CHAPTER XXIX

THE SOUDAN WAR (_Continued_)

VII. THE FIGHT TO REACH THE RIVER

"We had beat the foe at Abu Klea, and now had marched all night, Parching with thirst, each longed to see the first faint streak of light, For all expected with the dawn to see the river flow. 'Twas there all right, but in our path stood thousands of the foe; We halted, and a barricade of biscuit boxes made, And swift their deadly bullets flew round that frail barricade, And many a gallant fellow dropped before the welcome cry, 'Form square' was heard, 'we must advance, and reach the Nile or die.'" _Songs of the Camel Corps_ (Sergeant H. EAGLE, R.M.C.C.)

By the time the wounded were picked up, the dead counted, and their weapons destroyed, and the square was ready to start, it was half-past three in the afternoon. There was no food, and hardly any water. The soldiers suffered dreadfully from thirst; their tongues were so swollen as to cause intense pain, their lips black, their mouths covered with white mucus. Several men fainted. Luckily I had put a skin of water upon a camel just before the action, so that the men of the Naval Brigade all had a drink, and there was a little water over for the wounded. The sailors persisted in smoking; they said it did them good; so I let them.

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The wells of Abu Klea lay some three miles ahead. The Cavalry, the horses weak, emaciated, and tormented by thirst, were sent on to reconnoitre. The square followed slowly. So short-handed was the Naval Brigade that I had to clap on to the drag-ropes myself. We hauled the gun through the sand and across nullahs and over rocks till about 5.30 p.m., when we came to the wells, which were small pools in the soil, and which, when they were emptied, slowly filled again. The water was yellow and of the consistency of cream; but it was cool, sweet, and delicious.

Three hundred volunteers from the Heavy Camel Regiment, the Guards' Camel Regiment, and the Mounted Infantry left the wells soon after sunset to march the six weary miles back again to fetch the camels and commissariat. They marched and worked all night; yet their lot was better than ours; for they got food and could keep warm. As for ourselves, we lay down where we were, without food or blankets, and suffered the coldest night in my remembrance. It is suggested to me by a friend who has seen much active service in many wars, that, owing probably to the exhaustion of the nerves, men are far more susceptible to cold after a battle. He himself recalls the night after Magersfontein as the coldest he ever experienced. At any rate, we were cold to the marrow that night of 17th-18th January; cold and bruised and very hungry, the most of us having had no food for twenty-four hours. I must here record my admiration of the medical staff, who worked hard all night, doing their utmost for the sick and wounded.

I sat on an ammunition box and shivered. The wound upon my finger, where the Arab's spear had cut it, though slight, was disproportionately painful. Lieutenant Douglas Dawson (of the Coldstream Guards) came to me and asked me if I had any tobacco. I told him that my tobacco, together with my field-glasses, had departed into the desert with my steed County Waterford, which had run away. Dawson had six cigarettes, of which he gave me three. I would cheerfully have given a year's income for them, as {271} I told him. We agreed that it was hard to have to die without knowing who had won the Derby.

At about seven o'clock next morning (18th January) the convoy returned with the rest of the camels and the commissariat. We had our first meal for some thirty-six hours. Then we went to work to build a fort in which to leave the wounded, and to prepare for the march to the river, some 25 miles distant. A burying party went back to the field of Abu Klea and interred our dead. Some prisoners captured by the convoy on its way back to the camp, reported that Omdurman had fallen; but the information was not made generally known. I did not hear it until we reached Metemmeh.

Sir Herbert Stewart then determined to reach the Nile before next morning. A small detachment of the Royal Sussex was left to guard the wounded. The column marched about 3.30 p.m. It was a desperate venture, for the men had had no sleep for two nights, had fought a battle in between, had suffered agonies of thirst and the exhaustion of hunger. But Sir Herbert Stewart had learned from the prisoners that the enemy who had fought at Abu Klea were no more than the advanced guard of the main body, which would probably come out from Metemmeh to meet us, and that the fall of Omdurman had released a number of the Mahdi's army; and the general wished to reach the river before fighting again. He hoped to be upon the Nile before daylight. In any event, the enterprise of the Desert Column was a forlorn hope; and by this time we all knew it.

Cameron, war correspondent of _The Standard_, came to me with a very grave face. He was not alarmed for his own safety, for he was a most gallant man; but he feared for the Column.

"Lord Charles," he said, "have you any influence with General Stewart? If so, for God's sake implore him not to go on without reinforcements. I know these people and he does not."

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The next time I saw poor Cameron was upon the following day, when he was lying with a bullet-hole in his forehead, dead.

The Column was guided by Ali Loda, a friendly desert freebooter who had been captured during the first march to Jakdul. He was accompanied by Captain Verner and Colonel Barrow. Half the force marched on foot, in case of attack; the mounted men each leading a camel. The commissariat camels were tied in threes, nose to tail, the leading camel being ridden by a native driver. Although both men and camels were tired out, they went bravely along the track leading across a wide plain, with grass and scrub in the distance. By the time it was dark, we had come to the long savas grass, and the tracks, hitherto plain to see in the brilliant starlight, became obscured. Then began the confusion. By this time men and camels were utterly exhausted. There was no moon, but no lights were allowed, and all orders were to be given in a whisper. The camels, weary and famished, lagged and tumbled down; their riders went to sleep and fell off; the leading camels fell behind; and the rear camels, most of them riderless, straggled up to the front. The formation was totally disordered. In the darkness the confusion speedily became inextricable. When there was a halt to wait for stragglers, the men lay down and dropped asleep. About this time the Column blundered into a wood of acacia trees armed with long sharp thorns. There ought to have been no such wood; indeed, Count Gleichen avers that no one ever found it afterwards.

In this state of affairs, the Column lost in the dark in an unknown country, utterly worn out, and inextricably tangled upon itself, I made the Naval Brigade unspan and gave them tea. Then we struggled on, hour after hour. As for silence, the noise might have been heard and probably was heard at Metemmeh. An immense multitudinous murmur went up from the unhappy mob of swearing men and roaring, squealing, grumbling camels. A longer or more exhausting nightmare I never suffered.

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Daylight came at last. It was about 6 o'clock on the morning of 19th January. The least we had hoped was to have come within sight of the Nile. But when the Column halted there was no Nile; only a long gravel slope rising before us, set with scattered trees rising from the eternal savas grass and low scrub. Captain Verner went ahead to reconnoitre, and the Column toiled on up the ridge. Then, at last, upon reaching the top at about 7 o'clock, we beheld the wide valley, and the Nile flowing between broad belts of green, and on the left, the roofs of a chain of villages, and the walled town of Metemmeh. Beyond, upon the farther bank, clustered the huts of the village of Shendi. But we had not yet come to the river. And moving out from Metemmeh were crowds of the enemy, moving out to cut us off from the blessed water. Once more, the whole air was throbbed with the boding war-drums.

Sir Herbert Stewart determined to give the men breakfast and then to attack. As usual, a zeriba must first be constructed and the force put in laager. The Column was halted upon the top of the rising ground, in a space some 300 yards square, surrounded by a sea of thin scrub, in which the enemy could find cover. A parapet, square in plan, and about two feet six inches high, was constructed of saddles and biscuit boxes and anything else which would serve the purpose. The camels were pushed inside it, and knee-lashed, and in the centre was placed the hospital. During the progress of the work the enemy, concealed in the scrub, crept nearer and opened fire.

The men breakfasted in a rain of bullets. So wearied were they, that some fell asleep over their food, bullets singing all about them. Many of the men got no food at all. I saw two men shot while they slept. One Dervish in particular sniped the Naval Brigade all breakfast-time. I subsequently discovered him in the bush, lying dead, a bullet through his head, in a litter of about 200 spent cartridges. One of my men was shot, and a spoke was knocked out of the wheel of the Gardner gun. A soldier was shot through {274} the stomach, and was carried screaming to the doctors, who gave him laudanum.

The situation was far from encouraging. During the night--the third without sleep--the men had marched for 14 hours, covering 19 miles, and losing some hundred camels. We were still four miles from the river, and between the river and our exhausted force were thousands of raging Dervishes. We were caught in a trap.

Seventy yards from our left flank was a little hill. In order to prevent its capture by the enemy, 30 Guardsmen were told off to occupy it. Volunteers carried saddles and boxes across the bullet-swept space and built a small breastwork with them. Several men were knocked over. In the meantime a company was extended along the ridge some 50 yards beyond the zeriba to check the enemy's fire; but they had nothing at which to aim except the puffs of smoke rising above the scrub. The Naval Brigade had no better luck with the Gardner gun, placed outside the zeriba near the left angle of the front.

At some time between 9 and 10 o'clock Sir Herbert Stewart was hit in the groin and severely wounded. The knowledge of this disaster was concealed from the men as long as possible. Then followed a terrible interval, which lasted for hours. Under that pitiless fire, exposed to an invisible enemy, men and camels were being hit every minute. All this time the heat was intense. There we lay in the blazing sun, helpless, the rattle of rifles all around us, the thin high note of the bullets singing overheard, or ending with a thud close at hand; men crying out suddenly, or groaning; camels lying motionless and silent, blood trickling from their wounds; and no one seemed to know what we were going to do. Of all things, the most trying to a soldier is to lie still under fire without being able to reply. It is true that there was volley firing in reply to the enemy, but they were invisible.

The command had naturally devolved upon Colonel Sir Charles Wilson, R.E., head of the Intelligence Department. {275} It was clear to me that unless we marched against the enemy at once, we were done. I dispatched a written message to Sir Charles Wilson. The messenger was killed. I sent a second message by Sub-Lieutenant E. L. Munro, R.N., who was struck by a bullet which wounded him in seven places.

Shortly afterwards I received a message from Sir Charles Wilson informing me that he was about to march against the enemy. I was ordered to remain in command of the zeriba, with Colonel Barrow.

Before forming square, Sir Charles Wilson ordered the breastwork surrounding the hospital and that defending the little knoll occupied by the Guards in our rear, to be strengthened into redoubts, in case of attack. The ammunition boxes must be shifted from the inside of the main zeriba, and carried across and among the baggage and the packed and helpless camels, a slow, laborious and dangerous business performed under fire. Men and officers worked with a will; yet it was 2 o'clock in the afternoon before they had done. Just then St. Leger Herbert, private secretary to Sir Herbert Stewart and correspondent of _The Morning Post_, was shot through the head.

The square was composed of half the Heavy Camel Regiment, Guards, Mounted Infantry, Royal Sussex, Royal Engineers, and some dismounted Hussars. Sir Charles Wilson placed it under the executive command of Lieutenant-Colonel the Hon. E. E. Boscawen. The square was formed up in rear of the zeriba at 2.30 and marched at 3 o'clock. The men were cool, alert, and perfectly determined. The British soldier had shut his mouth. He was going to get to the river, enemy or no enemy, or die. By this time the enemy were plainly visible in full force in front, horse and foot gathering behind a line of green and white banners. The moment the square moved beyond the redoubt, it received a heavy fire. Several men were hit, and were carried back to the zeriba by our men, while the square moved forward at quick march. It made a zig-zag course in order to take {276} advantage of the clear patches of ground among the scrub; lying down and firing, and again advancing.

The Naval Brigade mounted the Gardner gun in the angle of the redoubt, and, together with the Royal Artillery and two of their screw-guns under Captain Norton, maintained a steady fire at the three distinct masses of the enemy. Two of these were hovering in front of the advancing square, upon the landward slope of the hill rising between us and the river; the third threatened the zeriba. In all of these we dropped shells, paying particular attention to the body menacing the zeriba. When the shells burst in their midst, the dervishes scattered like a flock of starlings.

In the zeriba were the most of the Hussars, whose horses were worn out, the Royal Artillery, half the Heavy Camel Regiment, half the Royal Engineers, what was left of the Naval Brigade, and the wounded in the hospital. Some 2000 camels were knee-lashed outside and all round the larger zeriba, forming a valuable breastwork.

All we could do was to work our guns. As the square went on, the enemy, moving in large masses, shifted their position, and as they moved, we dropped shells among them. We judged their numbers to be greater than at Abu Klea. Would the square of only 900 men ever get through? If ever a little British army looked like walking to certain death, it was that thin square of infantry.

Presently it disappeared from view. Soon afterwards we heard the steady roll of volley firing, and we knew that the enemy were charging the square. Then, silence. Whether the enemy had been driven back, or the square annihilated, we did not know. What we did know was that if the square had been defeated, the zeriba would very soon be attacked in overwhelming force. But as the moments passed the strain of suspense slackened; for, as the fire of the enemy directed upon the zeriba diminished and soon ceased altogether, the presumption was that the square had been victorious and had got through to the river.

What had happened was that the Arabs, charging downhill {277} at the left front angle of the square, had been met by concentrated rifle fire, our men aiming low at a range of 400 yards, steady as on parade. Once more the British soldier proved that no troops in the world can face his musketry. The front ranks of the charging thousands were lying dead in heaps; the rear ranks fled over the hills; and the square went on, unmolested, very slowly, because the men were tired out, and so came to the river.

Count Gleichen, who marched with the square, recounting his experiences (in his _With the Camel Corps up the Nile_), writes: "Soon in the growing dusk a silver streak was visible here and there in amongst the green belt, but it was still a couple of miles off.... Our pace could not exceed a slow march. The sun went down, and the twilight became almost darkness; ... a two-days-old crescent was shining in the sky, and its feeble light guided us through the gravel hills right to the brink of the Nile. The men were as wild with joy as their exhausted condition would allow. The wounded were held up for one look at the gleaming river, and then hurried to the banks. Still, perfect discipline was observed. Not a man left his place in the ranks until his company was marched up to take its fill.... A chain of sentries was established on the slopes overlooking the square, and in two minutes the force was fast asleep." Sir Charles Wilson (_From Korti to Khartoum_) adds: "The men were so exhausted that when they came up from their drink at the river they fell down like logs...."

They had been marching and fighting for four days and three nights without sleep, and with very little food and water, and had lost a tenth of their number. That night we in the zeriba also slept. I remember very little about it, except that Lieutenant Charles Crutchley, Adjutant of the Guards' Camel Regiment, woke me twice and asked me for water. He made no complaint of any kind, and I did not know that he had been hit early in the day and that he had a bullet in his leg. General Crutchley, who was so kind as to {278} write to me in reply to my request that he would tell me what he remembers of the affair, says: "I remember lying on a stretcher that night, and people knocking against my leg, and that my revolver was stolen, I believe by one of the camel boys." Crutchley was carried down to the river by my bluejackets next day, and was taken into hospital. As I remember the occasion, he left the decision as to whether or not his leg should be amputated, to me. At any rate, the surgeon had no doubt as to the necessity of the operation, at which I was present. With his finger he flicked out of the wound pieces of bone like splinters of bamboo. The leg was buried, and was afterwards exhumed in order to extract the bullet from it. I think I remember that Crutchley, seeing it being carried across to the hospital, asked whose leg it was. He was carried upon a litter back to Korti, and the shaking of that terrible march made necessary a second operation, which was successful.

Sir Charles Wilson's force, having bivouacked that night beside the Nile, were up at daybreak; took possession of the empty village of mud huts, called Abu Kru, but always known as Gubat, which stood on the gravel ridge sloping to the Nile, 780 yards from the river; and placed the wounded in Gubat under a guard. The force then returned to our zeriba.

When we saw that gallant little array come marching over the distant hill-top, and through the scrub towards us, we cheered again and again. Hearty were our greetings. Our comrades, who had marched without breakfast, were speedily provided with a plentiful meal of bully-beef and tea.

Then we all set to work to dismantle the zeriba, to collect the stores of which it was constructed and to sort them out, to mend the broken saddles, and load up the wretched camels, who had been knee-lashed and unable to move for twenty-four hours. About a hundred camels were dead, having been shot as they lay. As there were not enough camels to carry all the stores, a part of these were {279} left under an increased garrison inside the redoubt upon the knoll in rear of the zeriba, Major T. Davison in command.

At midday we buried the dead, over whom I read the service, Sir Charles Wilson being present as chief mourner.

The last of the wounded to be moved was Sir Herbert Stewart, so that he should be spared as much discomfort as possible. He was doing fairly well, and we then hoped that he would recover.

Before sunset we were all safely lodged in Gubat. The Desert Column had reached the river at last. It was the 20th January; we had left Korti on the 8th. In the course of that 176 miles we had gone through perhaps as sharp a trial as British troops have endured.

At the fight of Abu Klea, nine officers and 65 non-commissioned officers and men were killed, and nine officers and 85 non-commissioned officers and men were wounded. On the 19th January, between the wells of Abu Klea and the river, one officer and 22 non-commissioned officers and men were killed, and eight officers and 90 non-commissioned officers and men were wounded. The general, Sir Herbert Stewart, had received a wound which was to prove mortal. All the officers of the Naval Brigade, except Mr. James Webber, boatswain, and Sub-Lieutenant Munro, who was wounded, and myself, had been killed. The losses were roughly one-tenth of the total number of the Column. The camels which survived had been on one-third rations and without water for a week. They were hardly able to walk; ulcerating sores pitted their bodies; their ribs actually came through their skin. Count Gleichen says that his camel drank from the Nile for 14 minutes without stopping; and that subsequently the poor beast's ribs took a fine polish from the rubbing of the saddle. The horses of the Hussars had been 58 hours, and many of them 72 hours, without water. I cannot mention the Hussars without paying a tribute to the admirable scouting work they did under Lieutenant-Colonel Barrow during the whole march, up to the time the last zeriba was formed, when the gallant little horses were dead beat. {280} The present field-marshal, Sir John French, did splendid service with the Hussars throughout the campaign.

When we came into Gubat I was painfully, though not seriously, ill. The galling of the makeshift saddle during my three days' ride across the desert from Dal to Abu Fatmeh on my way to Korti, had developed into a horrid carbuncle; and I was unable to walk without help.

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