"As the expeditionary force followed the Nile south upriver, Churchill filed anonymous but vivid accounts of its progress with the Morning Post. He was at the decisive September 2 battle for the Mahdist capital of Omdurman, when the Dervish army, though vastly outnumbering Kitchener's Anglo-Egyptian-Sudanese force, moved "forward in the face of the pitiless fire" of Maxim guns, artillery, and rifles. The following year the 24-year-old Churchill resigned from the army and published his two-volume River War, describing the campaign and the "Soudan of the soldier….its squalid villages….its ample deserts…its hot, black rocks."
Below is an excerpt from chapter 9, detailing the fighting at the village of Abu Hamed in early August and the continued struggle to move gunboats up the Nile toward Omdurman.
THE VILLAGE OF ABU HAMED straggles along the bank of the Nile, and consists of a central mass of mud houses, intersected by a network of winding lanes and alleys, about 500 yards long by perhaps 100 yards wide. To the north and south are detached clusters of ruined huts, and to the south there rises a large, ragged pile of rocks. The ground slopes gradually up from the river, so that at a distance of 300 yards the village is surrounded on three sides by a low plateau. Upon this plateau stand three stone watch-towers, which were erected by General Gordon [Charles "Chinese" Gordon, who had died in the defense of Khartoum in 1885]. The Dervish garrison were strongly posted in shelter trenches and loop-holed houses along the eastern face of the village. The towers were held by their outposts.
Winston Churchill was captivated by the wars of empire and in 1899 was back in Africa to cover the Second Boer War. (Library of Congress)
Making a wide circuit to their left, and then swinging round to the right, so as to front facing the river, the brigade silently moved towards the enemy's position, and at a quarter past six occupied the plateau in a crescent-shaped formation; the XIth Soudanese on the right, opposite the north-east corner of the village; the battery, escorted by the remaining half-battalion of the 3rd Egyptians, next; then the IXth in the centre, and the Xth Soudanese on the left flank. As the troops approached the watch-towers the Dervish outposts fell back and the force continued to advance until the edge of the plateau was reached. From here the whole scene was visible…"
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Amicalement
Armand
