The battles of the British Army

by Robert Melvin Blackwood

He was returning with the camel corps convoy from Fort Atbara, whither during the days of waiting they had ridden for supplies, when “suddenly one of the men discerned cases lying opened on the sand about a hundred yards off the trampled road. Anything for an incident. We rode listlessly up and looked. A couple of broken packing-cases, two tins of sardines, a tin of biscuits half empty, a small case of empty soda bottles with Sirdar stencilled on it, and a couple of empty bottles of whisky. Among them lay a cigarette box, a needle and reel of cotton, and a badge—A.S.C.—such as the Army Service Corps wear on their shoulder-straps. We were on the scene of last evening’s raid. Two camels, we remembered, had been cut off and their loads lost.” With such incidents as these, and another reconnaissance in force by Hunter, terminating in a miniature battle with seventeen casualties, the evening of the 7th April arrived. In the early morning of the 8th, Good Friday, the long-expected battle was to be fought.

Dawn was the hour fixed for the attack. Unlike the approach to Tel-el-Kebir, the night of the march immediately preceding the battle on the Atbara was conspicuous for its brilliant moonlight. At six the force moved out of Umdabieh. At seven a halt was called, and till nearly one o’clock the troops rested. Some ate, some slept, but all were at last assured of the certainty of the morrow’s action. At one o’clock the march was resumed, and, under the guidance of Bunbashi Fitton of the Egyptian army, the dervish zareba was cautiously, but surely, approached by the Anglo-Egyptian squares. Between four and five another halt took place, and the prospective battle was discussed in low tones in the prevailing cold. Some slept once more, others shivered, waiting for the dawn. At length the sun rose and disclosed the enemy’s position right in front and the serried ranks of Britain ready to give battle.

Says Mr. Steevens:—“The word came, and the men sprang up. The squares shifted into the fighting formations, and at one impulse, in one superb sweep, nearly 12,000 men moved forward towards the enemy.... The awful war machine went forward into action.”

Twenty-four guns, under Colonel Long, were on the right flank, and 12 maxims were divided among the right and left flanks and the centre. Crash! broke out the roar of artillery, and in an instant the front of Mahmud’s camp was raked from end to end. The puffs of smoke floated lazily across the foreground as the iron hail tore its way into the quick-set hedge of the zareba, and here and there flames sprang out where the rockets compassed their work of relentless destruction. Once during the awful cannonade the dervish cavalry formed up on the extreme left of the position, emerging from the bush in handfuls, but a heavy maxim fire soon drove them back. For fully half an hour the enemy made no reply, and then, after this interval, the bullets began to whistle over the heads of the Anglo-Egyptian force. As at Tel-el-Kebir, the fire of the dervishes was aimed too high, and little damage was done.

At 7.30 the “Cease Fire!” sounded, and the infantry moved forward to the attack. The commanding officers of the various regiments made stirring speeches to their men. Colonel Murray, addressing the Seaforth Highlanders, said:—“The news of victory must be in London to-night.” General Gatacre’s words were to the point, “there was to be no question about this, they were to go right through the zareba and drive the dervishes into the river.” The moment had arrived. The bugles sounded the “Advance!” the pipes screamed out “The March of the Cameron Men” with that voice of glorious memories and lust for battle which the pipes convey when heard in war, and the force swept forward on the foe.

Upon the Camerons fell a prominent part. They were to clear the front with a hot rifle fire, and while some were doing this others were to tear opens in the zareba or surmount it by scaling ladders. Next behind them followed the Lincolns, the Seaforths, and the Warwickshires. For a few moments as the force rushed forward, the enemy made never a sound. Then suddenly, as the Camerons reached the crest of the ridge overlooking the zareba, the murderous fire broke out. Fortunately, as always in the Soudanese campaigns, the fire was for a great part too high, and the casualties, though heavy, were not so great as might have been expected. Meanwhile, General Macdonald’s brigade advanced, and only about a minute elapsed from the time the combined force crowned the rise of the hill till the Camerons and Soudanese had torn down the zareba and made way for the main body of the army.

“General Gatacre, accompanied by Private Cross, was actually the first at the zareba,” says an eye-witness. “Cross, of the Camerons, bayoneted a big dervish who was aiming point blank at the General.” The simultaneous right attack by the Egyptians and Soudanese was also a fine spectacle. General Hunter himself, helmet in hand, led his men on to the zareba, but thirty yards from it was a strong stockade, backed by entrenchments, and this too had to be stormed. It was a thrilling quarter of an hour, and nothing could be finer than the way these almost insurmountable obstacles were tackled by our troops, and that in the face of the hottest fire imaginable from the dervish defenders.

Inside the zareba, from behind stockades, and from holes in the ground swarmed the black, half-naked dervishes, running everywhere, turning now and again to fire at their assailants, but making ever for the river. Scores of them lay stretched upon the ground. The slaughter was awful. Gradually the ground grew clearer. The maxims had galloped right up to the stockade and poured their merciless fire into the living contents of the zareba. The Warwicks “were volleying off the blacks as your beard comes off under a keen razor.” Death and destruction reigned on every side.

But the British had lost heavily. Captains Findlay and Urquhart of the Camerons had been killed storming the zareba. Lieutenant Gore of the Seaforths fell in the same place, and, indeed, most of our casualties were sustained at this place. “Never mind me, lads; go on!” called Captain Urquhart as he fell stricken; and go on they did, killing and slaying at every step. Piper Stewart of the Camerons was killed leading the way.

The fight was now practically over. Only the pursuit remained. On stumbled our men over the broken ground till suddenly there “came a clear drop under foot—the river. And across the trickle of water the quarter mile of dry sandbed was a flypaper with scrambling spots of black. The pursuers thronged the bank in double line,” says Mr. Steevens, “and in two minutes the paper was still black spotted, only the spots scrambled no more.” “Now that,” panted the most pessimistic senior captain in the brigade, “now I call that a very good fight!” Shortly after this the “Cease Fire!” sounded, and only the cavalry pursuit remained.