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Updated: June 10, 2025
Passing over smaller engagements in which the Egyptian troops met the forces of the Mahdi, we come to one crowning disaster on the 5th November 1883, when an Egyptian army, numbering something like 12,000 men, under the command of Colonel Hicks, a retired Indian officer, was massacred on the road between Khartoum and El Obeid. No blame can be attached to the commander on this occasion. Mr.
But soon strange rumours began to run about the bazaars of Omdurman of buried weapons and whispers of revolt. For a few days a vague feeling of unrest pervaded the native city, and then suddenly on the 12th of November came precise and surprising news. The Khalifa was not retreating to the south or to the west, but advancing northward with Omdurman, not El Obeid, as his object.
There was a stout defence of a detached post at Ibn Obeid. A company of the 2/10th Middlesex Regiment had been sent on to Obeid, about five miles east of Bethlehem, to watch for the enemy moving about the rough tracks in that bare and broken country which falls away in jagged hills and sinuous valleys to the Dead Sea.
The wells were far apart, and Dervish bands were certain to be moving along the line. It seemed to me that El Obeid was the safest place to go to. True, it was in the hands of the Mahdists, but doubtless many wounded would be making their way there. Some, doubtless, would have wives and children.
If questioned, my story will be that my father was at El Obeid, and that the Governor there is, by the Khalifa's orders, holding his force in hand to put down any outbreaks there may be in the province; and that, wishing to fight against the infidel, I have come on my own account.
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.
You can treat us as friends. You do not even take our arms, and we can ride into El Obeid with our heads high." "It will be good for the Soudan," Abu said. "Your father told me, often, how peace and prosperity would return, were you ever to become our masters; and I felt that his words were true.
I may say that the reasons he has given me for not having hitherto used the family name are, in my opinion, amply sufficient; involving, as they do, no discredit to himself; or his father, a brave gentleman who escaped from the massacre of Hicks's force at El Obeid; and finally died, with Colonel Stewart, at Hebbeh." "I seem to know the name," Colonel Lewis said. "Gregory Hilliard Hartley!
All the warlike operations of Mohammedan peoples are characterised by fanaticism, but with this general reservation it may be said that the Arabs who destroyed Yusef, who assaulted El Obeid, who annihilated Hicks fought in the glory of religious zeal; that the Arabs who opposed Graham, Earle, and Stewart fought in defence of the soil; and that the Arabs who were conquered by Kitchener fought in the pride of an army.
But that hope left me, as I grew weaker and weaker, and I have only prayed for strength enough to reach the well, to drink, and to die there. "'Sleep now, I said. 'Be sure that I will not leave you. Is it not our duty to help one another? When the heat is over, we may go on. I have a horse, here, which you shall ride. How far is it from the well to El Obeid?
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