Two days afterwards the action known as McNeill’s Zareba was fought. I was not able to see anything of it. At the time it became a source of much controversy, but anyhow it was not altogether without results. For though we lost an enormous number of transport animals, 900 camels alone being killed, the Soudanese lost very heavily, over 1000 bodies being left on the field.
We laboured on throughout the rest of the months of March and April, landing stores, now supplemented by the necessary materials for the much-discussed Souakim to Berber Railway. Some advance was made with that railway; at one time it reached as far as Otao, eighteen miles from the base, but when, early in May, Lord Wolseley arrived on the scene, it became apparent to us all that the end was approaching. Gradually the navvies were withdrawn and sent back to England; many store ships, with railway material that, mercifully, had not been unloaded, were sent home. The Commander-in-Chief left on the 17th of May, and by the end of that month all the troops, with the exception of the Berkshire Regiment and a few Indian troops, who were left behind to garrison Souakim, had departed.
Captain Royle, in his book on the Egyptian Campaigns 1882 to 1899, mentions in a footnote that Osman wrote to the Madhi that “God struck fear into the hearts of the English and they went away.” And small wonder if Osman was able to boast in 1885, as he had previously done in 1884, that he had driven the British out of the country.
Captain Royle in another footnote gives the extra cost of the expedition as over two millions, and the cost of the Souakim-Berber Railway (including pipe and water lines), which, as mentioned before, was actually laid for eighteen miles, as over £865,000. This cost was incurred over and above the normal charge for the maintenance of the troops concerned. In the interests of economy it is pleasant to know that a small portion of the eighteen miles of line was picked up and re-shipped, to be used afterwards for some years as a light railway at Shorncliffe Camp, to take the men down to the sea to bathe.
Early in June the work of the Naval Transport came to an end. I remember well the last evening I spent there. I walked round the scene of our four months’ hard labour with my chief, Captain Fellowes, and thought that never had the forage which had fallen into the water, and the general debris on the beach, smelt more abominably. It was not for nothing that my sense of smell was so acute, for next morning I was down with fever. It was bad luck to be knocked out just as the work was finished, but so it was, and the climate of the Red Sea in the month of June is not the best in the world for a speedy recovery. However, I was packed up in a horrible little transport that was bound for Suez, and after a very long passage managed to reach Cairo. There was an old Indian doctor on board in charge of the odds and ends of troops and invalids, who had served all his life in India, and thoroughly understood the treatment of fever. His method, if drastic, was certainly efficient. Every two hours he used to appear with a huge tumbler of champagne and quinine and insist on its being swallowed. For the whole week that I was on board I was more or less insensible from the strength of this mixture, but after a couple of days in Cairo in a decent bed I was quite well again, though much pulled down, and was able to proceed home overland by way of Venice.
Barring the natural resentment we all felt at having laboured for months in the sun in unloading stores for an Expedition that was never intended to succeed, I personally have otherwise nothing but pleasant recollections of Souakim. Some of the finest men in the world were out there. I found many old friends, and made some new ones, one of whom remained a great ally of mine until his death two years ago. I refer to Lieutenant Alfred Paget, who died as Admiral Sir Alfred Paget. He also deserved the title of the bravest of the brave. When not on duty at Souakim he used to amuse himself by going into the dense bush outside our lines for the purpose of shooting sand grouse and gazelle. The bush was supposed to be crawling with Soudanese, but the old proverb of “where there is no fear there is no danger” held good in his case, and he was never interfered with. Years afterwards he was Naval Attaché at Washington during the American-Spanish War, and of course managed to see as much fighting as was possible. When the war came to an end, at a big dinner at which he was one of the guests, after the usual patriotic toasts had been honoured, the General Officer presiding at the dinner asked all present to charge their glasses to drink the health of the bravest man they had met during the campaign. No one had any idea whose name was to be coupled with this toast. The name was that of Captain Alfred Paget, Royal Navy, Naval Attaché at Washington. Surely one of the most graceful compliments that ever was paid to a British officer! and none who knew him could doubt how thoroughly it had been deserved. In the recent war he sank his rank of Admiral, and (until bad health compelled him to give up), served as a Commander of various patrol vessels and mine-sweepers. He died very suddenly at the age of sixty-seven.
Shortly after arriving in England I looked in at 87, St. James’s Street, to see my old friends. Thinking to enlist their compassion I informed them that, owing to hard work and fever, I had lost twenty pounds, upon which I was told that twenty pounds could be easily lost in less than an hour there, and that, very rightly, was the only sign of sympathy that I could extract from them.