WITH KITCHENER TO KHARTUM

This account begins with the background to the Sudan campaign – the rise of the Mahdi, Gordon, the state of the Egyptian Army, the construction of the Sudan Military Railway which was to play a highly significant part in Kitchener’s reconquest of the Sudan in 1898. There is a useful chronology of the chief events of the campaign from from the start of the advance in Feb, through the battle of the Atbara, the move on Khartum culminating in the battle of Omdurman on 2 Sep 1898 which brought the campaign to an end. The description of Omdurman itself, the Khalifa’s capital, after it fell to the Anglo-Egyptian force, is hardly an attractive one: Everything was wretched. And Foul. They dropped their dung where they listed; they drew their water from beside green sewers; they had filled the streets and khors with dead donkeys; they left their brothers to rot and puff up hideously in the sun. The strench of the place was in your nostrils, in your throat in your stomach. This is certainly a descriptive account as might be expected from a war correspondent