The Memoirs of Admiral Lord Beresford
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.
{273}
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