"On the morning of September 1 we marched twelve miles through jungle, finding everywhere traces of the flight of the Dervish outposts—dead animals, men, etc., who had been killed by them, probably people attempting to desert.
"We arrived at Kerreri about 12 noon, and found a village on the river with much open ground to our front and south-west, with a conical hill standing up in the plain about two miles to the south. We settled down to eat in the village, and in about an hour our cavalry sent in to say that the Khalifa's army was on the march from Omdurman towards us in three bodies, a centre and two wings. As soon as we had had our food, we set to work to get our troops into position in a kind of semicircle round the village, and strengthened ourselves with a zariba and trench, where zariba thorns were unprocurable; this we finished by dark, and then sat down to eat and sleep. The night passed quietly. The Khalifa missed a chance of doing us much damage by not attacking at night, but luckily he did not disturb us.
"At 3.30 a.m. we stood to our arms, ready for an attack at dawn. It was a beautiful moonlight night, and I had been up most of the time, watching my line and inspecting the patrols, etc. About six in the morning of the 2nd we got intelligence that the Khalifa's army was coming on, and presently they began to pour across the open ground about two miles off, yelling like demons, apparently an endless stream of men and horses. I have never seen anything like it—banners flying all along the line, guns firing, etc. For an hour they kept pouring along in thousands, and suddenly the centre of the mass turned, and came straight for us. I made all my men lie down, so that nothing could be seen of us except our zariba fence. As soon as they got within range, about 2,300 yds., we opened fire with all our guns, rifles, and Maxims, and a hail of lead fell on the army; but they were impervious to any influences of this kind, and kept pressing on and on till we literally mowed them down by hundreds. After about three-quarters of an hour, the ground was strewn with dead and dying, and then, as our fire did not slacken, they began to turn and go, but only at a walk, no running about it.
The great fight
"Then we advanced, and after we had moved on about one mile the centre of the Dervish force returned to the charge and fell upon a Soudanese Brigade, to whose assistance I sent a British Brigade (General Wauchope's); this stayed the Dervish attack, which was driven back and followed up. The whole force advanced and poured a heavy fire into the retreating Dervishes, who slowly withdrew, fighting. We had now been at work fighting and moving from 3.30 a.m. under a heavy sun without water, and had still four miles to march over a very sandy country, so we started in fighting formation, keeping ourselves ready at any moment to face west again. Well, they finally drew off to the hills, and we moved slowly on-towards the water, which one Brigade reached at 2 p.m. and the other at 3.30 p.m.; halted there till 4.30 p.m., and then marched on again into Omdurman, about three and a half miles; this we did not reach till dark, as we had to go carefully. There were still a lot of Dervishes in the town, and our gun-boats were shelling them, up the river and in the town. We had to bivouac out in the desert, as we could not find a suitable place. We could get no water that night, as the river was too far to send to, and it was not safe to allow small parties to go out.
"Next morning we marched down to the river and bivouacked on the water's edge, and there we are now.
"The total dead counted were 10,324 as near as could be; the wounded it would be impossible to count, as they all crowded away on to the river-bank and into the town, but there were thousands of them, possibly another 10,000 or more, some with the most fearful wounds. I went out the next afternoon and also the day following with water for the wounded. I sent out many mules laden entirely with water, and we relieved many of these unfortunates, but no doubt many died from want of water.
"Now the whole thing is over, except an excursion to Fashoda, which the Sirdar is arranging; I think he goes up to-morrow with 100 men of the Northumberland Fusiliers in a steamer.
"We had a nice day at Khartoum; we (800 men from various battalions), two or three bands, nearly all the officers, and an equal number of Egyptians steamed up on gun-boats to Khartoum, landed opposite Gordon's Palace, hoisted the Union Jack and Egyptian flag simultaneously, saluted them, and then held a Memorial Service for Gordon. All our clergymen were present; the Sirdar made me stand on his right hand, thus paying a compliment to the British troops. Afterwards we wandered about and hunted among the ruins to find traces of Gordon."