by Richard Toye
By this time the field force’s activities were more or less at an end. Churchill did see some fighting – Ian Hamilton, another latecomer to the expedition, recalled seeing him ‘enjoying himself amongst the bullets’ in the Bara Valley.77 His chief service, though, was as a propagandist. As Hamilton acknowledged in his memoirs, under the terms of the peace deal that Nicholson patched up, the tribesmen ‘surrendered some thousands of their rifles, most of them captured or stolen from us, and were [. . .] given umpteen heavy bags of silver to induce them to go on pretending they had been defeated’.78 Churchill, though, was to drop his previous private criticisms and to describe the outcome much more optimistically. Haldane’s influence may have been important here. ‘So far as I could I took care to ensure that he [Churchill] should meet those whose views on frontier policy I had imbibed from my seniors and which seemed to be sound’, the older man recalled; ‘and he several times discussed with Colonel Warbuton [one of the force’s political officers] the recent troubles on the border and their bearing on future problems’.79 As Churchill put it later, Haldane’s inside descriptions of the operations ‘showed me that much went on of which I and the general public were unconscious’.80 Or to put it another way, he was given the army’s ‘spin’.
Churchill showed his usefulness when Haldane revealed to him that Nicholson had been incensed by an article in the Fortnightly Review criticizing the conduct of the campaign.81 The general had been so stung, in fact, that he had written a reply, signed it ‘Chief of the Staff’, and sent it to the Fortnightly. Churchill realized that this was undignified, if not improper, and successfully urged that Nicholson should withdraw the piece from publication.82 Probably as a direct result of this incident, Churchill wrote his own article. Styled as a private letter to a Conservative MP – an artifice which can have fooled few – it was published in The Times. He did not make any effort to rebut criticisms of the campaign in detail, but instead dismissed them as gossip generated by ‘stragglers’ who had rushed home early. He denied that the results had been disappointing: ‘The business has been finished and yet while the army receives the humble submission of the most ferocious savages in Asia, we are assailed by the taunts and reproaches of our countrymen at home.’ At one point, though, he seemed to give the game away. He told the touching story of Private James Clow, who was accidentally shot by one of his fellow-soldiers with a dum-dum bullet and had to have his leg amputated. Invalided home, Clow and others of the wounded were visited by the Queen, and he told her he thought he had been hit by a Martini bullet (which might have been fired by a tribesman). Churchill saluted Clow’s well-meaning disingenuity: ‘This poor man – penniless & a cripple, because he thought the truth might “give away” the regiment to which he belonged, had concocted this fiction’ in order to save its honour.83 But as the Liberal Westminster Gazette pointed out, Churchill clearly believed that if Clow was entitled to deceive the Queen to spare his regiment, then he, Churchill, was also entitled to deceive the public so as to shield the army. ‘We are not criticising this ingenious “concocter of fiction”, James Clow, but the eulogy he gets is a sufficient revelation of what Mr Churchill’s “accepted creed” in these matters is. Mr Churchill may not be deceiving us – but how can we be in the least sure that he is not a second Clow?’84
IV
After the Tirah campaign, Churchill determined to make his way to the Sudan, where the British reconquest was entering its climactic phase. After the death of General Gordon at Khartoum in 1885, British and Egyptian forces had withdrawn from the country. The Mahdi died just a few months after his victory. Under his nominated successor, the Khalifa ‘Abdallahi, the Mahdist state established its writ with a fair degree of success. It had a tolerable postal service, a taxation system that aspired towards fairness, and its own currency. In Omdurman, the new capital, the Khalifa made some efforts at slum clearance.85 All this belied the idea that the Mahdists – usually referred to by the British as ‘Dervishes’ – were merely savages. A similar point struck Churchill when he at last found his way into the Khalifa’s abandoned house, with its bathroom served by hot and cold water. Its owner, he thought, ‘must have possessed civilised qualities’, as he was clearly a man who understood life’s decencies.86 Nonetheless, the state was a tyranny, and suffered from corruption. Confiscation was used as a weapon against internal enemies, but the more it was deployed the more those enemies multiplied. The Khalifa’s power base weakened. Jihad, the state’s guiding force and motivational principle, generated diminishing returns as the population wearied of war. There was, moreover, the type of legislation that is familiar in Islamist states today. Women were to be veiled outside the home, and those who disobeyed were beaten; those who ventured into the market place could be punished with one hundred lashes.87 The escaped European captives who acted as anti-Mahdist propagandists may have exaggerated the horrors of the regime – as Churchill for one appreciated – but they had plenty of material with which to work.88
Neither dislike for the regime nor the desire for revenge for Gordon’s death was enough in itself to provoke the British into action. But in 1896 the Italian army was heavily defeated by the Abyssinians at the Battle of Adowa. The Cabinet agreed to help the Italians by relieving Mahdist pressure on their garrison at Kassala. The resulting British–Egyptian advance was to turn into an unstoppable juggernaut of reconquest. This satisfied several impulses at once: Lord Salisbury’s hatred of the ‘false religion’ of Islam, the public’s desire to avenge Gordon, the government’s wish to frustrate other great powers in the region, and its urge to control the upper reaches of the Nile in the interests of Egypt’s economy and in turn its bondholders.89 It should not be assumed, however, that support for the reconquest was unanimous. Some Liberals felt that it had not been properly thought through, and warned that Britain risked overtaxing her strength.90
The man in charge was H. H. Kitchener, the Commander-in-Chief (or ‘Sirdar’) of the Egyptian army. He spoke Arabic and he knew the ground, having served in Sudan as an intelligence officer with the doomed Gordon Relief Expedition. His most remarkable achievement of the campaign was his construction of a railway across the desert, cutting journey times to a fraction of what had been possible by steamer or camel and ending the seasonal dependence on the level of the Nile. Churchill observed in a masterly chapter of The River War that mere flesh and blood could scarcely hope to prevail against this magnificent combination of planning and machinery. ‘Fighting the Dervish was primarily a matter of transport’, he wrote. ‘The Khalifa was conquered on the railway.’91 Kitchener gained a reputation as ‘the man who has cut out his human heart and made himself a machine to retake Khartum’.92 He was also autocratic, highly secretive and did not, as a rule, care much for correspondents.
After the British victory at Atbara in April 1898, the fall of the Mahdist regime was all but assured. The question for Churchill was whether he could get to the Sudan in time to see the endgame. After Tirah he headed to England on leave, which was when he had the meeting with Salisbury mentioned above. He prevailed upon the Prime Minister, and as many others as he could (including the Prince of Wales), to persuade Kitchener to accept his attachment. He was, in fact, only one of a long list of supplicants; the Queen’s grandson Prince Christian Victor of Schleswig-Holstein, for instance, was another.93 Yet in this instance the Sirdar would not bend. He was probably suspicious of Churchill’s intention to write about the campaign. Only a last-minute vacancy in the 21st Lancers – which was not part of the Egyptian army and therefore came under the authority of the War Office rather than the Sirdar – enabled Churchill to join in time for the final phase. His bitterness against Kitchener was considerable.
Churchill again contracted to write for the press – this time for the Morning Post. He was, in fact, one of a whole pack of journalists; Kitchener had earlier tried and failed to limit coverage to that of Reuters.94 One of the correspondents was G. W. Steevens of the Daily Mail, described by H. L. Mencken as ‘the greatest newsp
aper reporter who ever lived’;95 by Churchill as ‘the most brilliant man in journalism I have ever met’; 96 and by Kitchener (who plagiarized his reports for his own despatches) as a ‘genius’.97 Pale and thin but also witty and cheerful, he held strong Social Darwinist views and was a brilliant propagandist of Empire; Churchill was especially impressed by his article ‘From the New Gibbon’, a pastiche which warned against the decadence that might lead to the downfall of the British Empire.98 Steevens was soon to boost Churchill’s career with an article that dubbed him ‘the youngest man in Europe’. He shrewdly observed that his new friend had qualities that could make him ‘almost at will, a great popular leader, a great journalist, or the founder of a great advertising business’.99 He and Churchill were often compared to one another, although the latter was undoubtedly the superior writer.100 After Steevens’s death of fever during the Boer War, Churchill repaid his compliments: ‘Modest yet proud, wise as well as witty, cynical but above all things sincere, he combined the characters of a charming companion and a good comrade.’101 Another colleague in the Sudan was Hubert Howard of The Times, who was to survive the Battle of Omdurman only to be hit by ‘a friendly shell’ later the same day. It struck Churchill as strange that the experienced Howard should be killed and he himself escape unscathed; but, as he vaingloriously remarked to his mother, who could say that that result should not be better for the Empire?102
V
The Battle of Omdurman – or Karari, as it is known locally – took place on 2 September 1898. The Mahdists chose to fight outside the city, and to attack in daylight. Against the amassed British weaponry they stood no chance; surviving veterans interviewed in the 1970s spoke unaffectedly of their quest for martyrdom.103 The Mahdists were to suffer, by one estimate, 11,000 dead and 16,000 wounded.104 British-Egyptian losses were trivial in comparison – 48 killed and 428 wounded.105 From their point of view the only thing that went seriously wrong during the battle was the famous charge of the 21st Lancers, in which Churchill was caught up. At 8.40 a.m. the Lancers received orders to harass the enemy, who by this time had already suffered heavy losses, and to try and prevent them retreating to Omdurman. As they advanced they came under fire from a group of what appeared to be only a few hundred Mahdists. The Lancers’ colonel – who was clearly out for glory come what may – ordered the troops to turn and charge directly at them. However, they discovered too late that a further great mass of enemy soldiers were concealed in a dry watercourse for which they were directly headed. The Lancers plunged in, and in the next two minutes five officers and sixty-five men out of a total strength of 310 were killed or wounded, as were about 120 horses. Churchill described vividly how the mutual butchery seemed to pass in silence; the scene seemed to flicker like a cinematograph picture.106 He had previously expressed his ‘keen aboriginal desire to kill several of these odious dervishes’, and he now got his wish.107 His estimates of his personal tally were to vary, but he was certain he shot at least three.108 He reached the far side unscathed, but was frustrated that the regiment did not turn about and do it all over again. Although this would have been ‘magnificent’ rather than ‘practical’, he told his mother, ‘another fifty or sixty casualties would have made the performance historic – & have made us all proud of our race & blood’.109
The charge was instantly commemorated as an act of imperial heroism, but Kitchener was displeased at the needless loss of life.110 Steevens – not a man quick to allege military incompetence – condemned it as 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’, he argued.111 Churchill, though, claimed that the charge – even though it had little impact on the actual outcome of the battle – ‘was of perhaps as great value to the Empire as the victory itself’. This was because the courage of the soldiers would reassure British patriots that the Empire was not suffering degeneration or decay, and that ‘the blood of the race’ continued to circulate with health and vigour.112
Such views might suggest that Churchill’s ideas had developed little since his North-West Frontier experiences. He continued often (if not invariably) to use the word ‘savages’ to refer to the Sudanese – although in one despatch he restrainedly struck out the word ‘filthy’ that had originally preceded it.113 He continued to view Islam as being ‘as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog’, and blamed it for stifling economic development – although he did acknowledge that it gave its believers bravery in death.114 Nevertheless, he came to admire the courage of the Sudanese warriors; furthermore, the aftermath of the battle made a profound impression on him. The horrors that he saw may help explain the relatively nuanced (if sometimes conflicting) opinions that he was to express over the coming months. He never questioned that the war had been necessary, yet he did criticize certain aspects of its conduct and showed some appreciation of the Mahdists’ motives. The contradictions in his behaviour may well be accounted for by his mixed emotions – on the one hand, unstinted faith in the British Empire; on the other, first-hand knowledge of the cruelties it could sometimes inflict. The picture was further complicated by his feelings of resentment towards Kitchener.
Of course, he had seen barbarities committed by the British side in India, but the sheer scale of the killing at Omdurman was new to him. Three days after the battle he toured the site with the Marquess of Tullibardine, who was serving with the Egyptian cavalry, and he described the scene in an extraordinary despatch of 10 September. The dead Sudanese were strewn across the ground, sometimes two or three deep. In one place more than four hundred bodies were packed into a hundred square yards. The corpses were of monstrous appearance, bloated to huge proportions by the sun. Churchill and Tullibardine cautiously approached the remaining wounded, and distributed what water they had. They saw a man with only one foot who had crawled a mile since the battle but who was still two miles from the river. Another man had reached the Nile only to die at its edge. Churchill wrote, in what has become a famous passage:
there was nothing dulce et decorum about the Dervish dead. Nothing of the dignity of unconquerable manhood. All was filthy corruption. Yet these were as brave men as ever walked the earth. The conviction was borne in on me that their claim beyond the grave in respect of a valiant death was as good as that which any of our countrymen could make. The thought may not be original. It may happily be untrue. It was certainly most unwelcome.115
Expressions of respect for the enemy dead were indeed quite conventional – ‘the Dervishes were superb’, wrote Steevens116 – but that is not to say that Churchill’s sentiments were less than heartfelt. He even wrote of how his sense of victory faded to be replaced by a ‘mournful feeling of disgust’. Yet he ended his despatch on an optimistic note, perhaps comforted by Winwood Reade’s vision of warfare rendering itself redundant once it had fulfilled its social function. The ‘terrible machinery of scientific war’ had completed its work, Churchill wrote. He looked forward to a time long in the future when the plain of Omdurman would be converted through irrigation to a ‘fertile garden’ supporting a great metropolis, and the battle itself would be but dimly remembered.117 In this analysis, even the filthy corruption of the defeated dead did not detract from the war’s ultimate civilizing purpose.
VI
After the Sudanese war, Churchill went back to India briefly. But in the spring of 1899 he left the army – not least because writing and journalism were more profitable, and because in England he could pursue politics – and he never returned to India again. By this stage he had embarked on The River War (and he also completed a novel, Savrola). This book illustrates Churchill’s growing intellectual maturity; and yet, other statements made around the time he was writing it are suggestive of some internal conflict on his part.
Churchill had been upset by two aspects of the battle’s aftermath: the maltreatment of the Sudanese wounded and the of desecration of the Mahdi’s tom
b. He underwent several twists and turns of opinion in respect to both issues. In a letter to Ian Hamilton of 16 September 1898 he called the treatment of the wounded ‘disgraceful’, and reported that his private remarks on these lines had been repeated to an angry Kitchener.118 Furthermore, his account of the battle’s aftermath – quoted above – provided fuel for critics of the campaign. In October the editor of Concord magazine wrote to the Westminster Gazette, describing the battle as a ‘massacre’ and citing in support ‘Lieutenant Churchill’s account of how the enemy was “destroyed, not conquered by machinery”, and of the terrible scenes on the battlefield afterwards’. However, Churchill did not like the construction placed on his account and wrote a reply. He declined to discuss ‘the legitimacy of the practice of killing the wounded’ but denied there had been ‘unnecessary bloodthirstiness’.119
Churchill then changed his tune again. Ernest Bennett, the Gazette’s war correspondent, had written a book in which he alleged that ‘in many cases wounded Dervishes, unarmed and helpless, were butchered from sheer wantonness and lust of bloodshed’.120 He reiterated these charges in the Contemporary Review in January 1899, and also turned his fire on Churchill. Bennett poured scorn on one of his Morning Post articles, in which Churchill argued, ‘The laws of war do not admit the right of a beaten enemy to quarter.’121 Bennett wrote that this ‘truly remarkable utterance’ was ‘absolutely at variance’ with the laws of war; it was ‘monstrous’ to assert ‘that quarter need not be given to the vanquished’.122 Perhaps Churchill’s conscience was stung by this, as he now told his cousin that he was determined to reveal the truth, even at the risk of an outcry.123 He told his mother that he had read Bennett’s article, without mentioning that he himself had been attacked in it. ‘It is vy clever & as far as my experience goes absolutely correct’, he wrote. ‘I am going to avoid details of all kinds on this subject and shall merely say that “the victory at Omdurman” was disgraced by the inhuman slaughter of the wounded and that Kitchener is responsible for this.’124
