THE BLUNDER OF THE CHARGE.

293

21st for its indisputable heroism; the War Office will hardly be able to condemn it for its equally indisputable folly. That being so, it is the less invidious to say that the charge was a gross blunder. For cavalry to charge unbroken infantry, of unknown strength, over unknown ground, within a mile of their own advancing infantry, was as grave a tactical crime as cavalry could possibly commit. Their orders, it is

believed, were to find out the strength of the enemy south of Gebel Surgham, report to the British infantry behind them, and, if possible, to prevent the enemy from re-entering Omdurman. The charge implied disregard, or at least inversion, of these orders. Had the cavalry merely reconnoitred the body of dervishes they attacked, and kept them occupied till Lyttelton's brigade came up, the enemy would have been annihilated, probably without the loss of a man to our side. As it was, the British cavalry in the charge itself suffered far heavier loss than it inflicted. by its loss in horses it practically put itself out of action for the rest of the day, when it ought to have saved itself for the pursuit. Thereby it contributed as much as any one cause to the escape of the Khalifa.

And

For the other two points, General Gatacre, being new to zaribas, appears to have throughout attached undue importance to them. At the Atbara he squandered much of the force of his attack through an overestimation of the difficulty of Mahmud's zariba; here

he crippled both defence and readiness of offence through overestimating the difficulty of his own. A zariba looks far more formidable than a light sheltertrench such as General Hunter's division employed: in truth it is as easy to shoot through as a sheet of paper, and, for Sudanis, almost as easy to charge through. As for sending out the camel-corps with the Egyptian cavalry, it is exceedingly difficult to understand why this was done the very day after Broadwood's reconnaissance to Gebel Feried had demonstrated their immobility. The truth appears to be that it is very difficult to find a place for such a force in a general action. When the frontier was Halfa, and the war was mostly desert raids and counterraids, nothing could have replaced this corps; for other than desert work it has become something of an anomaly.

These amateur criticisms are put forward with diffidence, and will, I hope, be tentatively received. Turning to what is indisputable, it is impossible to overpraise the conduct of every branch of the force. Those of the longest and widest experience said over and over again that they had never seen a battle in which everybody was so completely cool and set on his business. Two features were especially prominent. The first was the shooting of the British. It was perfect. Some thought that the Dervishes were mown down principally by artillery and Maxim fire; but if

An

the gun did more execution than the rifle, it was probably for the first time in the history of war. examination of the dead- cursory and partial, but probably fairly representative-tends to the opinion that most of the killing, as usual, was done by rifles. From the British you heard not one ragged volley: every section fired with a single report. The individual firing was lively and evenly maintained. The satisfactory conclusion is that the British soldier will keep absolutely steady in action, and knows how to use his weapon: given these two conditions, no force existing will ever get within half a mile of him on open ground, and hardly any will try.

The native troops vindicated their courage, discipline, and endurance most nobly. The sudden, unforeseen charges might well have shaken the nerve of the Egyptians and over-excited the blacks; both were absolutely cool. Their only fault was in shooting. At almost every volley you saw a bullet kick the sand within fifty yards of the firing-line. Others flew almost perpendicular into the air. Still, given steadiness, the mechanical art of shooting can be taught with time and patience. When you consider that less than six months ago the equivalent of one company in each black battalion were raw dervishes, utterly untrained in the use of fire-arms, the wonder is they shot as well as they did. Anyhow they shot well enough, and in trying circumstances they shot

as well as they knew how. That is the root of the

matter.

As for the leading-happy the country which possessed a Hunter, a Macdonald, a Broadwood, and had hardly heard of any one of them. It has heard of them now, and it will be strange if it does not presently hear further.

XXXIV.

OMDURMAN.

IT was eleven o'clock.

Four brigades were passing slowly to right and left of Gebel Surgham: the Second British and Second Egyptian were far ahead, filmy shadows on the eye-searing sand. The dervish dead and dying were strewn already over some thirty square miles-killed by bullets, killed by shrapnel, killed by shell from the gunboats, dying of wounds by the water, dying of thirst in the desert. But most lay dead in the fighting line. Mahdism had died well. If it had earned its death by its iniquities, it had condoned its iniquities by its death.

Now on to overtake the Sirdar, to see the city of the Khalifa. Even now, after our triple fight, none was quite assured of final victory. We had killed a prodigious number of men, but where there were so many there might yet be more. Probably the same thought ran through many minds. If only they fought as well inside Omdurman! That would have spelt days of fighting and thousands of dead.