The age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1897-1902, 1898-10-07
THE SLAUGHTER
AT OMDURMAN

q. W. Stevens in the London Daily Mail.
Light stole quietly into the sky behind US;
there was no sound from the plain or the
hills before us; there was hardly sound
from our own line. Everybody was very 81
lent but very curious. Would they be SO
mad as to come out and run their heads m
to our fire? 1t seemed beyond hoping for;
vet certainly they had been full OF war the
day before. But most of us were expecting
instantly the order to advance on Omdur-
man.
A trooper rose out of the dimness from
behind the shoulder of Gebel Surgham, grew
larger and palmer, spurred violently up to
the line and inside. A couple more were
silhouetted across our front. Then the cleo
trio whisper came racing down the line;
they were coming. The Lancers came in on
the left; the Egyptian mounted troops drew
like a curtain across us from left to right.
AS they passed a flicker of white flags began
to extend and fill the front in their place.
The noise of something began to creep in
upon us; it cleared and divided into the tap
of drums and the PARKWAY surf of faucons
war-cries. SILVER of expectancy thrilled
along our army, and then sigh of content.
They were coming Allah help them,
they were coming on.
Ii was now half-past g. The flags seemed
still very distant, the roar very faint, and
the thud of our first gun was almost start
ling. 1t may have startled them too, but it
startled them into life The line of flags
swung forward and a mass OF white flying
linen swung forward with it too. They
came very fast and they came very
straight and then presently they came no
further. With crash the bullets leaped out
of the British rifles. 1t began with the
Guards and Warwicks-section volleys at
1000 yards then as the dervishes edged
rightward it along to the Highlanders,
the Lincons, and to Maxwells brigade. The
British stood up in double rank behind
their zariba; the blacks lay down in their
fast as they could load and press trigger.
Shrapne whistled and Maxims growled
savagely. From all the line came perpetual
fire, fire, fire, and shrieked forth in great
gusts of destruction.
And the enemy? No white trooper would
have faced that torrent of death for five
minutes, but the Baggara and the blacks
came on. The torrent swept into them and
hurled them down in whole companies. You
saw rigid line gather itself up and rush
on evenly then before shrapnel shell or
Maxim the line suddenly quivered and
stopped The line was yet unbroken, but it
was quite STILL But other lines gathered up
again, again, and yet again. they went
down and yet others rushed on. Sometimes
they came near enough to see single figures
quite plainly. One old man with a white
flag started with five comrades all drop
ped, but he alone came bounding forward
to within 200 yards of the Fourteenth Sou
ho fA1l AI h !,
face and his limbs loosened, and he dropped
sprawling to earth beside his flag.
1t was the last day of MahdiSm and the
greatest They could never get near and
they refused to hold back. By now the
ground before us was all white with dead
mems drapery. Rifles grew red-hot; the
soldiers seized them by the sings and
dragged them back to the reserve to change
for cool ones. 1t was not battle, but an
execution.
In the middle of 1t all you were surprised
to find that we were losing men. The crash
of our own fire was so prodigious that we
could not hear their bullets whistle; yet
they came and swooped down and found
victims. The dervishes were firing at their
extreme range, and their bullets were many
of them almost spent; bue as they always
fire high they often hit. So that while you
might have thought you were at a shoot of
rabbits, you suddenly heard the sharp cry,
was being borne forward. Few went down,
but there was a steady trickle to hospital
Bullets may have been spent, and Captain
Caldecott, of the Warwicks, was one of the
strongest men in the army; but that helped
him nothing when the dropping ball took
him in the temple and came out through
the jugulaE He lay an hour unconscious
then opened his eyes with. For Gods sake
give me water!'' and died as he drank. Most
of all the two Highland battalions dropped
| men. The Zariba, behind which they were
| unwisely posted, obliged them to stand be-
sides hampering them both in fire, and
| when it came to movement; a little clump
| of enemy gathered in a hole in front of
| them, and by the time guns came up to
shell them out the Camerons had lost some
twenty-five and the Seaforths above a
Dozen
But loss on this scale was not to be con-
sidered beside the awful slaughter of the
dervishes If they still came on our men
needed only time and ammunition and
strength to point rifle to kill them off to
the very last man. Only by now-small
Wonderfully were not coming on They
were not driven back; they were all killed
in coming on. One section of fire after an
other hushed, and at s o'clock the village
and the plain were still again. The last
shell had burst over the last visible group
of dervishes; now there was nothing but
the unbending, grimly expectant line be-
fore Agaiga and the still carpet of white in
front