by Max Hennessy
Aware of Churchill staring at him, he realised he’d been smiling to himself. Churchill was a funny customer, he thought, coming down to earth. But, ebullient, brash and far from popular though he was, there was still something about him and, though he criticised everybody, all too often he was right. Perhaps, Dabney thought, it was because he saw Churchill differently. Among the strings Churchill had pulled to get himself attached to the 21st was the one held by General Goff, who had known his father, so that with Dabney he managed to be more relaxed. And nobody could deny his experience because, despite his youth, he had seen action on the North-West Frontier and had got himself into Cuba to watch the rebellion there against the Spanish. In addition, his mother, like Dabney’s, was an American, which had given them a lot in common, and he had been more than once to Braxby to pick the brains of General Goff for his literary efforts.
Dabney glanced at his father again. The contemporary of so many great men, it was odd to think he was still on active service. Evelyn Wood was no longer on the active list. Buller was confined to a War Office role. Even Wolseley – once England’s ‘only general’ – was in eclipse these days and little heard of, Commander-in-Chief of the Army at last after years of intriguing.
The distant noise, the muted buzz that Dabney had heard from the Jebel Surgham – the sound of a swarm of bees in summer – came again, filtering across the plain, mingling with the beating of drums and the mournful wail of horns and changing gradually to a cacophony of human voices. A few officers were standing outside the zariba, looking like a group of racegoers awaiting the appearance of the field round Tattenham Corner. A man laughed. It was high-pitched and nervous, and a sergeant, equally strained, told him to be quiet. Then an officer galloped up to Dabney’s father, saluted and smiled. ‘They’re coming on beautifully, sir! About two miles away now!’
The battle they had all been expecting seemed at last to be on them. Dabney glanced at his father again as he peered across the desert. He’d been roughly Dabney’s age when he’d ridden with the Light Brigade at Balaclava. That had been a disaster in the making even before the trumpets had sounded.
As Dabney turned towards the front again, he saw a white speck appear on top of the ridge.
‘There they are!’
What he was looking at took on the shape of a banner, then he saw another and another, until the whole ridge, a moment before stark and bare, seemed furred along its edge as hundreds of men and hundreds of flags began to line it. The whole ridge to the north was covered by teeming black dots. There was a strange unreality about the scene. The enemy host was marching forward, rank on rank, and it was possible to pick out from the roar of thousands of voices the ceaseless chant of the Mohammedan prayer – La illa Lah Muhammad rasul Allah.
Glancing behind him, Dabney could see the boats carrying supplies and ammunition deployed along the banks of the Nile with the barges that were to carry the wounded. Kitchener was staring across the sand, his head forward, his pale eyes and squint faintly menacing behind the bull’s horns of his moustache.
By this time, among the mass of Dervishes, Dabney could see the emblems of the more famous Emirs – the bright green flag of Ali-Wad-Helu; the dark green of Osman-ed-Din; the sacred black banner of the Khalifa himself, heir to the great Mahdi, on its right a vast square of men under an array of white flags. Using his field glasses, he could even pick out the individual leaders themselves, in front of their troops. There were plum-skinned Arabs and yellow men with square bony faces and tightly-ringleted black hair, bent men, straight men, old men, young men, boys even, all advancing together in a cheering excited mob which nevertheless marched quickly and steadily and kept its formation, every single one of them with hatred in his heart and a desire to kill. The sight made his heart thump. These were the men who had killed Gordon and they were inspired by their old victories and embittered by their more recent defeats.
The Dervish left was beginning now to stretch out towards the Kerreri Hills, the centre moving directly towards Dabney, the right edging to the south. This southern wing, under its hundreds of white flags, decorated by texts from the Koran, was perfect in its formation.
There was a surprising clarity about the battlefield, every stone and grain of sand sharp in the light, each one with its sun-touched side and its little curve of shadow. But it was silent. No one seemed to speak. Not a gun fired. In the stillness a horse whinnied and a man cleared his throat noisily, nervously, as men did before a race.
‘If we don’t win this one,’ someone said – and in the silence his voice was clear and frightening in the implication of his words – ‘then God help us. It’ll be Isandhlwana all over again.’
Two
The battlefield remained silent. The guns had still not spoken. But the excitement was growing almost too much to bear as they watched the horde of black figures approaching, and there was a murmur and an excited surge forward.
‘Stand still,’ an officer snapped. ‘Your turn’ll come!’
As he spoke, about fifty yards short of the zariba two puffs of red sand lifted into the air as the Dervish artillery opened fire. Immediately, one of the field batteries began to bang away, followed at once by more explosions and a roar as the gun-boats anchored in the river behind joined in the barrage. The smell of cordite filled the air and great clouds of smoke appeared along the front of the British and Sudanese brigades as battery after battery opened on the Dervishes between the Jebel Surgham and the Kerreris, the sound of the cannonade echoing and re-echoing among the clefts and spires of the hills.
Though the aim of the British guns was excellent, the exploding shells seemed to send no more than a ripple through the vast horde in front. Then the whole Dervish army seemed to discharge their weapons in a vast feu-de-joie, and a huge section began to peel off from the main line of advance and head for the zariba. The British soldiers waited, front rank kneeling, rear rank standing – just as the Highlanders had received the Russian cavalry at Balaclava, General Goff remembered.
The Dervishes were still moving in good order, the whole division crossing the crest into the plain. The shells were striking them at a rate of twenty to the minute now, bursting in their faces so that the white banners began to topple in all directions and the mass began to crumble into groups under individual leaders. The tumult increased, the Maxims stuttering away, a field battery in action on a small rise, the gunners busy about their pieces, the officers standing on boxes of army biscuits to stare through their glasses at the effect their shells were having. The ragged line of men was still pushing forward, struggling ahead in the face of the pitiless fire, the banners swaying and tossing like waves in a stormy sea, the white-robed figures collapsing in dozens among the spurts of smoke from their own rifles and the larger puffs from the bursting shrapnel.
The infantry were firing steadily and stolidly, mercilessly, without hurry, taking pains to be accurate, empty cartridge cases forming heaps alongside each man. As the Dervishes drew nearer, they became fewer, but the rifles were growing hot now and were being exchanged hurriedly for those of the reserve companies, while the Highlanders were beginning to empty their water bottles into the jackets of the Maxims.
Crumbled by the shells, the Dervish horde hesitated, then came on again in a final despairing struggle. The angry sound of their voices was now a roar, blood-curdling in its volume and intensity. Though their fire was wild and mostly going high over the zariba, a few men were hit and reeled out of the line, and an officer’s charger crumpled to its knees, blood pouring from its nose across the sprawling man’s tunic and breeches. Then, at around five hundred yards, the forward march changed to a run. For a moment the Dervishes were obscured as the wind dropped and the smoke from the Egyptians’ Martini-Henrys drifted across the front, so that it seemed they might just break into the line. Peering forward into the smoke, waiting for it to lift, General Goff saw it disperse at last to reveal only a few men stil
l struggling forward in a group round a banner, until finally they, too, were sent sprawling to the sand.
It seemed to be over and Kitchener, worried as always about the cost, was calling for a cease fire and complaining about the waste of ammunition. A few bullets still whistled into the zariba from a group of riflemen who had gone to ground behind a small ridge in front, but there was no real danger now. The guns had smashed the attack before it had even got going, and an army of almost twenty thousand had shattered itself against the disciplined fire. At least six thousand men lay in front, dead or wounded, sprawling and still, or trying painfully to crawl away. The cloud of white flags had all disappeared.
‘There’s more to come. We’ve only been approached so far by the wings of their army.’
The General turned as his chief of staff spoke. Lord Ellesmere, he remembered with a sudden strange switch in time, had been a mere boy with a shocking case of acne when he’d first met him. He had turned out, however, to be a handsome man and a splendid chief of staff with the traditional asset of all good chiefs of staff – a memory like an elephant. He was now noted as one of the cleverer men in the army and his promotion had not been acquired simply because his father was an earl.
‘Where are they, Ned?’ the General asked.
‘I gather the main mass is still hidden behind the hills, sir, waiting its opportunity to see us off.’
‘Who says?’ the General growled.
‘It came from the 21st Lancers. Churchill, I think. The Sirdar thinks he’s talking nonsense.’
‘I don’t,’ the General said. ‘That young man has a strange habit of being right.’
But nothing seemed to come of the rumour and Kitchener began to study the city to the south. A few minutes later a galloper approached from where Gatacre was stalking up and down, a lanky shape like a stork with nerves. It was Robert, and the General eyed him warily. He had summed up his elder son long since. Robert’s idea of living was to inherit wealth and live off it for the rest of his days, if possible adding to it by marrying into the Cosgro family.
Since the Cosgros had lain across the General’s path throughout his life, brooding, difficult and stupid, it wasn’t a thing he looked forward to.
‘They come in bunches of a dozen,’ he had often said, ‘and there isn’t much to choose between any of ’em.’ Old Cosgro, the present Lord Cosgro’s father, had been a bit like Kitchener, arrogant with his inferiors, obsequious with anyone who might help him up the ladder. Claude, the second baron, had served with the General in the 19th Lancers, and was as fat, lazy and stupid as all the Cosgros with that streak of malicious meanness in him that always made them dangerous. Aubrey, his younger brother, had been broken by the General in Zululand for cowardice. It didn’t make for friendly relations.
‘Hello, Robert,’ the General said briskly, far from willing to be warm because the business had come into the open as they had camped at Atbara.
Nobody had been very happy at Atbara. The weather had broken and the wind had shifted and, on the river, sails had been lowered and the boats anchored as clouds of dust began to drive over the camp, making the night hideous and existence miserable. Then, as rain had begun to fall and they were all covered with a coating of mud, soaked and shivering as boats were dismasted and clothing and tents were whirled away, it was typical of Robert that he had picked the worst possible time to put forward his wish. His face rock-hard, the General had stared at him with contempt.
‘You’re a damn fool, boy!’ he had snapped. ‘Nobody but a fool would marry into that family. The girl’s father’s a fool, her mother’s a fool, her brother’s a fool, and until he did away with himself her uncle was a fool, too.’
Robert’s manner now was one of sullen wariness as he confined himself carefully to delivering his instructions, a square young man, blunt-featured without the intelligence in his face that Dabney had.
‘From General Gatacre, sir,’ he said. ‘The Sirdar wishes the cavalry to reconnoitre the Surgham Ridge and the ground between the zariba and Omdurman. He’s worried the Dervishes will get into the city and dig themselves in. They’re to prevent it.’
Calling Ellesmere forward, the General began to dictate his message, making it as clear as possible because he wasn’t sure of the Lancers’ experience. Experience had a habit of filtering down through the generations and the 21st were too new to the game and so far had not been blooded in battle. The officers were resentful of the motto the rest of the army had given them – Thou Shalt Not Kill – and were too anxious to win themselves a battle honour. In his concern, he was painstaking, remembering only too well how a badly-worded message had destroyed the Light Brigade, and very nearly himself, at Balaclava.
Robert was still alongside and, in an attempt to heal the breach between them, the general turned to him. ‘Would you like to take it to the 21st?’ he asked.
‘Of course, sir.’
‘Make it clear to them they’re not to get themselves into trouble. They’re not to become heavily engaged. They’re only to reconnoitre the Surgham Ridge and the ground beyond.’
Robert was frowning, his mind on his own problems, and for a moment the General wondered if he were listening.
‘You have that clear?’
‘Of course, sir.’
The 21st were standing by their horses and, as the firing continued to die away, the General saw his son approach the colonel. There was a brief conversation and an outstretched arm, then he heard shouts and saw the regiment mount.
As they started to trot forward, patrols broke away, ready to gallop towards the high ground, while the regiment followed in a mass – a square block of men on small horses – in Christmas tree order, hung all over with water bottles, saddle bags, picketing gear and tins of bully beef, all jolting and jangling together, all the polish of peace gone, soldiers without glitter.
The firing had died away completely now and the army had relaxed. As the Lancers passed close to the General, they were in files, dusty-brown figures with flaps of cloth attached to their sun helmets so that they looked vaguely like Arabs. Two patrols had pushed ahead of them, moving among the dead and dying of the first attack and the limping riderless horses that galloped aimlessly about.
The crest of the ridge was unoccupied and southward towards Omdurman the plain was covered by a broad stream of fugitives, wounded and deserters flowing towards the city, blurred by the mirages the heat threw up so that some of them seemed to be staggering in mid-air or wading through pools of water. As the heliograph started to flash from the ridge to give the numbers, the main attack developing to the north came to a complete halt and the General and his staff trotted forward. The horsemen on the ridge resumed their advance, then, as a spattering of fire came to the ears of the men on the plain, they saw the Lancers’ advance guard check their forward movement, turn and gallop back to the main body.
‘What the devil are they up to?’ The General’s eyes narrowed. ‘Don’t say the damn fools are exceeding instructions.’
From where he sat his mount in the sand dunes, Dabney watched his brother near the Colonel. He was holding on to his horse, which was caught by the stir and movement and was curvetting briskly, and was gesturing towards the Dervishes. As orders came back, the patrols cantered ahead again and the regiment began to move forward after them. As they went, they passed Robert slowly riding back, his brows down, his face set and sullen.
‘What’s in it for us, Robert?’ Dabney called.
‘Action,’ Robert called back. ‘You’re to go for the enemy.’
The first patrol was back within minutes to say the plain looked safe from the other side of the hill. A moment later the other patrol galloped back.
‘There’s a shallow khor about three-quarters of a mile to the south-west,’ Dabney heard the officer say.
‘Practicable?’ The Colonel’s head turned.
‘How many?’
‘About a thousand, sir. Hadendoas, I think.’
Martin smiled. ‘I think four hundred horsemen ought to be able to deal with them,’ he said.
As they cantered forward, Dabney peered ahead. ‘I’d have said there were a lot more than a thousand,’ he observed to Churchill. ‘And more being pushed in all the time.’
As they left the ridge, the scattered parties of Dervishes melted away and only a simple straggling line of men in dark blue waited motionless a quarter of a mile to the left front. There seemed to be scarcely a hundred of them. The regiment had formed line of squadron columns now and continued to walk forward. The firing from the ridges had stopped and there was complete silence that seemed twice as intense after the recent tumult of battle.
Straining to see through his glasses, General Goff turned. Robert had just reappeared and was waiting by his father, brooding again over the argument they’d had at Atbara. Several times he’d tried to push it from his mind but always it kept coming back. He’d known all along what his father’s view of his wish to marry a Cosgro would be, but he hadn’t expected it to be quite so firm. When he’d mentioned it to his mother, she’d hummed and hahed and offered warnings but, though he’d known full well that she also hadn’t approved, she’d not noticeably demurred.
His father had turned to Ellesmere.
‘What’s happening, Ned?’ he demanded.
Ellesmere was talking to a handsome moustached officer of the Egyptian cavalry.
