جمال سوداني قديم(1898)

Quote: Battle of Atbara from With Kitchener to Khartoum by G. W. Steevens [April 8, 1898] As the first rays of sunrise glinted on the desert pebbles, the army rose up and saw that it was in front of the enemy. All night it had moved blindly, in faith. At six in the evening the four brigades were black squares on the rising desert outside the bush of Umdabieh camp, and they set out to march. Hard gravel underfoot, full moon overhead, about them a coy horizon that seemed immeasurable yet revealed nothing, the squares tramped steadily for an hour. Then all lay down, so that the other brigades were swallowed up into the desert, and the faces of the British square were no more than shadows in the white moonbeams. The square was unlocked, and first the horses were taken down to water, then the men by half-battalions. We who had water ate some bully-beef and biscuit, put our on saddle-bags, rolled our bodies in blankets, and slept a little. The next thing was a long rustle about us, stealing in upon us, urgently whispering us to rise and mount and move. The moon had passed overhead. It was one o’clock. The square rustled into life and motion, bent forward, and started, half asleep. No man spoke, and no light showed, but the sand-muffled trampling and the moon-veiled figures forbade the fancy that it was all a dream. The shapes of lines of men – now close, now broken, and closing up again as the ground broke or the direction changed – the mounted officers, and the hushed order, “Left shoulder forward,” the scrambling Maxim mules, the lines of swaying camels, their pungent smell, and the rare neigh of a horse, the other three squares like it, which we knew of but could not see, - it was just the same war machine as we had seen all these days on parade. Only this time it was in deadly earnest, moving stealthily but massively forward towards an event that none of us could quite certainly foretell. We marched till something after four, then halted, and the men lay down again and slept. The rest walked up and down in the gnawing cold, talking to one and another, wondering in half-voices were we there, would they give us a fight or should we find their lines empty, how would the fight be fought, and, above all, how were we to get over their zariba. For [Emir] Mahmud’s zariba was pictured very high, and very thick, and very prickly, which sounded awkward for the Cameron Highlanders, who were to assault it. Somebody had proposed burning it, either with war-rockets or paraffin and safety matches; somebody else suggested throwing blankets over it, though how you throw blankets over a ten by twenty feet hedge of camel-thorn, and what you do next when you have thrown them, the inventor of the plan never explained. Others favored scaling-ladders, apparently to take headers off on to the thorns and the enemy’s spears, and even went so far as to make a few; most were for the simpler plan of just taking hold of it and pulling it apart. But how many of the men who pulled would ever get through the gap? Now the sun rose behind us, and the men rose, too, and we had arrived. Bimbashi Fitton had led the four brigades in the half-light to within 200 yards of the exact positions they were to take in the action. Now, too, we saw the whole army – right of us Macdonald’s, right of him, again, Maxwell’s, to our left rear, Lewis’s in support, far away leftward of them, the grey squadrons of the cavalry. The word came, and the men sprang up. the squares shifted into the fighting formations: at one impulse, in one superb sweep, near 12,000 men moved forward towards the enemy. All England and all Egypt, and the flower of the black lands beyond, Birmingham and the West Highlands, the half-regenerated children of the earth’s earliest civilization, and grinning savages from the uttermost swamps of Equatoria, muscle and machinery, lord and larrikin, Balliol and the Board School, the Sirdar’s brain and the camel’s back – all welded into one, the awful war machine went forward into action. We could see their position quite well by now, about a mile and a half away – the usual river fringe of grey-green palms meeting the usual desert fringe of yellow-grey mimosa. And the smoke-grey line in front of it all must be their famous zariba. Up from it rolled a nimbus of dust, as if they were still busy at entrenching; before its right center fluttered half a dozen flags, white and pale blue, yellow and pale chocolate. The line went on over the crunching gravel in awful silence, or speaking briefly in half-voices – went on till it was not half a mile from the flags. Then it halted. Thud! went the first gun, and phutt! came faintly back, as its shell burst on the zariba into a wreathed round cloud of just the zariba’s smoke grey. I looked at my watch, and it marked 6.20. Battle that had now menaced, now evaded us for a month – the battle had begun. Now, from the horse battery and one field battery on the right, from two batteries of Maxim-Nordenfelts on the left, just to the right front of the British, and from a war-rocket which changed over from left to right, belched a rapid, but unhurried, regular, relentless shower of destruction. The round grey clouds from shell, the round white puffs from shrapnel, the hissing splutter of rockets, flighted down methodically, and alighted on every part of the zariba and of the bush behind. A fire sprang and swarmed redly up the dried leaves of a palm tree; before it sank another flung up beside it, and then another. When the shelling began a few sparse shots came back; one gunner was wounded. And all over the zariba we saw dust-clothed figures strolling unconcernedly in and out, checking when a shell dropped near, and then passing contemptuously on again. The enemy’s cavalry appeared, galloping and forming up on our left of the zariba, threatening a charge. But tut-tut-tut-tut went the Maxims, and through glasses we could see our cavalry trembling to be at them. And the Baggara horsemen, remembering the guns that had riddled them and the squadrons that had shorn through them three days before, fell back to cover again. By now, when it had lasted an hour or more, not a man showed along the whole line, nor yet a spot of rifle smoke. All seemed empty, silent, lifeless, but for one hobbled camel, waving his neck and stupid head in helpless dumb bewilderment. Presently the edge of the storm of devastation caught him too, and we saw him no more. An hour and twenty minutes the guns spoke, and then were silent. And now for the advance along the whole line. Maxwell’s brigade on the right – 12th, 13th, and 14th Sudanese to attack and 8th Egyptian supporting – used the Egyptian attack formation, - four companies of a battalion in line and the other two in support. Macdonald, - 9th, 10th, and 11th Sudanese in front and 2nd Egyptian supporting, - his space being constricted, had three companies in line and three in support. The British had the Camerons in line along their whole front; then, in columns of their eight companies, the Lincolns on the right, the Seaforths in the center, and the Warwicks, two companies short, on the left: the orders to these last were not to advance till it was certain the dervish cavalry would not charge in flank. Lewis’s three-battalion brigade – 3rd, 4th, and 7th Egyptian – had by this time two battalions to the British left rear and one forming square round the water-camels. All the artillery accompanied the advance. The Camerons formed fours and moved away to the left, then turned into line. They halted and waited for the advance. They were shifted back a little to the right, then halted again. then a staff officer galloped furiously behind their line, and shouted something in the direction of the Maxim battery. “Advance?” yelled the major, and before the answer could come the mules were up to the collar and the Maxims were up to and past the left flank of the Camerons. They stood still, waiting on the bugle – a line of khaki and dark tartan blending to purple, of flashing bayonets at the slope, and set, two-month-bearded faces strained towards the zariba. In the middle of the line shone the Union Jack. The bugle sang out the advance. The pipes screamed battle, and the line started forward, like a ruler drawn over the tussock-broken sand. Up a low ridge they moved forward: when would the dervishes fire? The Camerons were to open from the top of the ridge, only 300 yards short of the zariba; up and up, forward and forward: when would they fire? Now the line crested the ridge – the men knelt down. “Volley-firing by sections” – crash it came. It came from both sides, too, almost the same instant. Wht-t, wht-t, wht-t piped the bullets overhead: the line knelt very firm, and aimed very steady, and crash, crash, crash they answered it. O! A cry more of dismayed astonishment than of pain, and a man was up on his feet and over on his back, and the bearers were dashing in from the rear. He was dead before they touched him, but already they found another for the stretcher. Then bugle again, and up and on: the bullets were swishing and lashing now like rain on a pond. But the line of khaki and purple tartan never bent nor swayed; it just went slowly forward like a ruler. The officers at its head strode self-containedly – they might have been on the hill after red-deer; only from their locked faces turned unswervingly towards the bullets could you see that they knew and had despised the danger. And the unkempt, unshaven Tommies, who in camp seemed little enough like Covenanters or Ironsides, were now quite transformed. It was not so difficult to go on – the pipes picked you up and carried you on – but it was difficult not to hurry; yet whether they aimed or advanced they did it orderly, gravely, without speaking. The bullets had whispered to raw youngsters in one breath the secret of all the glories of the British Army. Forward and forward, more swishing about them and more crashing from them. Now they were moving, always without hurry, down a gravelly incline. Three men went down without a cry at the very foot of the Union Jack, and only one got to his feet again; the flag shook itself and still blazed splendidly. Next, a supremely furious gust of bullets, and suddenly the line stood fast. Before it was a loose low hedge of dry camel-thorn – the zariba, the redoubtable zariba. That it? a second they stood in wonder, and then, “Pull it away,” suggested somebody. Just half-a-dozen tugs, and the impossible zariba was a gap and a scattered heap of brushwood. Beyond is a low stockade and trenches; but what of that? Over and in! Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah! Now the inside suddenly sprang to life. Out of the earth came dusty, black, half-naked shapes, running, running and turning to shoot, but running away. And in a second the inside was a wild confusion of Highlanders, purple tartan and black-green, too, for the Seaforths had brought their perfect columns through the teeth of the fire, and were charging in at the gap. Inside that zariba was the most astounding labyrinth ever seen out of a nightmare. It began with a stockade and a triple trench. Beyond that the bush was naturally thick with palm stem and mimosa-thorn and halfa-grass. But, besides, it was as full of holes as any honeycomb, only far less regular. There was a shelter-pit for every animal – here a donkey tethered down in a hole just big enough for itself and its master; beside it a straw hut with a tangle of thorn; yawning a yard beyond, a larger trench, choke-full of tethered camels and dead or dying men. There was no plan or system in it, only mere confusion of stumbling-block and pitfall. From holes below and hillocks above, from invisible trenches to right and innocent tukls to left, the bewildered bullets curved, and twisted, and dodged. It took some company-leading; for the precise formations that the bullets only stiffened were loosening now. But the officers were equal to it: each picked his line and ran it, and if a few of his company were lost – kneeling by green-faced comrades or vaguely bayoneting along with a couple of chance companions – they kept the mass centered on the work in hand. For now began the killing. Bullet and bayonet and butt, the whirlwind of Highlanders swept over. And by this time the Lincolns were in on the right, and the Maxims, galloping right up to the stockade, had withered the left, and the Warwicks, the enemy’s cavalry definitely gone, were volleying off the blacks as your beard comes off under a keen razor. Farther and farther they cleared the ground – cleared it of everything like a living man, for it was left carpeted thick enough with dead. Here was a trench; bayonet that man. Here a little straw tukl; warily round to the door, and then a volley. Now in column through this opening in the bushes; then into line, and drop those few desperately firing shadows among the dry stems beyond. For the running blacks – poor heroes – still fired, though every second they fired less and ran more. And on, on the British stumbled and slew, till suddenly there was unbroken blue overhead, and a clear drop underfoot. The river! And across the trickle of water the quarter-mile of dry sand-bed was a fly-paper with scrambling spots of black. The pursuers thronged the bank in double line, and in two minutes the paper was still black-spotted, only the spots scrambled no more. “Now that,” panted the most pessimistic senior captain in the brigade – “now I call that a very good fight.” Cease fire! Word and whistle and voice took a little time to work into hot brains; then sudden silence. Again, hurrah, hurrah, hurrah! It had lasted forty minutes; and nobody was quite certain whether it had seemed more like two minutes or two years. All at once there came a roar of fire from the left; the half-sated British saw the river covered with a new swarm of flies, only just in time to see them stop still as the others. This was Lewis’s half-brigade of Egyptians at work. They had stood the heavy fire that sought them as if there were no such things as wounds or death; now they had swept down leftward of the zariba, shoveled the enemy into the river-bed, and shot them down. Bloodthirsty? Count up the Egyptians murdered by Mahdism, and then say so if you will. Meanwhile, all the right-hand part of the zariba was alive with our blacks. They had been seen from the British line as it advanced, ambling and scrambling over rise and dip, firing heavily, as they were ordered to, and then charging with the cold bayonet, as they lusted to. They were in first, there cannot be a doubt. Their line formation turned out a far better one for charging the defenses than the British columns, which were founded on an exaggerated expectation of the difficulty of the zariba, and turned out a trifle unhandy. And if the zariba had been as high and thick as the Bank of England, the blacks and their brigaded Egyptians would have slicked through it and picked out the thorns after the cease fire. As against that, they lost more men than the British, for their advance was speedier and their volleys less deadly than the Camerons’ pelting destruction that drove through every skull raised an inch to aim. But never think the blacks were out of hand. They attacked fast, but they attacked steadily, and kept their formation to the last moment there was anything to form against. The battle of the Atbara has definitely placed the blacks – yes, and the once condemned Egyptians – in the ranks of the very best troops in the world. When it was over, their officers were ready to cry with joy and pride. And the blacks, every one of whom would beamingly charge the bottomless pit after his Bey, were just as joyous and proud of their officers. They stood about among the dead, their faces cleft with smiles, shaking and shaking each other’s hands. A short shake, then a salute, another shake and another salute, again and again and again, with the head-carving smile never narrowed an instant. Then up to the Bey and the Bimbashis – mounted now, but they had charged afoot and clear ahead, as is the recognized wont of all chiefs of the fighting Sudan when they intend to conquer or die with their men – and more handshakes and more salutes. “Dushman quaϊss kitir,” ran round from grin to grin: “very good fight, very good fight.” Now fall in, and back to the desert outside. And unless you are congenitally amorous of horrors, don’t look too much about you. Black spindle-legs curled up to meet [red-gimleted] black faces, donkeys headless and legless, or sieves of shrapnel, camels with necks writhed back on to their humps, rotting already in pools of blood and bile-yellow water, without faces, and faces without anything below, cobwebbed arms and legs, and black skins grilled to crackling on smoldering palm-leaf, - don’t look at it. Here is the Sirdar’s white star and crescent; here is the Sirdar, who created this battle, this clean-jointed, well-oiled, smooth-running, clockwork-perfect, masterpiece of a battle. Not a flaw, not a check, not a jolt; and not a fleck on its shining success. Once more, hurrah, hurrah, hurrah! ---------- Battle of Atbara - Losses and Gains >>