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Updated: May 29, 2025
The enemy fought stubbornly, in the village; but were driven out with only some half-dozen casualties on our part. Thirty sheep were found in the village, and they were a Godsend, indeed, to the troops. As in every other place, too, numbers of Lee-Metfords, Martinis, and Sniders were found. Treda was burnt by the rear guard.
Iris, slim and boyish in her male garments, was dwarfed by the six-foot sailor, but her face was blood-stained, and Jenks wore a six weeks' stubble of beard. Holding their Lee-Metfords with alert ease, with revolvers strapped to their sides, they presented a warlike and imposing tableau in their inaccessible perch. In the path of the emissaries lay the bodies of the slain.
But most astonishing was the quantity of ammunition-cartridges for Lee-Metfords, for Winchesters and Marlins, for revolvers from thirty-two calibre to forty- five, shot-gun cartridges, Joan's two boxes of thirty-eight, cartridges of prodigious bore for the ancient Sniders of Malaita, flasks of black powder, sticks of dynamite, yards of fuse, and boxes of detonators.
Even the dum-dum does not invariably "set up" on striking an object. For the Omdurman Campaign a new hollow-nosed bullet was issued for the Lee-Metfords. So far as I was able to judge, it generally spread on hitting, and made a deadly wound, tearing away bone and flesh at the point of exit.
In the face of a fire that mowed down battalions and smashed great gaps into their columns they flinched not nor turned. Noticing the enemy's persistency, the Sirdar sent bidding General Lyttelton try them with long-range volleys from the Lee-Metfords. Major Lord Edward Cecil took the message, and Lieutenant H. M. Grenfell got the range from the gunners.
They gave the whole men the water out of their own bottles; they gave the wounded the blankets off their own saddles and slept themselves on the naked veldt. They were short of transport, and they were mostly armed with Martinis; yet they gave captured mules for the hospital panniers and captured Lee-Metfords for splints.
During the day his Lee-Metfords, at ninety yards' range, might be trusted to keep the place clear of intruders. But at night that was the difficulty.
Such heavy cannon as the Long Toms were of no use to us now. Hence-forward we were to live on the produce of the surrounding country, as there was no basis from which we were to operate. Besides this, the khakies very kindly made over some of their provisions, arms, and ammunition to us in a skirmish or battle, so that afterwards we had more Lee-Metfords than Mausers in our possession.
The climb became now more and more difficult; and when we had nearly reached the top of the mountain, there was a huge slab of granite as slippery as ice, and here man and horse stumbled still more, and were continually falling. We were, as I have said, in view of the enemy, and although out of reach of the Lee-Metfords, were in range of their big guns! I heard burghers muttering:
They were torn and thrown about as puppets before the hurricane of shell fire, and laid in windrows like cut grain before the hail of the Lee-Metfords. Twelve hundred short yards away, Surgham's bare slopes were being literally covered with corpses and writhing wounded. In sheer blundering brutishness, the ferocious dervishes tried to stem the storm.
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