With Kitchener to Khartum

Front matter

• COPYRSGHT DEPOSIT.

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WITH KITCHENER TO KHARTUM stereoscopic Co., London

Contents

I. HALFA TELLS ITS STORY page

The romance of the Sudan in brief — The rise of the Mahdi — The second act of the drama — The first Anglo- Egyptian strategical victory — The defeat of Nejumi — The turning-point of the drama — Convict labour — The taming of the Sudan — ^The cemetery i

IL THE EGYPTIAN ARMY The growth of sixteen years — The smallest and best paid of conscriptive armies — The Sudanese battalions — A perennial schoolboy — Inconstant warriors — Polygamy — Uniform and equipment — Cavalry and artillery — British officers and native troops — The merits of "Sergeant Whatsisname"^ — A daily heroism — Bey and Bimbashi — Rapid promotion — One of the highest achievements of our race . . . -. ...... . . ii

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WITH KITCHENER TO KHARTUM

HAIJ'A TELLS ITS STORY

To walk round Wady Haifa is to read the whole romance of the Sudan. This is the look-out whence Egypt has strained her vision up-Nile to the vast, silent, torrid, murderous desert land, which has been in turn her neighbour, her victim, all but her undoing, and is now to be her triumph again. On us English, too, the Sudan has played its fatal witchery, and half the tale of Haifa is our own as well as Egypt's. On its buildings and up and down its sandy, windy streets we may trace all the stages of the first conquest, the loss, the bitter failures to recover, the slow recommencement, the presage of final victory.

You can get the whole tale into a walk of ten minutes. First look at that big white building : it is

GENERAL MAP-EGYPT TO UGMDA

2 HALFA TELLS ITS STOBT.

the Egyptian military hospital, and one of the largest, solidest structures of Haifa. In shape and style, you will notice, it is not unlike a railway-station — and that is just what it was meant to be. That was the northern terminus of Ismail Pasha's great railway to Khartum, which was to have run up-river to Dongola and Debbeh, and thence across the Bayuda, by Jakdul and Abu Klea to Metemmeh. The scheme fell short, like all Ismail's grandiose ambitions ; Gordon stopped it, and paid for his unforesight with his life. The railway never reached the Third Cataract. The upper part of it was torn to pieces by the Dervishes, who chopped the sleepers into firewood, and twisted the telegraph-wires to spear-heads ; the part nearer Haifa lay half-derelict for many years, till it was aroused at length to play its part in the later act of the tragedy of the Sudan.

Now, twenty yards along the line — in this central part of Haifa every street is also a railway — you see a battered, broken - winded engine. It was here in 1884. That is one of the properties of the second act — the nerveless efforts to hold the Sudan when the Mahdi began to rip it loose. For in the year 1881, before we came to Egypt at all, there had arisen a religious teacher, a native of Dongola, named Mohammed Ahmed. The Sudan is the home of fanaticism: it has always been called " the Land of the Dervishes," and no rising saint was more ascetic than the young Dongolawi. He was a disciple of a holy man named

THE BEGINNING OF THE MAHDI. 3

Mohammed Sherif, and one day the master gave a feast at which there was dancing and singing. Such frivolity, said Mohammed Ahmed, was displeasing to Allah; whereat the Sherif was angry, cursed him, and cast him out. The disciple sprinkled ashes on his head, put a yoke on his neck, and fell at his master's feet, imploring forgiveness. Again Mohammed Sherif cursed him and cast him out.

Angered now himself, Mohammed Ahmed joined a new teacher and became a straiter ascetic than ever. The fame of his sanctity spread, and adherents flocked to him. He saw that the people of the Sudan, smarting under extortion and oppression, could but too easily be roused against the Egyptian Government : he risked all, and proclaimed himself El Mahdi el Muntazer, the Expected Guide, the Mussulman Messiah. The Governor - General at Khartum sent two companies to arrest him: the Mahdi's followers fell on them unawares and destroyed them. More troops were sent ; the Mahdists destroyed them : next came a small army, and again the Mahdists destroyed it. The barbarous tribesmen flocked to the Mahdi's standard, and in September 1882 he laid siege to El Obeid, the chief city of Kordofan. His assault was beaten back with great slaughter, but after five months' siege the town surrendered ; sack and massacre taught doubters what they had to expect.

The Sudan doubted no longer : of a truth this was the Mahdi. Hicks Pasha's army came down from the i HALFA TBLLS ITS STOBY.

North only to swell the Mahdi's triumph to immensity. Unorganised, unwieldy, afraid, the Egyptians crawled on towards El Obeid, harassed by an enemy they never saw. They saw them at last on November 4, 1883, at Shekan : the fight lasted a minute, and the massacre spared only hundreds out of ten thousand. The rest you know — Gordon's mission, the loss of Berber, the siege of Khartum, the massacre of Baker's levies at El Teb, Graham's expedition to Suakim, and the hard-fought fights of the second Teb and Tamai, Wolseley's expedition up the Nile, with Abu Klea and the Gubar and Kirbekan, the second Suakim campaign and M'Neill's zariba. Everybody knows these stories, so gallant, so futile. I remember thirteen and fourteen years ago being enormously proud and joyful about Tamai and Abu Klea. I was very young. Read over the tale again now — the faltering and the folly and the failure — and you will feel that if Egypt has Baker's Teb and Hicks's ruin to wipe out, England was not so very far from sufiering precisely the same humiliations. And in the end we failed, with what loss we still remember, and gave the Sudan away. The second act is not a merry one.

The third was less tragic, but it was perhaps even harder to play. We pass by a mud-walled quadrangle, which was once the artillery barracks ; through the gateway you look across sand to the mud ramparts of Haifa. That is the stamp of the days of reorganisation, of retrenchment, of difficulties and

THB FIRST ANGLO-EGYPTIAN VICTORY. 6

discouragements, and unconquerable, undisappointed work. Those were the days when the Egyptian army was in the making, when Haifa was the frontier fortress. There are old barracks all over it, where the young fighting force of Egypt used to sleep half awake. The brown flanks of those hills beyond the rifle-range, just a couple of miles or so desertwards, have seen Dervishes stealing up in broad day and insolently slashing and stabbing in the main streets of the bazaar. Yet this time was not all unavenged insult: the long years between 1885 and 1896 saw Egypt defended and its assailants smashed to pieces. Little by little Egypt — British Egypt now — gained strength and new resolution.

Four battles mark the stages from weakness and abandonment to confidence and the resolution to reconquer. At Ginnis, on the last day but one of 1885, came the first Anglo - Egyptian strategical victory. The Mahdists had been tactically beaten before — well beaten ; but the result had always been that we fell back and they came on. After Ginnis, fought by the British army of occupation, aided by a small number of the new Egyptian army, we stood firm, and the Dervishes were washed back. There were men of the Cameron Highlanders on the Atbara, who had fought in that battle : it was not perhaps a very great one, but it was the first time the enemy had been brought to a standstill. He retired behind the Third Cataract.

6 HALFA TELLS ITS STOEY.

Then followed three years of raid and counter-raid. Chermside cut up their advance-guard at Sarras ; they captured the fort of Khor Musa, and Machell Bey of the 13th Sudanese drove them out within twelve hours. On the Suakim side the present Sirdar made head against Osman Digna with what irregulars and friendlies he could get together. Then in 1888 Osman waxed insolent and threw up trenches against Suakim. It became a regular siege, and Dervish shells fell into the town. But on December 20 Sir Francis Grenfell, the Sirdar, came down and attacked the trenches at the battle of Gemaizeh, and Osman fell back shattered : never again did he come so near his soul's ambition.

Meanwhile Wad-en-Nejumi — the great Emir, the conqueror of Hicks and the captor of Khartum — had hung on the southern frontier, gathering strength for his attack on Egypt. He came in 1889, skirting Haifa in the western desert, striking for a point in Egypt proper above Assuan. His Emirs got out of hand and tried to get to the Nile; in a hard day's tussle at Argin, Colonel Wodehouse and the Haifa garrison threw him back into the desert again. N"ejumi pushed on southward, certain of death, certain of Paradise. At Toski Grenfell brought him to battle with the flower of the Egyptian army. At the end of the day Nejumi was dead and his army was beginning to die of thirst in the desert. Egypt has never been attacked since.

THE TURNING-POINT OF THE DRAMA. 7

Finally, in 1891 Colonel Holled - Smith marched against Osman Digna's base outside Suakim, the oasis of Tokat. The Dervishes sprang upon him at Afafit, but the days of surprise and panic were over. They were rolled back and shattered to pieces ; their base was occupied ; and Suakim as well as Haifa had peace. Now all ground was finally maintained, and all was ripe for attack again. England heard little of this third act; but for all that, unadvertised, hard-working, it was the turning-point of the whole drama.

And now we have come to the locomotive-sheds and the fitting-shops, the boiler-houses and the storerooms; we are back in the present again, and the Haifa of to-day is the Egypt of to-day. Haifa has left off being a fortress and a garrison; to-day it is all workshop and railway terminus. To-day it makes war not with bayonets, but with rivets and spindleglands. Railways run along every dusty street, and trains and trucks clank up and down till Haifa looks for all the world like Chicago in a turban. In chains, too, for to Haifa come all the worst villains of Egypt. You must know that, till the other day, no Egyptian could be hanged for murder except on the evidence of eyewitnesses — just the people whom most murderers try to avoid. So the rails and sleepers are slung ashore to the jingle of ankle - chains ; and after a day in Haifa it startles you in no way to hear that the black foreman of the engine - shop did his five murders, and that, nevertheless, he is a most intelli-

8 HALFA TELLS ITS STORY.

gent, industriouSj.and harmless creature. On the contrary, you find it admirable that Egypt's ruffians are doing Egypt's work.

Haifa clangs from morning till night with rails lassoed and drawn up a sloping pair of their fellows by many convicts on to trucks ; it thuds with sleepers and boxes of bully-beef dumped on to the shore. As you come home from dinner you stumble over strange rails, and sudden engine-lamps flash in your face, and warning whistles scream in your ears. As you lie at night you hear the plug-plug of the goods engine, nearer and nearer, till it sounds as if it must be walking in at your tent door. From the shops of Haifa the untamed Sudan is being tamed at last. It is the new system, the modern system — mind and mechanics beating muscle and shovel-head spear. It takes up and digests all the past : the bits of Ismail's railway came into the Dongola line ; the engine of Wolseley's time has been rebuilt, and is running again f the artillery barracks are a store for all things pertaining to engines. They came together for the fourth act — the annihilating surprise of Ferkeh, the masterly passage of Hafir, the occupation of Dongola and Merawi, the swift march and sharp storm of Abu Hamed, the swoop on Berber. They were all coming together now for the victorious end, ready to enter for the fifth act and the final curtain on Khartum.

But that is not all Haifa, and it is not all the Sudan. Looking at it hence from its threshold, the

THE CEMETESY. 9

Sudan seems like a strong and swift wild beast, which many hunters have pursued, none subdued. The Sudan is a man-eater — red -gorged, but still insatiable. Turn your pony's head and canter out a mile ; we are at the cemetery. No need to dismount, or even to read the names — see merely how full it is. Each white cross is an Englishman devoured by the Sudan. Go and hear the old inhabitants talk — the men who have contrived to live year in, year out, in the Sudan, in splitting sun and red-hot sand. You will notice it best with the men who are less trained to take a pull on their sentiment than are British officers — with the engineer corporals and the foreman mechanics, and ail the other plain, efficient Englishmen who are at work on Haifa. Their talk is half of the chances of action, and the other half of their friends that have died.

" Poor Bill, 'e died in the desert surveying to Habu 'Amed. Yes, 'e's 'ere in the cemetery. No ; there wasn't any white man there at the time."

" Ah, yes ; he was a good fellow, and so was poor Captain Blank ; a real nice man, he was now ; no better in all the Egyptian army, sir, and I tell you that's saying a good deal, that is. Fought, too, against it ; he was engaged to a girl at home, you know, sir, and he wouldn't give up. I nursed him till the doctor come, and then till the end. Didn't you see him when you was out at the cemetery ; he's next to poor Dash ? "

10 HALFA TELLS ITS STOBT.

* Ah, yes," says the third ; " don't you remembeT that night out at Murat — poor Blank, and poor Dash, and poor Tertius, and you, and me. Five we were, and now there's only us two left. Dear, yes ; and I slept in Tertius's bed the night before he took it ; he was gone and buried forty -eight — no, thirty- six, it was — thirty -six hours later. Ah, yes; he was a good fellow, too. The way those niggers cried ! "

Yes; it is a murderous devil, the Sudan, and we have watered it with more of our blood than it will ever yield to pay for. The man-eater is very grim, and he is not sated yet Only this time he was to be conquered at last.

II

THE EGYPTIAN ARMY

The Anglo-Egyptian army is not quite sixteen years old. The old Turco-Egyptian army was knocked to pieces by Lord Wolseley at Tel-el-Kebir, and the Mahdi ground the fragments to powder. Out of the nothing which remained sixteen years of British leadership have sufficed to build up an army capable of fighting foot for foot with the victors of Tel-el- Kebir, and accustomed to see the backs of the conquerors of Hicks and Baker and Gordon.

Sixteen years of active service have seen a ' great increase on the eight battalions which were Sir Evelyn Wood's original command. To-day the Egyptian army numbers nineteen battalions of infantry, ten squadrons of cavalry, one horse and four field batteries, and Maxims, a camel corps of eight companies, and the usual non-combatant services. Lord Dufferin limited the original army to 6000 men, with 25 white officers ; to-day it counts three times that number with over 140.

12 THE EGYPTIAN ASMT.

The army is of course raised by conscription. But probably the conscription sits less heavily on Egypt than on any country in the world. Out of ten millions it takes — counting the railway battalions — under 20,000 men, — that is to say, one out of every 500 of population; whereas Germany takes 1 in 89, and France 1 in 66. That is only on the peace-footing, moreover ; Egypt has been at war ever since the birth of the new army ; no conscriptive nation ever carried war so lightly. On the other hand, the Egyptian soldier is called on to serve six years with the colours and nine in the reserve or the police. The small proportion of men taken enables the War Office to pick and choose ; so that in point of physique also the Egyptian army could probably give weight to any in the world. And not only is it the smallest of conscriptive armies — it is also the best paid. The fellah receives a piastre (2|d.) a-day — a magnificent salary, equal to what he would usually be making in full work*in his native village.

Even these figures do not do justice to the easy conditions on which Egypt supports her army. For of the eighteen battalions of infantry, six — 9th to 14th — are Sudanese blacks. The material of these is not drawn from Egypt proper, nor, properly speaking, by conscription. The black is liable to be enlisted wherever he is found, as such, in virtue of his race ; and he is enlisted for life. Such a law would be a terrible tyranny for the fellah : in the estimation of the black

OUB SUDANESE SOLDIEBS. 13

it only gives comfort and security in the natural vocation of every man worth calling such — war. Many of the black soldiers have fought against us in the past, with the same energy and enjoyment as they now exhibit in our service. After each victory the more desirable of the prisoners and deserters are enlisted, to their great content, in one black battalion or another. Every morning I had seen them on the range at Haifa — the British sergeant-instructor teaching the ex-Dervishes to shoot. When the recruit made a bull— which he did surprisingly often — the white sergeant, standing behind him with a paper, cried, " Quaiss hitir " — " Very good." When he made a fool of himself, the black sergeant trod on him as he lay flat on his belly : he accepted praise and reproof with equal satisfaction, as part of his new game of disciplined war. The black is a perennial schoolboy, without the schooling.

The black soldier is not adapted to garrison life. They brought a battalion down to Cairo once ; but the soldiers insisted on driving about all day in carriages, and then beat the driver when he asked for his fare. Ever since then the Sudanese battalions have been kept on the frontier — either up the Nile or on the Suakim side, wherever there has been fighting to do. Having neither knowledge of civilised enjoyments nor desire for them, they are very happy. Their pay is, properly, higher than that of the fellahin — 14s. amonth to begin with and 3|d. a-day allowance for the

14 THE EGTFTIAN ABIIT.

wife and family of such as are allowed to marry. The allowance is given generously, for woman is to the black soldier a necessary of life. On a campaign he must, of course, leave his wife and children behind : there is a large village of them just above Assuan. But since their time, I am afraid, as the frontier has ever advanced up-river, the inconstant warrior has formed fresh ties ; and now at Haifa, at Dongola, at Berber, the path of victory is milestoned with expectant wives and children.

It is not so abandoned as it sounds, for the Sudanese are born of polygamy, and it would be unreasonable to expect them not to live in it. Here is a typical case. One day a particularly smart soldier came and desired to speak with his commanding officer.

" I wish to marry, O thou Bey," he said.

" But aren't you married ? "

" Tes ; but my wife is old and has no child, and I desire,a child. I wish therefore to marry the sister of Sergeant Mohammed Ali, and he also is willing."

" Then you want to send away your present wife ? "

"0 no, Excellency. My wife cooks very well, and I want her to cook my rations. She also is willing."

So, everybody being willing, the second marriage took place. Mohammed All's sister duly bore a son, and the first wife cooked for the whole family, and they all lived happy ever afterwards.

BGTFTIAN GAYALBT. 15

Each infantry battalion, black and Egyptian alike, is divided into six companies, which parade between 100 and 120 strong ; a battalion thus counts roughly, with band and bearer parties, from 650 to 750 rifles. The normal strength of a battalion is 759. The uniform is much the same for all arms — brown jersey, sand-coloured trousers, and dark-blue putties. Over the tarbush the Egyptians have a cover which hangs down behind over the nape of the neck : the blacks need no such protection from their native sun, and do with plaited-straw round the tarbush, bearing a badge whose colour varies with the various battalions. The infantry rifle is the Martini.

The cavalry are all Egyptians, recruited mostly from the Eayum oasis : a black can never be made to understand that a horse needs to be groomed and fed. The horses are stout, hardy beasts of 13 hands or so : they get through an amazing amount of work, and so do the men, though they are a little heavy in the saddle. The strength of a squadron is about 100 ; the front rank, as in all civilised armies, carry lance as well as sabre and Martini carbine. Seven of the squadron leaders are Englishmen.

Two batteries of field-artillery are armed with new Maxim-Nordenfeldt quick-firing 9-pounders, or 18- pounders with a double shell — handy little creatures which a couple of mules draw easily. The horse-battery has 12-pounder Krupps, the rest 9-pounders. Each battery has a white commander: all th» mea

16 THB EGYPTIAN ARMY.

are Egyptians, and their physical strength and teachableness make them almost ideal gunners.

The camel corps is some 800 strong — half black, half fellah. They use the mounted-infantry saddle, sitting astride, and carry Martini and bayonet. There are five white officers.

Of the fellah battalions some are officered by Englishmen, some not. The former are 1st to 4th and 15th to 18th; 5th to 8th are officered entirely by natives. Until this campaign the normal number of white officers has been three to an Egyptian and four to a Sudanese battalion : the latter require more holding, and also usually see more fighting, than the former. Most of them were one or even two short. But for this campaign — the final campaign, the climax for which the Anglo-Egyptian army has existed and drudged sixteen years — the number of British officers had been raised to four in some battalions for the fellahin and five for the blacks. There has been complaining, both in Egypt and at home, that the proportion of British to Egyptian officers seems to grow greater, whereas in theory it ought to grow less; but the objection is political rather than military. Many good judges would like to see a few black battalions officered right through by white men, like our West India Eegiment. There is no better regimental officer than the Englishman ; there is no better natural fighter than the Sudanese: there would hardly be a likelier force in the world.

SERGEANT WHATSISNAMB. 17

The native officers are largely of Turkish, Circassian, or Albanian race, with the qualities and defects of their blood; their standard of professional attainment and duty is higher than that of the Turkish •amy, their courage in action no lower. Native Egyptians have furnished the army with one or two conspicuously useful officers. There is also a certain proportion of black captains and subalterns among the Sudanese : they are keen, work well with the British, and, of course, are utterly fearless ; but, as a rule, lack of education keeps them out of the higher grades.

Finally, we must not forget Sergeant Whatsisname, as with grateful appreciation of fame at Mr Kipling's hands he is proud to call himself. Each battalion has as instructor a British non-commissioned officer: he drills it, teaches it to shoot, makes soldiers of it: Perhaps there is no body of men in the world whc do more unalloyed and unlimited credit to their country than the colour-sergeants and sergeants with the Egyptian army. In many ways their position is a very difficult one. Technically they are suboijiuate to all native officers down to the latest-joined sublieutenant. The slacker sort of native officer resents the presence of these keenly military subordinates, and does his best to make them uncomfortable. But the white sergeant knows how not to see unpleasantness till it is absolutely unavoidable ; then he knows how to go quietly to his colonel and assert his posi-

18 THE EGYPTIAN AKMT.

tion without publicly humiliating his superior. When you hear that the sergeant - instructors are highly endowed with tact, you will guess that in the virtues that come more naturally to the British sergeant they shine exceedingly. Their passionate devotion to duty rises to a daily heroism. Living year in, year out, in a climate very hard upon Europeans, they are naturally unable to palliate it with the comparative luxuries of the ojB&cer; though it must be said that the consideration of the officer for his non-commissioned comrade is one of the kindliest of all the many kindly touches with which the British-Egyptian softens privation and war. But the white officer rides and the white sergeant marches. " Where a nigger can go, I can go," he says, and tramps on through the sun. Early in the year one of them marched with the 4th every step of the road from Suakim — the only white man who ever did it. In action the white sergeant has no particular place or duties, so he charges ahead of the^ first line. At Haifa, training the recruits, he has no officer set over him, and can do pretty well what he likes ; so he stands five hours in the sun before breakfast with his men on the range. He must needs be a keen soldier or he would not have volunteered for his post, and a good one, or he would not have got it. But on the top of this he is also essentially a fine man. Stiffened by marches and fights and cholera camps, broadened by contact with things new and strange, polished by a closer associa-

AN ABMT OF TOUHTG MEN. 19

tion with his officers than the service allows at home, elevated by responsibility cheerfully undertaken and honourably sustained, — he is a mirror of soldierly virtue.

The position of the British officer is as assured as that of the sergeant is ambiguous. No British regimental officer takes lower rank than major (Bimbashi) ; none has any superior native officer in his own corps. The lieutenant -colonel (KaimaJcam) commanding each battalion is usually a captain or major in the British army, and the Bimhashis usually subalterns : so many of both ranks, however, have earned brevets or been promoted, that in talking of officers in the Egyptian army it will be simplest to call a battalion commander Bey, which is the courtesy title by which he is usually addressed, and his British subordinate Bimbashi.

To take a man from the command of a company and put him to command a battalion is a big jump ; but with the British officers in Egypt the experiment has richly justified itself. The Egyptian army is an army of young men. The Sirdar is forty-eight years old ; General Hunter was a major-general before he was forty. The whole army has only one combatant officer over fifty. Through the Dongola campaign majors commanded brigades and captains battalions ; at Abu Hamed, last year, a subaltern of twenty-eight led his regiment in action. With men either rash or timid such sudden promotion might be dangerous;

20 THE EGYPTIAN AEMT.

but the officers of the Egyptian army are at the same time unafraid of responsibility and equal to it. Their professional success has been very great — some whisper, too great. "After Tel-el-Kebir," said a captain in the British brigade, "one of our officers came to me and talked of joining the Egyptian army. For God's sake, don't,' I said; 'don't: you'll spend your life thrashing fellahin into action with a stick.' Now, here am I commanding a company, and a man who was under me in the Kandahar show is commanding a brigade." Certainly the Egyptian officers may have passed over men as good as they ; but their luck has lain solely in getting the chance to show their merit.

For after all the fact remains, that while the British campaigns in the Sudan are a long story of failure brightened only by stout fighting, the Egyptian campaigns have been a consistent record of success. With inferior material, at a tithe of the expense, they have ^orn their enemy down by sheer patience and pluck and knowledge of their business. In the old days campaigns were given up for want of transport ; now rations are as certain in Khartum as in Cairo. In the old days we used to be surprised and to fight in square ; now we surprise the enemy and attack in line. In quite plain language, what Gordon and Wolseley failed to do the Sirdar has done. The credit is not all his : part must go to Sir Evelyn Wood and Sir Francis Grenfell, his predecessors, and to the whole body of