First Jihad: Khartoum, and the Dawn of Militant Islam (37 page)

While the Khalifa was committed to attacking Kitchener’s army, he had no intention of simply flinging his Dervishes and Ansar into a headlong assault.
Instead he formulated a clever plan that, had he not so greatly underestimated the destructive power of modern weaponry, might actually have succeeded in driving Kitchener’s army into the Nile.
His first move was to send fifteen thousand of Osman Sheikh-ed-Din’s Dervishes forward to deliver a frontal attack on the Anglo-Egyptian line.
He waited with a similar force near a rise known as Surgham Hill to watch the outcome.

Though he almost certainly didn’t expect it to succeed, if it did the assault would have been followed by Abdullahi’s own bodyguard, the elite of the Arab army.
As every man in the British and Egyptian Armies knew by now, the Dervishes were extraordinarily brave men and dangerous opponents.
The purpose of this attack was two-fold: it might actually succeed in breaking the enemy line, and at the same time it would cover a movement by the rest of Osman Sheikh-ed-Din’s soldiers, who were to move to the northern flank and swing around to strike at the Egyptian brigade, not by any means Kitchener’s best or most reliable troops.
But that was not the most clever part of the Khalifa’s plan.
Ali-Wad-Helu had been instructed to keep some twenty-two thousand men in reserve behind the Kerreri Hills, out of sight and out of range of the British.
If the first two attacks failed—and by his planning it seems that Abdullahi was to some degree anticipating that they would—when the Anglo-Egyptian army advanced on Omdurman, believing they had won an easy victory, the remaining Ansar would swoop down from the hills, catching the enemy out in the open plain, in marching order, unable to form their habitual square.
Caught by Ali-Wad-Helu’s twenty-two thousand to the north and the Khalifa with sixteen thousand to the south, with the Nile behind them and the open desert before them, the British and Egyptian soldiers would be doomed.
It would be the Hicks disaster all over again.

But it was not to be.
The British artillery opened up when the Dervish center came within range.
Four batteries began firing at a range of about 3,000 yards.
Gaps momentarily appeared in the Arab ranks.
They were quickly filled, and the advance continued.
The gunboats joined in the cannonade, and soon shells were bursting all along the Arab line.
Still the Arabs closed with their British and Egyptian foes.

At a thousand yards the infantry opened fire, the crash of their massed volleys of rifles punctuated by the chatter of machine-guns.
The gaps in the Arab lines grew larger and were filled less quickly now, the approach becoming a bit ragged—yet they still came on.
The artillery was firing shrapnel shells over the heads of the advancing Dervishes and Ansar, the fragments raining down on them.
It was here that two mistakes caught up with the Khalifa, dooming his plans.
The first was that in one of those quirks of fate which can often decide battles and which no commander can ever completely avoid, both divisions of Dervishes attacked simultaneously rather than in succession.
This meant that the Anglo-Egyptian infantry would only confront a single charge, rather than being forced to divide their fire, and would only have to endure a single shock action if the Arabs were able to come to close combat instead of the succession of impacts that Abdullahi had anticipated.
It also meant exposing them to the devastating rifle volleys of British and Egyptian troops and the raking fire of the Maxim guns.
The second mistake was the Khalifa’s apparent ignorance of the effectiveness of his enemy’s weapons.

The British Army and its Egyptian counterpart, now thoroughly reorganized along British lines, were now equipped with the .303 calibre Lee-Metford, a bolt action rifle which had replaced the old Martini-Henrys.
The Lee-Metford fired a round at nearly twice the velocity and twice the range of the Martini, with almost double the rate of fire.
When the Arab army advanced toward the Anglo-Egyptian lines, they marched into a veritable wall of fire, as the 300 rounds-per-minute rate of fire of the Maxim guns was added to the fifteen rounds per minute each infantryman was capable of producing.

The effect was devastating.
Entire ranks of Ansar and Dervishes were brought down in bloody heaps before they could get within range with their own weapons.
With each volley the charging Arabs seemed to draw a little closer to the British ranks, but in ever dwindling numbers.
Finally, at about 800 yards from the British lines, the Dervishes could do no more—it was impossible to advance another foot against such firepower.

On the Anglo-Egyptian right, a force of cavalry, the Camel Corps, and Horse Artillery, supported by the Egyptian Brigade, brought the Dervish left to a halt, preventing the turning movement that Abdullahi had thought possible there.
The fighting was fierce and the British suffered significant casualties, though the Dervish losses were just awful.
Several British officers would recall how the Dervishes continued to close relentlessly, heedless of the artillery shells exploding within their ranks.
When one of the gunboats stood in close to the shoreline and began firing at the Dervish soldiers at almost point-blank range, the situation became unbearable even for those incredibly brave men, and they fell back in confusion, harassed by the British cavalry, effectively out of the battle.

The Dervish frontal attack on the center continued, but still could make no headway against the fearsome British firepower.
Though they quickly learned that the dense ranks in which they advanced presented targets impossible to miss and so began advancing in more dispersed formations, eight hundred yards was the closest any of the Ansar could approach to the British lines.
Yet, though they were unable to advance, they were unwilling to retire.
Here and there Arab riflemen would find a fold of ground that allowed them to take shots at the British troops, but the range was long, their weapons old, and their effect was negligible.
Slowly, reluctantly, the Arabs withdrew.
Their courage had been unquestionable, but it hadn’t been enough against the measured volleys of a modern army supported by machine guns and artillery.
By eight o’clock more than four thousand of the Dervish warriors lay dead or wounded on the open ground before the British lines.

As the Arabs withdrew, artillery started picking off the small groups of riflemen who were still doing their best to harass the British line.
Small pockets of warriors, seeking shelter from the British volleys, were flushed into the open and, deciding that they had endured enough for the moment, quickly fled the field.
Lee-Metford and Maxim fire followed them, until they were lost to sight behind the far ridge of the Kerreri plain.

Once the Arab attack had been broken, Kitchener and his officers agreed that they had to occupy Omdurman before the Dervish army could retreat into the city.
The British unit on the extreme left of the Anglo-Egyptian position, the 21st Lancers, was sent orders to ride for the city and cut off the retreat of the Arab army: “Advance and clear the left flank, and use every effort to prevent the enemy re-entering Omdurman.”

Initially facing the Lancers was a small force of seven hundred Arabs, positioned to prevent any blocking movement of the Khalifa’s line of retreat to Omdurman.
As soon as the Lancers began moving toward Omdurman, Abdullahi sent an additional twenty-four hundred of his fighting men to support the blocking force.
While the Arabs raced to get into position, the 21st methodically went through the drill preparatory to advancing against an enemy—or if need be, charging one.

This was not a demonstration of British dedication to military orthodoxy or the commanders’ lack of imagination or sense of urgency.
To be truly effective, cavalry charges had to be carefully organized and staged: in real life they were a far cry from the spectacles depicted in countless motion pictures, where a bugle sounds the “Charge” and a mass of horsemen spring forward in a mad, headlong gallop.
The success or failure of a charge came down to one single moment—the instant when the horsemen met the foot soldiers.
Unformed infantry, that is troops not in a column or square, were vulnerable at all times to cavalry, but formed troops could only be defeated if the cavalry met them in a single, cohesive mass, relying on the shock of the impact to break the infantry formation.
Maintaining that cohesion and mass was the purpose of the careful preparations the 21st Lancers were now undertaking.

They first formed into line of squadron columns, and continued forward at a walk until they came to within three hundred yards of the Arabs.
Wheeling left, the squadrons broke into a trot as they moved across the Dervish front.
The Arabs quickly opened fire on the cavalry, inflicting casualties among the troopers and the horses.
The order rang out, “Right wheel into line,” and at that, four hundred horsemen swung round into a single line and began working up to the gallop.

It was the first charge the regiment had ever made in its history.
The fact that the unit had never before been in battle was an embarrassment to all of its officers and troopers.
Though the regimental motto was “Death or Glory,” cynical officers from other cavalry units scorned the 21st by declaring that its actual motto was “Thou shalt not kill.” Now the 21st was given a chance to prove its mettle.
What was about to happen would be a costly demonstration of regimental pride.

The horsemen were still some two hundred and fifty yards from the Arab riflemen who were still firing away at them, when the rising, ten-note bugle call of the “Charge!” was sounded and the regiment broke into a full gallop.
Before half the distance to the riflemen had been crossed, a khor—a dry watercourse—appeared that had been invisible until the riders were virtually on top of it.
Out of it sprang a screaming, surging mass of white-clad Arabs, the twenty-four hundred reinforcements the Khalifa had sent to support the blocking force.

The Lancers crashed into and through the Arabs, down into the khor and up the other side.
Seventy-one officers and troopers fell in that first clash, and as its impetus carried it through the Arab position, the regiment wheeled about-face, reformed, and charged once again.
By this time, though, the unit had lost much of its cohesion and the pace of the charge was slower.
Soon a hand-to-hand melee was underway between Dervish and trooper, and it was only decided when one squadron of the Lancers drew off, dismounted and opened fire on the Arabs with their carbines.
It was the last cavalry charge ever made by the British Army, and it was over in barely ten minutes.

It had been a desperate, ferocious, and ultimately needless action.
Winston Churchill, who had not only been an eyewitness to the charge but a participant, painted a memorable picture of the aftermath of one of the last stands of the Mahdi’s army:

The Lancers remained in possession of the dearly bought ground.
There was not much to show that there had been a desperate fight.
A quarter of a mile away nothing would have been noticed.
Close to, the scene looked like a place where rubbish is thrown, or where a fair has recently been held.
White objects, like dirty bits of newspaper, lay scattered here and there—-the bodies of the enemy.
Brown objects, almost the color of the earth, like bundles of dead grass or heaps of manure, were also dotted about—-the bodies of soldiers.
Among these were goat-skin water-bottles, broken weapons, torn and draggled flags, cartridge cases.
In the foreground lay a group of dead horses and several dead or dying donkeys.
It was all litter.

It had been a costly action.
The seventy-one dead and wounded Lancers amounted to nearly a fifth of the regimental strength, while close to a thousand Arabs lay dead or dying on the field.
The remainder fled while the surviving Lancers collected their casualties and reformed their ranks.
At about the same time, a heavy barrage of cannon fire began and seconds later the crackle of small arms could be heard from behind the ridge.
It was just on 9:00 AM and the whole of the British Army had swung over to the attack.

As soon as the Mahdist soldiers in the center began to withdraw, Kitchener had ordered his British and Egyptian brigades to advance toward Omdurman.
It was a bold move, for there were still more than thirty-six thousand Ansar and Dervishes on the field, many of them mounted—more than sufficient forces to block Kitchener’s advance and inflict heavy losses in the process.

The infantry brigades wheeled left in echelon formation and began marching toward Surgham Ridge.
At the same time, the Khalifa’s reserves, fifteen thousand horsemen and foot-soldiers, turned on the northernmost British brigade, that is, the last in the line.
Surging over the ridge, the Arabs charged with as much ferocity as the Dervishes had shown earlier.
Seeing the looming threat, Kitchener instantly responded with a series of crisp orders that completely realigned his army.
Whereas it had begun the fight facing to the southwest, it was now facing almost due north.

The Khalifa, watching from the far side of the plain as his warriors attacked the British line, saw a possibility that his original plan might still come to pass—catching the British and Egyptians in the open desert—if his widely separated divisions could manage to attack both British flanks simultaneously.
It would create a crisis for Kitchener, compelling him to divide his reserves, denying him the opportunity to move units from one part of the line to support threatened sections.
But even as he watched he saw that the assault against the British left would begin too soon.
On the other side, the divisions of Ali-Wad-Helu and Osman Sheikh ed-Din were still reforming on the Kerreri Hills, and their attack on the British right would come too late.