After this victory there was a sense among the army that the final phase of the campaign was imminent. For the last advance Kitchener was reinforced by more British troops and equipment. It was well appreciated that firepower was the key to success, but Kitchener was out of touch with some developments as he had hardly been in Britain recently. While the allied army would muster 20 Maxim machine-guns and 44 guns, Wolseley, it seems, drew Kitchener’s attention to a new type of cannon available – the 5.5in howitzer that fired the new high-explosive (lyddite) shell – of which a battery (6 guns) was eventually sent.¹⁹ Supplementing the army’s artillery and machine-guns were those on board the gunboats that accompanied the army on its advance. There were 10 at Omdurman and together these massed 36 guns and 24 Maxims and would help protect the flanks of the allies during the battle. The gunboats had been with Kitchener from the start and were weapons in which he had taken a great interest.²⁰ The infantry were armed with two types of rifle: the Egyptian forces had the older, single-shot Martini-Henry, while the British had the recent Lee-Metford II, a magazine rifle that used bullets propelled by smokeless cordite and had a range of 2,500yd. This was similar to that of the Maxims, although it was more effective at shorter ranges. Gatacre, to increase the ‘stopping’ power of the bullets, had had his men turn them into ‘dum dum’ bullets, which would enter cleanly but leave a massive hole at the back. The artillery, mostly modern rifled breech-loaders, had a range of over 5,000yd. In all, Kitchener’s forces numbered 25,000 men, 8,000 of whom were British.²¹

Against this powerful force the Khalifa ‘Abdullahi, who had succeeded the Mahdi in 1885, could deploy some 50,000 men, although the numbers have been disputed. The only modern Sudanese account, that by ‘Ismat Hasan Zulfo, does not suggest a figure but questions the numbers above, which was a British estimate. The captured Dervish musters were apparently out of date and there were large desertions the night before the battle, while years of warfare since the creation of the Mahdist state in 1885, against the British, the Abyssinians and among themselves, had weakened the Dervish cause considerably. Zulfo adds that Hunter and the journalist Bennet Burleigh both thought the Dervish army numbered between 30,000 and 35,000, but gives no references. According to his recent biographer, Hunter told a correspondent that 50,000 Dervishes attacked, while Burleigh’s book of the campaign also gives that figure. Smith-Dorrien wrote later that the British cavalry estimated the Dervishes at 30,000, but ‘it subsequently proved to be double that number’. À Court stated that Lieutenant Colonel Hector MacDonald, commander of the Egyptian 1st Brigade and Lieutenant Colonel G R Broadwood, commander of the Egyptian Cavalry, ‘who are both sober people’, thought the enemy numbered 60,000; while Rawlinson gave figures of between 40,000 and 50,000. Whether Zulfo is correct in assuming that the Dervish numbers were exaggerated to add lustre to the victory is a point that cannot be resolved. It was Wingate who used the figures from the captured Dervish books (upwards of 52,000) and this remains the only reliable source.²²

What is not beyond doubt is the inferiority of the Dervish weapons compared to those of the allied army. While the Dervishes were not simply armed with swords and spears – although most were – the quality of their firearms was poor. Their rifles, Remingtons and Martini-Henrys captured from the British and Egyptians ten years earlier, were obsolete or badly kept. Their ammunition, while plentiful, was hampered by poor-quality, homemade gunpowder. The Dervishes could field 35 guns, but 27 of these were antiquated: the 8 modern Krupp breech-loaders were good enough but had hardly been fired since their capture and were, like the rifles, hindered by inferior gunpowder. As it happened, only five would be used on the battlefield, the rest were placed in forts meant to defend the river against the gunboats.²³

Kitchener’s advance to the outskirts of Omdurman, the Dervish capital opposite the abandoned city of Khartoum, was trouble-free. The Dervishes might have made a stand at the Shabluka gorge which contained the Nile’s sixth cataract (rapids). If forced to fight there the gunboats would have had little impact and the ground offered good defensive positions. The Dervishes did make an attempt to fortify the area but this was abandoned by the Khalifa who could not have provisioned his army there. Moreover, he preferred to lead the army himself and fight on familiar ground. Thus on 1 September 1898, Kitchener’s army encamped on the plain of Kereri (Karari) outside Omdurman, in a semicircle around the village of el-Egeiga.²⁴

Now they were so close Kitchener and his officers became anxious lest the Dervishes not come out and fight. There was some expectation that the Khalifa would make a stand in and around Omdurman itself and engage the allies in street fighting, where their technological superiority might be negated. What the allied army feared most, however, was a night attack and precautions were taken against such an eventuality: the gunboats’ searchlights swept the plain and spies helped make the Khalifa think he would be attacked instead. After passing a peaceful night, Kitchener, who knew the Dervishes had come out of Omdurman, ordered the army to leave their defences and make ready to march on the enemy’s capital because as dawn broke there was no sign of them. However, the 21st Lancers, having been sent out to find the enemy, found them very close indeed and on the move towards the allied forces. Lieutenant Meiklejohn summed up the army’s mood on hearing this: ‘I think everybody gave a sigh of relief, since it was much better that they should attack.’²⁵

The allied army returned to its positions. Kitchener had disposed of his army in a defensive semicircle and had left the manner of its deployment to the two main commanders. Hunter, on the right, had positioned the Egyptians in shallow trenches, while Gatacre placed the British behind a zariba, or thorn-bush fence. The 21st Lancers came into the position, but the Egyptian cavalry and camel corps remained on the Kereri hills, which were slightly towards the north-west of the allied army. To the south-west lay the ridge known as Jebel Surgham and to the south of that lay a dried river bed, the Khor Abu Sunt, in which were eventually concealed about 2,000 Dervish warriors. Of these, 700 were Beja Hadendowa tribesmen under their wily chief Osman Digna, whom Kitchener had fought when governor of the eastern Sudan.

The Khalifa did not simply launch his army against the allies in the hope of overwhelming the enemy by numbers alone. The frontal assault under Osman Azrak, assisted by a smaller force under Ibrahim al Khalil that came over the Jebel Surgham, was meant to pin the allied forces, while a force of around 15,000, under the Green Standard and commanded by Osman Shaykh al-Din and Abu Siwar, moved into the Kereri hills in order to attack the right flank of the allied army. Meanwhile, the Khalifa, with his brother Ya’qub and senior officer Ali Wad Hilu, waited with the Black Standard (some 12,000 to 15,000 men) ready to charge the enemy at the right moment.²⁶

The attack by the forces of Osman Azrak began at about 0630. The sight of these men on the move impressed all those who witnessed it. Lieutenant Colonel D F Lewis, commander of the 3rd Egyptian Brigade wrote: ‘The order and pace with which they moved struck us so particularly. This was no horde of savages but a well-ordered army.’ Rawlinson, agreed: ‘It was a magnificent sight these thousands of wild, brave uneducated savages advancing to their destruction.’²⁷

The allied artillery and gunboats fired first at about 0645 and then, as the survivors came closer, the Maxims and rifles of the infantry followed. There was little cover for the Dervishes and thousands fell. Ibrahim al Khalil’s smaller force soon engaged the allied left flank from the Jebel Surgham but they had mistimed their attack and engaged the British forces too early, before Osman Azrak’s assault had made any impact. They too were repulsed with heavy losses.

On the allied right, where stood the Egyptian army, the Green Standard had climbed the Kereri hills and driven off the Egyptian cavalry and camel corps with a sustained and unwavering charge. The Egyptians, heavily outnumbered, beat a hasty retreat: the camel corps, being slower, fled towards the allied main position covered by the timely fire of five gunboats. Broadwood, meanwhile, took the cavalry north, luring the Dervishes away from the main battlefield for some 4 or 5 miles before they realised they were needed elsewhere and headed back.

By 0800, the Dervishes’ attacks had been beaten off with heavy losses. The bravery of these men earned high praise from the British officers and soldiers who had shot them down. Corporal Skinner believed that: ‘Nothing could possibly stand against such a store of lead, in fact no European would ever think of facing it in the daring way these fanatics did.’²⁸ After a break of about an hour, Kitchener began the second phase of the battle by ordering the army out of its position and on to the plain. The brigades were meant to move southwards towards Omdurman in echelon in the hope of meeting all eventualities and to be mutually supporting. Thus the British Brigades were in the front and the Egyptians on the right and rear. Meanwhile, the 21st Lancers had been sent ‘to clear the ground on our left front and head off any retreating Dervishes from the direction of Omdurman’. The Dervish survivors were apparently fleeing into the desert and Kitchener wanted to encourage the rest to do so.²⁹ The subsequent charge of the 21st Lancers, during which they were effectively ambushed by the forces of Osman Digna concealed in the dried river bed, the Khor Abu Sunt, has been well recounted, not least by its famous participant, Winston Churchill. Kitchener did not order the charge and though successful it ended the usefulness of the 21st Lancers for the rest of the day. They might have informed Kitchener that there was still a large body of Dervishes – the Black Standard – in the vicinity.

The second phase of the battle, for it was far from over, in spite of 2,000 to 3,000 Dervish dead, was the most controversial part and called into question Kitchener’s tactical judgement. As the army moved towards the Jebel Surgham ridge the various brigades became separated and the cohesion of the army lost. The brigade of Lieutenant Colonel Hector MacDonald was out on the right flank when a serious gap emerged between it and the forward brigades so that it became isolated on the plain. This was far too tempting for the men of the Black Standard who surged from around the western end of the Jebel Surgham and headed straight for MacDonald. The Khalifa did not lead the attack himself, having already moved off towards Omdurman. Although heavily outnumbered, MacDonald’s force was supported by eighteen guns and eight Maxims and held its own against the Dervish onslaught. MacDonald was not in great danger as he had seen the enemy early and was prepared. Nevertheless, when Kitchener received word of MacDonald’s predicament he acted decisively by ordering one British brigade to support him. However, what might seem a decisive act also revealed one of Kitchener’s shortcomings because he gave the orders to the brigade commander directly, without having consulted Gatacre. Thankfully for the allied cause the Dervish attack was repulsed with heavy losses, but MacDonald’s travails were not over. No sooner had the Black Standard begun to waver then the Green Standard, the force that had chased off Broadwood’s cavalry, returned to the battlefield right behind MacDonald’s embattled brigade. With quick thinking, MacDonald demonstrated his brigade’s superb training and discipline and turned them round in parade-ground fashion to face the new enemy. With Kitchener alert enough to send a British battalion to help, MacDonald’s brigade fought off this new adversary with the same coolness and determination that it had shown earlier. In his dispatch after the battle, Kitchener readily praised MacDonald’s brilliant handling of his troops.³⁰

With the destruction of the Black and Green Standards the Dervish army was annihilated. The enormity of the victory and the huge losses sustained by the Dervishes were soon appreciated by the British. Captain Cameron admitted to his father that: ‘It seems to me that as far as the British Division was concerned it was mostly a question of superiority of weapons for the Dervishes showed splendid courage.’³¹ Dervish losses were huge: Wingate stated that 10,800 were killed, while the number of wounded was estimated at 16,000. British and Egyptian losses amounted to 48 dead and 434 wounded.³²

The British victory was certainly helped by the Khalifa smashing his army against the shells and bullets of the allied forces, revealing his ignorance of modern weapons. Of the Dervish commanders only Osman Digna had real experience of what British firepower could do, having experienced it in 1884–85. Osman Digna, however, was from the north-east and was of the Beja people, who were better known to the British as the ‘fuzzy-wuzzies’. As an outsider his opinions did not carry much weight in the Dervish council because it was dominated by the Khalifa’s family and tribe, the Ta’aisha of the Baqqara. The Khalifa was determined to fight the battle his way and paid the price.³³

A succinct summary of the battle was provided later by à Court and he certainly identified the fact the Khalifa played a major part in his own downfall:

We were a very fortunate army. The Dervishes had many chances and availed themselves of none. Had they held Shabluka, they would have forced us to fight in a difficult and waterless country where our gunboats were useless. Had they given battle in the thick scrub, they would have placed themselves almost on equal terms with us, and the weight of their 60,000 fighting men would have told. Had they attacked our widely extended line on the night of September 1–2, it is almost certain, considering their reckless gallantry, that their masses must have broken in somewhere. Had they held the mud houses, forts, and walls of Omdurman, we should hardly have turned them out with a loss of less than 3,000 men.³⁴

Thus the old adage that victories are won because of the mistakes of the enemy was certainly applicable to the Khalifa and his generals.

Kitchener, then, did not need to exert direct control of the allied army during the battle. The placement of the troops and the actual conduct of the fighting he left to the more experienced men – Hunter and Gatacre. Nevertheless, the incident involving MacDonald’s brigade showed Kitchener’s judgement to be at fault. Hunter said he was too impatient, which was true; but the Dervishes could be handled out in the open. À Court criticised Kitchener for not having stated the required distances between the brigades as they moved off, but added ‘What K needed was a good infantry drill man, and he did not have one.’ Moreover, it seems the 1st British Brigade was too eager to get to Omdurman and marched far too quickly. ‘They marched upon our heels [the 2nd British Brigade detailed to lead the advance] in spite of my protests.’³⁵ Consequently, the army moved off far too rapidly, which left MacDonald’s brigade, as the last to deploy, isolated out on the right rear of the formation. Furthermore, if the 21st Lancers had done their job properly they might have given early warning of the Black Standard and enabled Kitchener to alter his movements and deployment.

Thus Kitchener’s control of the Sudan expedition revealed his command of logistics; the key to the objective – Omdurman. In this respect the campaign was a triumph: the army was well fed and watered and the building of the desert railway a brilliant piece of engineering. The need to defeat the desert was foremost in Kitchener’s planning. Yet, Kitchener revealed some alarming faults for a commander who would have to fight battles: particularly, his desire to control every aspect of the campaign and his failure to take his officers into his confidence. Had he been incapacitated things might have turned out differently. Or would they? Arguably, the Sudan campaign and its objectives were straightforward enough for any commander of proven ability. Even so, Kitchener’s personal style of command, which was in keeping with Victorian practice, can also be explained by the two severe restraints under which he laboured. First, his fear of the generals and politicians of the War Office, who might have replaced him at any moment; and secondly, the financial constraints imposed by Cromer. Together, these, certainly in 1898, caused Kitchener acute anxiety relieved only by total victory. Kitchener was not a great battlefield tactician, but he handled the ‘early Victorian formations’ needed to combat a known enemy well enough.³⁶

South Africa, 1900–2

On 11 October 1899, the South African War broke out following an ultimatum presented to the British by the president of the semi-independent Boer republic of the Transvaal. On 18 December 1899, Kitchener, along with Field Marshal Lord Roberts, was sent to the war zone to eradicate the mess created by the British military authorities.

Kitchener was made Roberts’s Chief of Staff, a rather ambiguous post that lacked definition and for which, in the ordinary sense, he did not have the necessary training. Consequently, Kitchener was obliged to perform many different tasks: first, he reorganised the transport system in a way that suited his experience but not that of the British forces. Secondly, he took control of the army when Roberts was ill and fought a major engagement against the Boers at the battle of Paardeberg on 18 February 1900. Here his old faults resurfaced: he took complete control and bypassed the various British generals present by issuing orders directly to individual units – as he had done at Omdurman. This time there was no brilliant victory, and although the Boers were surrounded and pinned down, they had inflicted what for the British amounted to huge losses. It was the most controversial battle he ever fought and while he was lauded later for injecting an energy that few commanders had shown beforehand, the results appalled the other generals, including possibly Roberts who was too polite to say.³⁷

Kitchener’s credibility as a battlefield commander was questioned and he never fought a battle on this scale again. Roberts sent him away to tidy up other areas but Kitchener was back with him for the march into the Boer republics. From May 1900, the Boers, who would not face the British in open battle, opted for guerrilla warfare. While Roberts occupied their towns and cut them off from the outside world the Boer commandos hit at his precarious supply line, a single railway. Eventually, a tired Roberts, having declared the war to be at an end, left South Africa, leaving Kitchener to mop up and bring the guerrilla war to an end.

On 29 November 1900, Kitchener was appointed Commander in Chief in South Africa. Many felt that he would now provide the necessary leadership that Roberts lacked. Captain R J Marker believed that once Kitchener was in charge and given a free hand ‘it [the war] will be over in a very short time’. However, not all were impressed by the change in regime: Captain Colin Ballard wrote, ‘Personally, I don’t expect that Kitchener will do any better. Of course, I don’t know him personally, but he is said to be very harsh and unfeeling – and all his old Egyptian lot expect him to take very stern measures.’³⁸