The breeze gently fluttered the pennants of the 21st Lancers deployed at Egeiga, just north-east of Omdurman. It was a hot day, but what could you expect at the height of the Sudanese summer. The men fidgeted in their saddles, checking their swords and carbines. They looked rather comical in their khaki pith helmets with large quilted sun shades. From a distance these made them look like Mexican bandits in sombreros. An image of Don Quixote’s Sancho Panza also sprang to mind, but these men were not about to charge harmless windmills. Their armpits soaked their dust-caked uniforms as they listened to the storm of artillery and rifle fire. There was also the distinctive clatter of the Maxim machine gun going about its deadly work. The horses languidly flicked their tails and manes to keep the pesky flies at bay. The battle had been raging for several hours.
Colonel R.M. Martin, their regimental commander, and his officers had a problem that they planned to fix as soon as possible. The 21st had no battle honours and Martin was damned if he was going to miss out on the fun. It annoyed him immensely that the army had given them the unofficial motto ‘Thou shalt not kill’. The regiment’s only real claim to fame was that it had once guarded Napoleon Bonaparte on St Helena.2 Martin now had the means to remedy this thanks to the written orders he was holding in his hand.
At 0830 hours on 2 September 1898 Major-General Sir Herbert Kitchener, commander of the Anglo-Egyptian Army, had instructed, ‘Annoy them [i.e. the enemy] as far as possible on their left flank and head them off if possible from Omdurman.’ While this was fairly explicit, it also offered some leeway in interpretation. Furthermore, Martin was accompanied by Times correspondent Hubert Howard. He would ensure that the Lancers’ forthcoming Omdurman exploits were recorded for prosperity. Martin also had a Morning Post war reporter serving with him, one Lieutenant Winston S. Churchill. The latter though, unlike Howard, was not a non-combatant. He was armed with a sword and his trusty Mauser pistol and was in command of a troop of Martin’s lancers. It irked Martin that the unwanted Churchill and Howard were friends. Who knew what malicious gossip they had been spreading.
Kitchener’s expedition to retake Sudan and avenge the death of General Charles Gordon some 13 years earlier was reaching its climax. Gordon had been sent to evacuate Khartoum in the face of a widespread revolt led by Mohammed Ahmed, known as the Mahdi. Instead, he stayed and the Mahdi stormed Khartoum in January 1885.
The Mahdi’s successor, Khalifa Abdulla, who ruled supreme, had stirred up trouble in neighbouring Abyssinia and British-controlled Egypt. Finally alarmed by the Khalifa’s regime, Kitchener was ordered to retake Dongola province in Sudan. His early clashes with the Dervishes had resulted in a victory at Atbara in April 1898. He then pushed down the Nile towards the Khalifa’s base at Omdurman, which lay just north-west of Khartoum. The British captured the Dervish commander, Sharif Mahmud Ahmad, at Atbara. When taken before Kitchener, he had warned ominously, ‘You will pay for all this at Omdurman … compared with the Khalifa I am but a leaf!’ Churchill landed in Cairo on 2 August 1898 to discover two of the 21st Lancers’ four squadrons were already on their way to join Kitchener at Atbara. Thanks to his late arrival the troop he was to have commanded was assigned to Lieutenant Robert Grenfell. Had Churchill been any later he would have had to make the long journey down the Nile to Sudan on his own. Being a supernumerary, on secondment from the 4th Hussars stationed in India and therefore an interloper, Churchill was not made to feel welcome, especially as his posting had been facilitated by the death of Lieutenant P. Chapman, one of the Lancers’ own officers.
Furthermore, Churchill had made it abundantly clear he had no intentions of staying in the army as he wished to pursue a political career like his father Lord Randolph. He had gone to Egypt because he wanted to take part in the historic recapture of Khartoum. Perhaps more importantly he planned to make money from a book on the expedition and his reports for the Morning Post, despite initial assurances given to Kitchener that he would not write whilst on campaign. Kitchener disapproved of Churchill’s appointment, not only because of his lack of commitment to his military career, but also because he had pulled political strings to get there. Kitchener fully appreciated he would be under close public scrutiny by the journalists accompanying his army.
He did not need any criticism in the press from a serving officer, even if his work was published anonymously. Churchill really wanted to be attached to the Egyptian cavalry staff, as he hoped they would have given him greater freedom. Instead, the man who got that job was one Captain Douglas Haig who later gained fame during World War I. While Kitchener had absolute say over the Egyptian Army, he had no authority over the composition of the British Expeditionary Force. The War Office arranged Churchill’s secondment to the 21st Lancers on the condition that he picked up all the costs.
Once kitted out and while still in Cairo, Churchill had his photograph taken. Deliberately or not, he presented the image of a rather callow and impudent-looking young man.
Churchill soon developed a dim view of the Lancers, despite six of his squadron’s nine officers being acquaintances from Bangalore and Harrow. He was assigned to Major Finn’s A Squadron and found himself put in charge of the pack animals carrying the officer’s mess.
Lionel James of the Times found Churchill’s sense of destiny amusing. When James questioned him about his new role Churchill retorted, ‘These are little people, I can afford to laugh at them. They will live to see the mistake they have made!’ As a Hussar officer on deployment from India Churchill should have felt an affinity to the Lancers. Not only were they formerly a hussar unit, they had originally been raised in India as a European light cavalry regiment. As the 21st Hussars a detachment had first seen service in the Sudan over a decade earlier. They had only just become the 21st Lancers in 1897.
James also noted that Churchill preferred to eat with the journalists rather than his fellow officers. Nonetheless, on the journey south from Cairo, he befriended Lieutenants Grenfell and Richard Molyneux, and the three of them billeted together. If there were any historians amongst their ranks, talk would inevitably have turned to the battle of Hasheen 13 years earlier when the 5th Lancers had ridden down the Dervishes. Along with the 9th Bengal Lancers and the 20th Hussars their charge had decimated a band of enemy warriors. Notably at the time it was reported most of them had been shot by the cavalry using their carbines rather than their lances and swords. Despite clarifying the cavalry’s preference for firearms, the Illustrated London News could not resist including a highly dramatic spread showing three 5th Lancers heroically putting the Dervishes to flight. If a ten-year-old Churchill had seen this image one can only guess at the impression it made on him.
In mid-August, after leaving Atbara, Churchill got separated from his column and spent a very anxious night and day alone in the wilderness before catching up. They were some 60 miles from Omdurman by 24 August. He and his squadron then joined Kitchener’s forces at Shabulka. Churchill proceeded to annoy Colonel Martin by requesting his transfer to the Egyptian cavalry. He did this on the selfish grounds he stood a better chance of gaining glory with them. Colonel R.G. Broadwood commanding the nine squadrons of Egyptian cavalry was amenable to the idea, but Martin refused to let Churchill go. It is unclear if Martin ran this request through Kitchener, but he would have certainly agreed with his decision. To be fair Churchill had good reason for wanting this transfer. The Egyptians were tough veterans of the fighting in Sudan, whereas the 21st Lancers had only just arrived. Broadwood was said ‘to have been a quick-thinking and daring leader, the ideal cavalry general’. The Egyptian Cavalry Corps fought with Kitchener at Firket in 1896 and had taken part in the pursuit of the enemy after the battle. At Atbara under Broadwood it had engaged Dervish horsemen to the left of the enemy stronghold.
The 21st Lancers were Kitchener’s only British cavalry unit and they spent most of their time conducting reconnaissance. They spotted large numbers of Dervishes eight miles ahead of the army on 1 September 1898. ‘The 21st Lancers reported some 60,000 or more of the enemy were halted outside Omdurman, and apparently drilling,’ recalled infantry officer Lieutenant Ronald Meiklejohn. Churchill made a personal report to Kitchener, which went off smoothly despite their frosty relationship. That night the Lancers withdrew into the defensive positions of the Anglo-Egyptian Army. Meiklejohn chatted to some of the cavalry officers, including Churchill, about the likelihood of a battle. ‘He was far less argumentative and assertive than usual,’ noted Meiklejohn. ‘He said the enemy had a huge force, and if they attacked during the night it would be “touch and go” about the result.’
Afterwards Churchill went for a walk along the banks of the Nile with another officer. Lieutenant David Beatty, commanding the British gunboat Fateh, seeing them, yelled to attract their attention. He then lifted an arm and hurled a bottle of champagne towards the shore. A grateful Churchill stepped into the shallows and picked it up, little realizing that one day Beatty would become a famous admiral.
At dawn on 2 September 1898, Kitchener’s Anglo-Egyptian force of about 25,000 deployed just seven miles from Omdurman in a horseshoe formation, with each flank anchored on the Nile. They were protected by a defensive barrier made from dry brushwood known as a zareba. This was only about waist high which meant that the front rank of the infantry, in order not to expose themselves, would have to fight kneeling. Instead of deploying in the nearby hills, the Khalifa’s army took the bait and advanced across a coverless plain. At about 0630 hours the Dervish forces appeared. ‘The noise of something began to creep in upon us,’ recalled journalist G.W. Steevens, ‘it cleared and divided into the tap of drums and the far-away surf of raucous war cries … They were coming on.’ Kitchener coolly noted, ‘I estimated their numbers at 35,000 men, though, from subsequent investigation, this figure was probably under-estimated, their actual strength being between forty and fifty thousand.’
Kitchener soon discovered that his exposed mounted forces on his far-right flank were under pressure. He observed, ‘By 6.30 am the Egyptian Cavalry, which had been driven in, took up a position with the Horse Artillery, Camel Corps, and four Maxims on the Kerreri ridge’. Before the Anglo-Egyptian zareba the enemy were greeted by rifles, machine guns, artillery and howitzers. It was killing on an industrial scale and the Dervishes did not stand a chance. Kitchener’s British, Egyptian and Sudanese infantry opened fire with section volleys at 2,000 yards and stopped the Dervishes at 500 yards. The fire was such that the riflemen became deafened by the din and almost blinded by the resulting smoke billowing over their ranks. ‘Rifles grew red-hot; the soldiers seized them by the slings and dragged them back to the reserve to change for cool ones,’ adds Steevens. ‘It was not a battle, but an execution.’ Churchill’s ears may have detected the different rates of fire by the infantry. The British were equipped with the bolt-action magazine-fed Lee-Metford rifle, while the Egyptians and Sudanese were armed with the much older single-shot breechloading Martini-Henry rifle. The latter was a weapon he had handled as a school boy at Harrow. Lacking a magazine, the Martini had a much slower rate of fire. The Dervishes with their ancient rifles and homemade ammunition, supported by their swordsmen and spearmen, struggled to respond to the storm of searing metal. Further slaughter became a pointless task. ‘Cease fire please!’ Kitchener ordered one British regiment. ‘Cease fire! What a dreadful waste of ammunition!’ Kitchener, concerned by the prospect of the Dervishes withdrawing on Omdurman, ordered a counter-attack. His infantry brigades marched forth and prepared to advance along the Nile towards the city. Once the firing slackened off Churchill began to fret that he was going to miss out on the action. However, Kitchener had plans for his British cavalry. At 0800 hours Churchill and the four squadrons of the 21st Lancers, numbering some 310 men, left the safety of the Anglo-Egyptian camp and headed south. Fifteen minutes later they had reached the northern slopes of the Jebel Surgham. The summit was occupied by some of the Khalifa’s personal guard. This rocky outcrop blocked the view to the west and the south, thereby hiding the Black Standard, the Khalifa’s reserve force hiding in a dry river bed known as the Khur Abu Sunt. Patrols sent out by Martin could only see the thousands of Dervish wounded streaming back towards Omdurman. They were eventually forced to turn back by the Khalifa’s riflemen hidden amongst the rocks. However, one of the patrols on the far left spotted a group of riflemen standing on the banks of the Khur.
They were neither wounded nor
retreating.
It was about now that Kitchener’s hastily scribbled orders arrived. Colonel Martin, rather than heading for the Nile, resolved to attack this force along the Khur and cut off their retreat. ‘See formed body of about 200 men six hundred yards out to our left,’ noted Lieutenant Robert Smith, one of Churchill’s fellow officers. ‘Front troops left wheel. Immediately met by volleys fairly accurately aimed.’ Martin ordered the whole regiment to turn to meet the enemy. Major Finn’s A Squadron was on the right flank, then Major Fowle’s B Squadron. To his left was Captain Eadon’s D Squadron, while on the extreme left was C Squadron under Captain Doyne. Their steady trot soon turned into a gallop. The horses’ hooves pounding on the dry ground, they swept forward. Churchill had injured his right shoulder in India so was unable to use his sword, but by his own account he felt no fear. He gripped the reins and knew he had to do just two things, stay alive and act heroically. Now was his chance to shine and win a medal. Steevens reports, ‘The trumpets sang out the order, the troops glided into squadrons, and, four squadrons in line, the 21st Lancers swing into their first charge. Knee to knee they swept on till they were but 200 yards from the enemy.’ It was at this point they realized they had ridden into a trap, because instead of fighting several hundred men, several thousand were waiting in the Khur Abu Sunt. Before them was a sea of white jibbah decorated in multi-coloured patches – the loose cotton shirt worn by the Mahdi’s followers. Many of them, though, were topless Hadendowa, reportedly one of the fiercest tribes in Sudan, whose wild hair had led to them being dubbed ‘fuzzy wuzzy’. They were not afraid of cavalry and would stand their ground. Out on the Nile Lieutenant Beatty had seen the Dervishes deploying, but was unable to warn the Lancers. ‘By this time we were within 200 yards of their right,’ recalled Martin, ‘when a large body jumped up out of a small khor and commenced a very heavy fire.’ Smith was aghast when he had almost reached the dry river bed, ‘Looking round see Khor 12 feet wide, 6 feet deep. In front. Every side a compact mass of white-robed men.’ In places they were up to 20 deep. Churchill’s lack of a lance was hardly a handicap. ‘The lancer’s pennons attract the fire of artillery,’ wrote Captain Louis Nolan, the mid-19th century cavalry expert. ‘If lances be such good weapons, surely those who wield them ought to acquire great confidence in them, whereas it is well known that, in battle, lancers generally throw them away and take to their swords.’ Colonel Martin charged forward without sword or pistol in his hand. At a critical moment his horse stumbled forward and he had Dervish swords swinging perilously close to his head. The startled animal recovered and he pressed on down the ravine. Behind him his men thrust their lances till they broke, swung their swords till their arms ached and emptied their revolvers. Some of the Dervishes responded by lying down so they could cut the hamstrings of the passing horses.
Unfortunately for Eadon and Fowle their squadrons hit the main body of the enemy. To make matters worse their escape route was impeded by a rough bank of boulders making it difficult for their horses to scramble up and out. Lieutenant Grenfell’s troop on the far right found the enemy ranks too dense and were unable to cut their way through. Their horses were speared, stabbed and shot from all sides. The Lancers were pulled from their mounts by their feet and killed. Grenfell’s horse desperately struggled to clear the river bed. The beast was cut down and he was struck by a sword. Once on the ground Grenfell was repeatedly stabbed and a spear went through his watch that stopped at 0840 hours.
In contrast Churchill galloped forward with his troop and through enemy lines that were only about four deep. Looking back, he saw one man from his troop fall and be hacked to death. Private Wade Rix with A Squadron quickly lost his lance. Just as his horse jumped into the Khor he lunged with his weapon and pierced the left eye of a Dervish. The impact was such that it shattered his lance and he quickly drew his sword. This he used to strike an enemy rifleman. ‘Luck was with us,’ he said. ‘The horse bravely scrambled up the opposite bank of the stream bed and we were through without a scratch.’ Churchill, lunging left and right, fired ten shots from his pistol, killing three men by his own reckoning and possibly three others. The first swordsman who attempted to hamstring his horse was killed with two bullets. The second was so close that his weapon touched the man before he discharged it. He was within 30 yards of a gathering Dervish force when he reloaded. It was then that he realized that the rest of his troop were 100 yards away, so he quickly turned and trotted after them.
Churchill was extremely lucky for many of the Lancers were unhorsed, including 30 who fell on the first impact. Miraculously Colonel Martin got through without drawing any of his weapons. Major Crole Wyndham’s horse, although wounded, managed to get him beyond the river bed before dropping dead. Upon seeing this, Captain Paul Kenna galloped over, lifted the major onto his own horse and took him to safety. The unfortunate Lieutenant Molyneux found himself wounded, on foot and surrounded by angry Dervishes. He only managed to escape thanks to the actions of Private Thomas Byrne, who used his horse to block the enemy while the lieutenant made good his escape.
When Lieutenant Raymond de Montmorency dismounted to help Lieutenant Grenfell, he discovered the officer was already dead and in the chaos his horse bolted. Luckily he was rescued by Captain Kenna and Corporal Swarbrick. Kenna, using his revolver, kept the enemy at bay while Swarbrick rounded up de Montmorency’s horse. ‘Lieutenants T. Connally and Winston Churchill also turned about to rescue two non-commissioned officers of their respective troops,’ reported war correspondent Bennet Burleigh. ‘They succeeded in their laudable task.’ Elsewhere, some of Churchill’s fellow war correspondents were not as lucky and were set upon by a lone Arab. Captain Nevill Smyth of the 2nd Dragoon Guards managed to save at least one of them, but was speared through the arm.
An exhilarated Churchill and his troop sergeant rounded up about 15 men and prepared to go again. When Churchill enquired if his sergeant had enjoyed himself, the man responded he was getting the hang of things, which caused much mirth amongst the ranks. Looking round at the battlefield Churchill witnessed, ‘horses spouting blood, struggling on three legs, men staggering on foot, men bleeding from terrible wounds, fish-hook spears stuck right through them, arms and faces cut to pieces, bowels protruding’. The Khur Abu Sunt engagement had lasted barely two minutes. In that time Captain Fair broke his sword, while Lieutenant Wormwald bent his. Major Finn, like Churchill, using his revolver shot four Dervishes.
Lieutenants Brinton, Nesham and Pirie were all wounded. Churchill observed, ‘the blood of our leaders cooled … They remembered for the first time that we had carbines.’ One of Churchill’s brother officers also recalled the mayhem, ‘There was half a minute’s hacking, cutting, spearing and shooting in all directions; then we cleared them and rallied on the far side. Halting about 300 yards off, men were dismounted and we opened a sharp fire from our carbines, driving them westward in ten minutes.’ Churchill noted, ‘I was about the only officer whose clothes, saddlery and horse were uninjured.’ Colonel Martin rallied his regiment with a view to attacking the Dervishes once more, but quickly lost enthusiasm. ‘Mr Churchill wanted the men to charge the enemy again,’ observed Private Rix, ‘but the colonel wisely forbade it’. Churchill even warned his troop that they might need to go back twice. Martin did not realize he had missed an opportunity to capture the Khalifa, who had been watching the battle seated upon a goatskin on the far side of the Khur. Instead both sides continued to shoot at each other from about 600 yards before the Dervishes finally withdrew.
At 1130 hours Kitchener observed that they had given the enemy ‘a good dusting’. This was a classic British understatement. The battlefield was a sea of bent and broken bodies. The Dervish Army had been completely wiped out. The Khalifa’s forces suffered 9,700 dead, 11,000 wounded and 4,000 captured. Kitchener’s losses amounted to 482 casualties of whom the bulk were Egyptians. By midday Kitchener’s victory was complete and he marched into Omdurman followed by Khartoum. His callous treatment of the Dervish wounded and the destruction of the Mahdi’s tomb was to result in a chorus of disapproval back home.
Churchill later writing his report for the Morning Post was evidently intoxicated by the charge. It may have been at this point that he became a fully fledged adrenalin junkie. He modestly tried to play down his experience when he wrote to a friend, claiming, ‘it was not in the least exciting’. Nonetheless, he also acknowledged, ‘It was I suppose the most dangerous 2 minutes I shall live to see.’ In the Morning Post he floridly characterized the charge as ‘two living walls crashed together with a mighty collision’. In a letter to his cousin, the 9th Duke of Marlborough, he described the battle ‘as a wonderful spectacle’.
The 21st Lancers suffered 21 dead and 49 wounded and lost 119 horses for little tactical gain. In particular B and D Squadrons lost nine dead and 11 wounded, and seven dead and eight wounded respectively. Churchill was saddened by the loss of Grenfell and his war correspondent friend Hubert Howard. The latter had ridden with the 21st Lancers and survived, only to be killed by a friendly shell. Martin got the regimental fame and glory he wanted as Captain Kenna, Lieutenant de Montmorency and Private Byrne were all awarded the Victoria Cross for bravery as was Captain Smyth.37 It was Churchill who identified Byrne as the gallant saviour of his friend Lieutenant Molyneux. Behind the scenes the actions of the 21st Lancers were seen as foolhardy. ‘We hear the charge was a great error, and K. [Kitchener] is furious,’ noted Lieutenant Meiklejohn.
Captain and future Field Marshal Haig viewed Martin’s actions as verging on criminal recklessness. When Churchill later asked David Beatty for his impressions of the charge, he rather bizarrely compared it to a pudding. ‘It looked,’ replied Beatty mischievously, ‘like plum duff: brown currants scattered about in a great deal of suet.’
Churchill discovered in Khartoum that Molyneux needed a graft on his wrist, so he surrendered some of his own skin from his right forearm for the operation. Whilst this was a brave and generous act, Churchill by his own admission had little choice after the doctor failed to get a graft from a nurse. It was not surprisingly a very painful procedure. ‘It hurt like the devil,’ admitted Churchill.
In later years he delighted in showing people his ‘Omdurman’ scar. He then travelled to Cairo to be briefed by the intelligence department in preparation for writing two books about his adventures called The River War. The charge of the 21st Lancers was subsequently immortalized on canvas by the artists Edward Matthew Hale and R. Caton Woodville to great effect. It transpired it was very fortunate that Churchill did not get his way and accompany Colonel Broadwood. The Egyptian camel and cavalry forces fighting as foot soldiers on the far right were attacked by 10,000 men, backed by another 5,000. In the face of such numbers they had little choice but to mount up and quickly withdraw northwards. Although ordered back within the British defences, Broadwood continued north with the enemy host in hot pursuit. This move fortunately split the Dervish Army and weakened the pressure on Kitchener.
However, some of the Egyptian rearguard, covering Broadwood’s escape from the Kerreri Hills, were overwhelmed and chopped to pieces.
Notably Colonel Tudway’s Camel Corps nearly did not get away as the camels struggled to cope with the broken and rocky ground. Although this action could not be seen from the British camp, artillery and nearby gunboats relentlessly shelled the Dervishes chasing Broadwood and his men. Gunboat fire alone killed about 1,000, gaining the Egyptians much-needed breathing space. In particular, the gunboat Melik under Major Gordon accounted for almost half this number.
Later Broadwood was able to return to the battlefield to assist the British right in repelling a Dervish flank attack at 1015 hours. This culminated in a charge by the Egyptian cavalry, but by that stage the Dervishes were already retreating. While Broadwood’s actions were extremely helpful to Kitchener, they offered Churchill little opportunity for glory. Knowing his taste for danger there is a good chance Churchill would have insisted on fighting with the rearguard. He certainly made a good impression with at least some of the officers and men of the 21st Lancers. ‘He is a nice cheery lad and I like him a good deal,’ concluded Captain Eadon, ‘and I think he has inherited some of his father’s abilities.’
Churchill would have been pleased to hear such sentiments. He had narrowly escaped death and felt that glory was calling. Equally importantly he had witnessed the full military might of the British Empire at work and this had a lasting effect on him. He learned that Britain, on occasions at least, could be truly invincible. This and his earlier escapades in India gave him an unshakable faith in the country’s prowess on the battlefield.
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