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The River War

W >> Winston S. Churchill >> The River War




It cannot be denied that a battle, the climax to which all military
operations tend, is an event which is not controlled by strategy or
organisation. The scheme may be well planned, the troops well fed, the
ammunition plentiful, and the enemy entangled, famished, or numerically
inferior. The glorious uncertainties of the field can yet reverse
everything. The human element--in defiance of experience and probability--
may produce a wholly irrational result, and a starving, out-manoeuvred army
win food, safety, and honour by their bravery. But such considerations
apply with greater force to wars where both sides are equal in equipment
and discipline. In savage warfare in a flat country the power of modern
machinery is such that flesh and blood can scarcely prevail, and the
chances of battle are reduced to a minimum. Fighting the Dervishes was
primarily a matter of transport. The Khalifa was conquered on the railway.

Hitherto, as the operations have progressed, it has been convenient
to speak of the railway in a general manner as having been laid or
extended to various points, and merely to indicate the direction of the
lines of communication. The reader is now invited to take a closer view.
This chapter is concerned with boats, railways, and pack animals,
but particularly with railways.

Throughout the Dongola campaign in 1896 the Nile was the main channel
of communication between the Expeditionary Force and its base in Egypt.
All supplies were brought to the front as far as possible by water
transport. Wherever the Nile was navigable, it was used. Other means of
conveyance--by railways and pack animals--though essential, were merely
supplementary. Boats carry more and cost less than any other form of
transport. The service is not so liable to interruption; the plant needs
only simple repair; the waterway is ready-made. But the Nile is not always
available. Frequent cataracts obstruct its course for many miles.
Other long reaches are only navigable when the river is in flood.
To join the navigable reaches, and thus preserve the continuity of the
communications, a complex system of railways and caravans was necessary.

In the expedition to Dongola a line of railway was required to connect
the two navigable reaches of the Nile which extend from Assuan to Wady
Halfa, and from Kerma to Merawi. Before the capture of Dongola, however,
this distance was shortened by the fact that the river at high Nile is
navigable between the Third Cataract and Kerma. In consequence it was
at first only necessary to construct the stretch of 108 miles between
Wady Halfa and Kosheh. During the years when Wady Halfa was the
southernmost garrison of the Egyptian forces a strong post had been
maintained at Sarras. In the Nile expeditions of 1885 the railway from
Halfa had been completed through Sarras and as far as Akasha, a distance
of eighty-six miles. After the abandonment of the Soudan the Dervishes
destroyed the line as far north as Sarras. The old embankments were still
standing, but the sleepers had been burnt and the rails torn up, and in
many cases bent or twisted. The position in 1896 may, in fact, be summed
up as follows: The section of thirty-three miles from Wady Halfa to Sarras
was immediately available and in working order. The section of fifty-three
miles from Sarras to Akasha required partial reconstruction. The section of
thirty-two miles from Akasha to Kosheh must, with the exception of ten
miles of embankment completed in 1885, at once be newly made. And, finally,
the section from Kosheh to Kerma must be completed before the Nile flood
subsided.

The first duty, therefore, which the Engineer officers had to perform
was the reconstruction of the line from Sarras to Akasha. No trained staff
or skilled workmen were available. The lack of men with technical knowledge
was doubtfully supplied by the enlistment of a 'Railway Battalion' 800
strong. These men were drawn from many tribes and classes. Their only
qualification was capacity and willingness for work. They presented a
motley appearance. Dervish prisoners, released but still wearing their
jibbas, assisted stalwart Egyptians in unloading rails and sleepers.
Dinkas, Shillooks, Jaalin, and Barabras shovelled contentedly together
at the embankments. One hundred civilian Soudanese--chiefly time-expired
soldiers--were also employed; and these, since they were trustworthy
and took an especial pride in their work, soon learned the arts of
spiking rails and sleepers, fishing rails together, and straightening.
To direct and control the labours of these men of varied race and language,
but of equal inexperience, some civilian foremen platelayers were obtained
at high rates of pay from Lower Egypt. These, however, with very few
exceptions were not satisfactory, and they were gradually replaced by
intelligent men of the 'Railway Battalion,' who had learned their trade
as the line progressed. The projection, direction, and execution of the
whole work were entrusted to a few subalterns of Engineers,
of whom the best-known was Edouard Girouard.

Work was begun south of Sarras at the latter end of March. At first
the efforts of so many unskilled workmen, instructed by few experienced
officers, were productive of results ridiculous rather than important.
Gradually, however, the knowledge and energy of the young director and
the intelligence and devotion of his still more youthful subordinates
began to take effect. The pace of construction increased, and the labour
was lightened by the contrivances of experience and skill.

As the line grew longer, native officers and non-commissioned officers
from the active and reserve lists of the Egyptian Army were appointed
station-masters. Intelligent non-commissioned officers and men were
converted into shunters, guards, and pointsmen. Traffic was controlled
by telephone. To work the telephone, men were discovered who could read
and write--very often who could read and write only their own names,
and even that with such difficulty that they usually preferred a seal.
They developed into clerks by a simple process of selection. To improve
their education, and to train a staff in the office work of a railway,
two schools were instituted at Halfa. In these establishments, which were
formed by the shade of two palm-trees, twenty pupils received the
beginnings of knowledge. The simplicity of the instruction was aided by
the zeal of the students, and learning grew beneath the palm-trees more
quickly perhaps than in the magnificent schools of civilisation.

The rolling stock of the Halfa-Sarras line was in good order and
sufficient quantity, but the eight locomotives were out of all repair,
and had to be patched up again and again with painful repetition.
The regularity of their break-downs prevented the regularity of the road,
and the Soudan military railway gained a doubtful reputation during the
Dongola expedition and in its early days. Nor were there wanting those
who employed their wits in scoffing at the undertaking and in pouring
thoughtless indignation on the engineers. Nevertheless the work
went on continually.

The initial difficulties of the task were aggravated by an unexpected
calamity. On the 26th of August the violent cyclonic rain-storm of which
some account has been given in the last chapter broke over
the Dongola province.

A writer on the earlier phases of the war [A. Hilliard Atteridge,
TOWARDS FREEDOM.] has forcibly explained why the consequences were
so serious:

'In a country where rain is an ordinary event the engineer lays his
railway line, not in the bottom of a valley, but at a higher level on
one slope or the other. Where he passes across branching side valleys,
he takes care to leave in all his embankments large culverts to carry off
flood-water. But here, in what was thought to be the rainless Soudan,
the line south of Sarras followed for mile after mile the bottom of the
long valley of Khor Ahrusa, and no provision had been made, or had been
thought necessary, for culverts in the embankments where minor hollows
were crossed. Thus, when the flood came, it was not merely that the railway
was cut through here and there by the rushing deluge. It was covered deep
in water, the ballast was swept away, and some of the banks so destroyed
that in places rails and sleepers were left hanging in the air
across a wide gap.'

Nearly fourteen miles of track were destroyed. The camp of the construction
gangs was wrecked and flooded. Some of the rifles of the escort--for the
conditions of war were never absent--were afterwards recovered from a depth
of three feet of sand. In one place, where the embankment had partly
withstood the deluge, a great lake several miles square appeared.
By extraordinary exertions the damage was repaired in a week.

As soon as the line as far as Kosheh was completed, the advance
towards Dongola began. After the army had been victorious at Hafir
the whole province was cleared of Dervishes, and the Egyptian forces
pushed on to Merawi. Here they were dependent on river transport.
But the Nile was falling rapidly, and the army were soon in danger of
being stranded by the interruption of river traffic between the Third
Cataract and Kenna. The extension of the line from Kosheh to Kerma was
therefore of vital importance. The survey was at once undertaken,
and a suitable route was chosen through the newly acquired and unmapped
territory. Of the ninety-five miles of extended track, fifty-six were
through the desert, and the constructors here gained the experience which
was afterwards of value on the great Desert Railway from Wady Halfa to
the Atbara. Battalions of troops were distributed along the line and
ordered to begin to make the embankments. Track-laying commenced south
of Kosheh on the 9th of October, and the whole work was carried forward
with feverish energy. As it progressed, and before it was completed,
the reach of the river from the Third Cataract to Kenna ceased to be
navigable. The army were now dependent for their existence on the
partly finished railway, from the head of which supplies were conveyed
by an elaborate system of camel transport. Every week the line grew,
Railhead moved forward, and the strain upon the pack animals diminished.
But the problem of feeding the field army without interfering with the
railway construction was one of extraordinary intricacy and difficulty.
The carrying capacity of the line was strictly limited. The worn-out
engines frequently broke down. On many occasions only three were in
working order, and the other five undergoing 'heavy repairs' which might
secure them another short span of usefulness. Three times the construction
had to be suspended to allow the army to be revictualled. Every difficulty
was, however, overcome. By the beginning of May the line to Kenna was
finished, and the whole of the Railway Battalion, its subalterns and its
director, turned their attention to a greater enterprise.

In the first week in December the Sirdar returned from England with
instructions or permission to continue the advance towards Khartoum,
and the momentous question of the route to be followed arose. It may at
first seem that the plain course was to continue to work along the Nile,
connecting its navigable reaches by sections of railway. But from Merawi
to Abu Hamed the river is broken by continual cataracts, and the broken
ground of both banks made a railway nearly an impossibility. The movements
of the French expeditions towards the Upper Nile counselled speed.
The poverty of Egypt compelled economy. The Nile route, though sure,
would be slow and very expensive. A short cut must be found. Three daring
and ambitious schemes presented themselves: (1) the line followed by the
Desert Column in 1884 from Korti to Metemma; (2) the celebrated, if not
notorious, route from Suakin to Berber; (3) across the Nubian desert
from Korosko or Wady Halfa to Abu Hamed.

The question involved the whole strategy of the war. No more important
decision was ever taken by Sir Herbert Kitchener, whether in office or in
action. The request for a British division, the attack On Mahmud's zeriba,
the great left wheel towards Omdurman during that battle, the treatment
of the Marchand expedition, were matters of lesser resolve than the
selection of the line of advance. The known strength of the Khalifa made
it evident that a powerful force would be required for the destruction
of his army and the capture of his capital. The use of railway transport
to some point on the Nile whence there was a clear waterway was therefore
imperative. Berber and Metemma were known, and Abu Hamed was believed,
to fulfil this condition. But both Berber and Metemma were important
strategic points. It was improbable that the Dervishes would abandon
these keys to Khartoum and the Soudan without severe resistance.
It seemed likely, indeed, that the Khalifa would strongly reinforce both
towns, and desperately contest their possession. The deserts between
Korti and Metemma, and between Suakin and Berber, contained scattered
wells, and small raiding parties might have cut the railway and perhaps
have starved the army at its head. It was therefore too dangerous to
project the railway towards either Berber or Metemma until they were
actually in our hands. The argument is circular. The towns could not be
taken without a strong force; so strong a force could not advance until
the railway was made; and the railway could not be made till
the towns were taken.

Both the Korti-Metemma and the Suakin-Berber routes were therefore
rejected. The resolution to exclude the latter was further strengthened
by the fact that the labour of building a railway over the hills behind
Suakin would have been very great.

The route via Abu Hamed was selected by the exclusion of the alternatives.
But it had distinct and apparent advantages. Abu Hamed was within striking
distance of the army at Merawi. It was not a point essential to the
Dervish defences, and not, therefore, likely to be so strongly garrisoned
as Berber or Metemma. It might, therefore, be captured by a column marching
along the river, and sufficiently small to be equipped with only camel
transport. The deserts through which the railway to Abu Hamed would pass
contain few wells, and therefore it would be difficult for small raiding
parties to cut the line or attack the construction gangs; and before the
line got within reach of the Dervish garrison at Abu Hamed, that garrison
would be dislodged and the place seized.

The plan was perfect, and the argument in its favour conclusive.
It turned, however, on one point: Was the Desert Railway a possibility?
With this question the General was now confronted. He appealed to expert
opinion. Eminent railway engineers in England were consulted. They replied
with unanimity that, having due regard to the circumstances, and
remembering the conditions of war under which the work must be executed,
it was impossible to construct such a line. Distinguished soldiers were
approached on the subject. They replied that the scheme was not only
impossible, but absurd. Many other persons who were not consulted
volunteered the opinion that the whole idea was that of a lunatic,
and predicted ruin and disaster to the expedition. Having received this
advice, and reflected on it duly, the Sirdar ordered the railway to be
constructed without more delay.

A further question immediately arose: Should the railway to Abu Hamed
start from Korosko or from Wady Halfa? There were arguments on both sides.
The adoption of the Korosko line would reduce the river stage from Assuan
by forty-eight hours up stream. The old caravan route, by which General
Gordon had travelled to Khartoum on his last journey, had been from Korosko
via Murat Wells to Abu Hamed. On the other hand, many workshops and
appliances for construction were already existing at Wady Halfa. It was the
northern terminus of the Dongola railway. This was an enormous advantage.
Both routes were reconnoitred: that from Wady Halfa was selected.
The decision having been taken, the enterprise was at once begun.

Lieutenant Girouard, to whom everything was entrusted, was told to make
the necessary estimates. Sitting in his hut at Wady Halfa, he drew up a
comprehensive list. Nothing was forgotten. Every want was provided for;
every difficulty was foreseen; every requisite was noted. The questions
to be decided were numerous and involved. How much carrying capacity was
required? How much rolling stock? How many engines? What spare parts?
How much oil? How many lathes? How many cutters? How many punching and
shearing machines? What arrangements of signals would be necessary?
How many lamps? How many points? How many trolleys? What amount of coal
should be ordered? How much water would be wanted? How should it be
carried? To what extent would its carriage affect the hauling power and
influence all previous calculations? How much railway plant was needed?
How many miles of rail? How many thousand sleepers? Where could they be
procured at such short notice? How many fishplates were necessary?
What tools would be required? What appliances? What machinery? How much
skilled labour was wanted? How much of the class of labour available?
How were the workmen to be fed and watered? How much food would they want?
How many trains a day must be run to feed them and their escort? How many
must be run to carry plant? How did these requirements affect the estimate
for rolling stock? The answers to all these questions, and to many others
with which I will not inflict the reader, were set forth by Lieutenant
Girouard in a ponderous volume several inches thick; and such was the
comprehensive accuracy of the estimate that the working parties were
never delayed by the want even of a piece of brass wire.

In any circumstances the task would have been enormous. It was, however,
complicated by five important considerations: It had to be executed with
military precautions. There was apparently no water along the line.
The feeding of 2,000 platelayers in a barren desert was a problem in
itself. The work had to be completed before the winter. And, finally,
the money voted was not to be outrun. The Sirdar attended to
the last condition.

Girouard was sent to England to buy the plant and rolling stock.
Fifteen new engines and two hundred trucks were ordered. The necessary new
workshops were commenced at Halfa. Experienced mechanics were procured to
direct them. Fifteen hundred additional men were enlisted in the Railway
Battalion and trained. Then the water question was dealt with.
The reconnoitring surveys had reported that though the line was certainly
'good and easy' for 110 miles--and, according to Arab accounts, for the
remaining 120 miles--no drop of water was to be found, and only two likely
spots for wells were noted. Camel transport was, of course, out of the
question. Each engine must first of all haul enough water to carry it to
Railhead and back, besides a reserve against accidents. It was evident that
the quantity of water required by any locomotive would continually increase
as the work progressed and the distance grew greater, until finally the
material trains would have one-third of their carrying power absorbed in
transporting the water for their own consumption. The amount of water
necessary is largely dependent on the grades of the line. The 'flat desert'
proved to be a steady slope up to a height of 1,600 feet above Halfa,
and the calculations were further complicated. The difficulty had,
however, to be faced, and a hundred 1,500-gallon tanks were procured.
These were mounted on trucks and connected by hose; and the most striking
characteristic of the trains of the Soudan military railway was the long
succession of enormous boxes on wheels, on which the motive power of the
engine and the lives of the passengers depended.

The first spadeful of sand of the Desert Railway was turned
on the first day of 1897; but until May, when the line to Kerma was
finished, no great efforts were made, and only forty miles of track had
been laid. In the meanwhile the men of the new Railway Battalion were
being trained; the plant was steadily accumulating; engines, rolling stock,
and material of all sorts had arrived from England. From the growing
workshops at Wady Halfa the continual clatter and clang of hammers and the
black smoke of manufacture rose to the African sky. The malodorous incense
of civilisation was offered to the startled gods of Egypt. All this was
preparation; nor was it until the 8th of May that track-laying into the
desert was begun in earnest. The whole of the construction gangs and
railroad staff were brought from Kerma to Wady Halfa, and the daring
pioneers of modern war started on their long march through the wilderness,
dragging their railway behind them--safe and sure road which infantry,
cavalry, guns, and gunboats might follow with speed and convenience.

It is scarcely within the power of words to describe the savage
desolation of the regions into which the line and its constructors plunged.
A smooth ocean of bright-coloured sand spread far and wide to distant
horizons. The tropical sun beat with senseless perseverance upon the level
surface until it could scarcely be touched with a naked hand, and the filmy
air glittered and shimmered as over a furnace. Here and there huge masses
of crumbling rock rose from the plain, like islands of cinders in a sea
of fire. Alone in this vast expanse stood Railhead--a canvas town of 2,500
inhabitants, complete with station, stores, post-office, telegraph-office,
and canteen, and only connected with the living world of men and ideas
by two parallel iron streaks, three feet six inches apart, growing dim and
narrower in a long perspective until they were twisted and blurred by the
mirage and vanished in the indefinite distance.

Every morning in the remote nothingness there appeared a black speck
growing larger and clearer, until with a whistle and a welcome clatter,
amid the aching silence of ages, the 'material' train arrived, carrying
its own water and 2,500 yards of rails, sleepers, and accessories. At noon
came another speck, developing in a similar manner into a supply train,
also carrying its own water, food and water for the half-battalion of the
escort and the 2,000 artificers and platelayers, and the letters,
newspapers, sausages, jam, whisky, soda-water, and cigarettes which enable
the Briton to conquer the world without discomfort. And presently the empty
trains would depart, reversing the process of their arrival, and vanishing
gradually along a line which appeared at last to turn up into the air
and run at a tangent into an unreal world.

The life of the strange and lonely town was characterised by a
machine-like regularity, born perhaps of the iron road from which it
derived its nourishment. Daily at three o'clock in the morning the
'camp-engine' started with the 'bank parties.' With the dawn the 'material'
train arrived, the platelaying gangs swarmed over it like clusters of
flies, and were carried to the extreme limit of the track. Every man knew
his task, and knew, too, that he would return to camp when it was finished,
and not before. Forthwith they set busily to work without the necessity of
an order. A hundred yards of material was unloaded. The sleepers were
arranged in a long succession. The rails were spiked to every alternate
sleeper, and then the great 80-ton engine moved cautiously forward along
the unballasted track, like an elephant trying a doubtful bridge.
The operation was repeated continually through the hours of the burning
day. Behind the train there followed other gangs of platelayers, who
completed the spiking and ballasting process; and when the sun sank
beneath the sands of the western horizon, and the engine pushed the empty
trucks and the weary men home to the Railhead camp, it came back over a
finished and permanent line. There was a brief interval while the
camp-fires twinkled in the waste, like the lights of a liner in mid-ocean,
while the officers and men chatted over their evening meal, and then the
darkness and silence of the desert was unbroken till morning brought
the glare and toil of another long day.

So, week in, week out, the work went on. Every few days saw a further
advance into the wilderness. The scene changed and remained unaltered--
'another, yet the same.' As Wady Halfa became more remote and Abu Hamed
grew near, an element of danger, the more appalling since it was peculiar,
was added to the strange conditions under which the inhabitants of
Railhead lived. What if the Dervishes should cut the line behind them?
They had three days' reserve of water. After that, unless the obstruction
were removed and traffic restored, all must wither and die in the sand,
and only their bones and their cooking-pots would attest the folly
of their undertaking.

By the 20th of July a hundred and thirty miles of line had been finished,
and it became too dangerous to advance further until Abu Hamed had been
cleared of the Dervish force. They were still a hundred miles away, but
camels travel fast and far, and the resources of the enemy were uncertain.
It appeared that progress would be checked, but on the 7th of August
General Hunter, marching from Merawi along the river bank, attacked and
took Abu Hamed--an operation which will be described hereafter. Work was
at once resumed with renewed energy. The pace of construction now became
remarkable. As much as 5,300 yards of track was surveyed, embanked,
and laid in a single day. On the 1st of November Abu Hamed was reached,
and by the banks of the Nile the men who had fought their way across the
desert joined hands with those who had fought their way along the river.

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