page_title: Battle of Abu Klea
section_title: Aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: Battle of Abu Klea / Aftermath
caption_attribution_description: English: The battery emblem of 176 (Abu Klea) Battery Royal Artillery. For the article on that unit. The emblem was adopted on 22nd June 1993. This copy of it has been recreated from scratch by the uploader.
context_page_description: The Battle of Abu Klea, or the Battle of Abu Tulayh took place between the dates of 16 and 18 January 1885, at Abu Klea, Sudan, between the British Desert Column and Mahdist forces encamped near Abu Klea. The Desert Column, a force of approximately 1,400 soldiers, started from Korti, Sudan on 30 December 1884; the Desert Column's mission, in a joint effort titled "The Gordon Relief Expedition", was to march across the Bayuda Desert to the aid of General Charles George Gordon at Khartoum, Sudan, who was besieged there by Mahdist forces.
  The place is generally known in British military records as Abu Klea, which arose as a contemporary British spelling of its Arabic name, 'Abu Tͅuleiħ.
context_section_description: The column was too late to save Khartoum; the Mahdists captured it two days before the column arrived, leading to the death of General Gordon. The British then withdrew from the Sudan, leaving the Dervishes of the Mahdi to rule Sudan for the next 13 years. The official public blame for this failure was left with Prime Minister Gladstone for delaying several months, to the considerable anger expressed in public of Queen Victoria, to authorize a rescue. Gladstone lost public confidence and much authority and within two months he resigned.
  The battle was celebrated by the doggerel poet William McGonagall:
  Ye sons of Mars, come join with me,
  
  And sing in praise of Sir Herbert Stewart’s little army,
  
  That made ten thousand Arabs flee
  
  At the charge of the bayonet at Abou Klea
  and so on for 19 stanzas.
  And also the battle and one of its notable participants is mentioned in the song "Colonel Burnaby", which has as its chorus:
  Weep not my boys, for those who fell,
  They did not flinch nor fear.
  They stood their ground like Englishmen,
  and died at Abu Klea
  The rhymes in these poems show varying attempts at pronouncing "Klea" from the English spelling, and the rhyme with "fear" shows British English arhotic pronunciation.
  More celebrated and of higher literary quality, but taking substantial liberties for the exact events, is the mention of the battle in verse two of Sir Henry Newbolt's poem Vitai Lampada:
  …The sand of the desert is sodden red,
  
  Red with the wreck of a square that broke;
  
  The Gatling’s jammed and the colonel dead,
  
  And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.
  
  The river of death has brimmed his banks,
  
  And England’s far, and Honour a name,
  
  But the voice of the schoolboy rallies the ranks,
  
  “Play up! play up! and play the game!”
  "The wreck of a square" is a severe exaggeration, and Newbolt conflated Abu Klea with other events such as the Battle of Tamai; most of the dead were Mahdists. Newbolt's reference to the Gatling is wrong, as the British force at Abu Klea had the American Gardner machine gun. The Royal Artillery unit which took part in the battle still exists today, re-numbered as 176 Battery, and has the honour title "Abu Klea", awarded in 1955 in recognition of the Victoria Cross won by Gunner Smith.
caption: The emblem of 176 (Abu Klea) Battery Royal Artillery
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