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Deputy-Assistant Adjutant-General: MAJOR WILLIAMS Troops: Two squadrons Egyptian Cavalry 2nd Egyptians XIVth Soudanese Two galloping Maxims Two mule guns One company Camel Corps. Camel transport was drawn from the Atbara and from the Blue Nile. The troops were conveyed by steamer to Duem, and concentrated there during the first week in 1899.
The power of the Mahdi was at this moment so firmly established, and his reputation based on the double claim of a divine mission and military success so high that it may be doubted whether the 10,000 men, of which the Hicks force consisted when the irregulars raised by the Governor-General had joined it at Duem, would have sufficed to overcome him even if they had been ably led, and escaped all the untoward circumstances that first retarded their progress and then sealed their fate.
The troops were all in the camp at Omdurman in June, but they did not reach Duem till September, and a further delay of two months occurred there before they began their march towards El Obeid. That interval was chiefly taken up with disputes between Hicks and his Egyptian colleagues, and it is even believed that there was much friction between Hicks and his European lieutenants.
The first radical error committed was the decision to advance on El Obeid from Duem, because there were no wells on that route, whereas had the northern route via Gebra and Bara been taken, a certain supply of water could have been counted on, and still more important, the co-operation of the powerful Kabbabish tribe, the only one still hostile to the Mahdi, might have been secured.
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