sides in our own ranks. Poor, misguided
Jehadieh and hocussed Arabs of the spacious and cruel Soudan! With
such troops disciplined and trained by English officers the policing
of Africa would be an easy affair. Try and try as they did, they could
not moving openly pass through our blasts of fire. Some few there were
who got by subtler means to within 600 yards of the British front and
200 yards from Maxwell's blacks, there to yield their lives.

Among the earliest, if not the first man, wounded in the zereba on 2nd
September was Corporal Mackenzie, of "C" Company Seaforth Highlanders.
About 6.10 a.m. he was hit in the leg by a ricochet. The wound was
dressed, and Mackenzie stuck to his post. At 6.30 a.m., when the
action was almost in full swing, as Private Davis and Corporal Taylor,
R.A.M.C., were carrying a wounded soldier upon a stretcher to the
dressing hospital, Davis was shot through the head and killed, and
Taylor was severely wounded in the shoulder.

Whilst our batteries were hurling death and destruction from the
zereba at the Khalifa's army, Major Elmslie's battery of 50-pounder
howitzers was battering the Mahdi's tomb to pieces and breaching the
great stone wall in Omdurman. The practice with the terrible Lyddite
shells was better than before, and the dervishes, even more clearly
than we, must have seen from the volcanic upheavals when the missiles
struck, that their capital was being wrecked. It must have been
something of a disillusion to many of them to note that the sacred
tomb of their Mahdi was suffering most of all from the infidels' fire.
Several of the gunboats assisted in the bombardment, but their chief
duty was to drive all bodies of the enemy away from the river. Major
Elmslie threw altogether some 410 Lyddite shells into Omdurman. Most
of them detonated, but there were a few that merely flared. It was the
fumes from these that imparted a chrome colour to the surrounding
earth and stonework. Why the Khalifa did not make greater use of his
artillery and musketry became more of a puzzle than ever when we saw
how well provided he was in both respects. He had a battery of
excellent big Krupps that were never fired, besides eight or ten
machine guns. As for rifles, his men must have carried at least 25,000
into action against us. Had they employed these in "sniping" as at
Abu Kru, the Sirdar would have had to march out and attack them.

The victory of Omdurman owed much to the masterly serving of