw that railway across the desert, which did so much for the expedition.
Before his arrival at the front, however, one brilliant fight had taken place. Mahmoud had been discovered securely, as he thought, entrenched some seventeen miles up the river from Abador, or about forty from Atbara camp; and it was not fitting, notwithstanding the difficulties of transport by camels for twelve thousand men, that so large a British force should sit down within so short a distance of an enemy and not attempt to drive him out of his position. The forward order was given, and on 8th April, after a long night-march, the troops found themselves facing Mahmoud's zareba at Nakheila, on the Atbara.
The story of the attack has been given with all the graphic skill of an eye-witness, by G. W. Steevens in his book, With Kitchener to Khartoum. When the sun rose behind the Sirdar's men, it revealed a stockade made up of timber, and a ten-foot hedge of camel-thorn, with entrenchments behind—a formidable enough obstacle to face. Without delay arrangements were made for the attack. The enemy's base rested on the river, and the Sirdar, determined that he should not escape, formed his force in a semi-circle round him. At 6.20 the first gun announced the advent of battle, and for an hour and twenty minutes Mahmoud's zareba was pounded with shot, shell, and rocket, after which the Egyptian and British troops advanced to the attack all along the line. Maxwell's, Macdonald's, and Hunter's Egyptians deployed on the right. Gatacre's British Division had the Cameron Highlanders in the place of honour, formed in line along their whole front; then, in columns of their eight companies, the Lincolns on the right, the Seaforths in the centre, and the Warwicks—two companies short—on the left. The orders to these were, not to advance till it was certain the Dervish cavalry, hovering to the left of the zareba, would not charge in flank. Behind all was Lewis's brigade ready for any emergency that might occur. Stirring addresses having been made by the leading officers, the Sirdar called upon the men to 'remember Gordon,' and all being ready, 'the word came, and the men sprang up. The squares shifted into fighting formations; at one impulse, in one superb sweep, nearly twelve thousand men moved forward towards the enemy. All England and all Egypt, and the flower of the black lands beyond, Birmingham and the West Highlands, the half-regenerated children of the earth's earliest civilisation, and grinning savages from the uttermost swamps of Equatoria, muscle and machinery, lord and larrikin, Balliol and the Board School, the Sirdar's brain and the camel's back—all welded into one, the awful war machine went forward into action.'
Attack on the Zareba