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Updated: June 1, 2025
In half an hour, the troops went forward again. The field presented a terrible appearance, being thickly dotted with dead, from the Surgham Hill across the plain; and round, by the Kerreri Hills, to the spot where Macdonald's brigade had made their stand.
Wave followed wave of men, they surged together, inviting greater disaster, but always striving to get nearer us. Their front had covered the whole slopes of Jebel Surgham and their left overlapped part of the Khalifa's right. Death was reaping a gigantic harvest. Hecatombs of slain were being spread everywhere in front. The fight was terrible, the slaughter dreadful.
Some there were who thought that Jebel Surgham should have been made the central stronghold of our camp, and that the army ought to have slept behind it on the previous night. The wisdom of that suggestion was most doubtful. Where we were the gunboats could more easily cover the whole position.
Believing that they could catch the horsemen in the rocky ridge alongside of Gebel Surgham, the Dervishes came forth from their capital in swarms, pressed them hard, and inflicted some losses. Retiring in good order, the cavalry drew on the eager hordes, until about 6.30 A.M. the white glint of their gibbehs, or tunics, showed thickly above the tawny slopes on either side of Gebel Surgham.
On their arrival, they took up a position whence they could shell the line by which the Dervishes were advancing, and which would bring them apparently five or six hundred yards west of Surgham Hill. The Lancers at once started forward to cover the left flank of the position. In a few minutes they reached Surgham Hill, and joined the Egyptian squadron there.
Each brigade, formed in four parallel columns of route, which closed in until they were scarcely forty paces apart, and both at deploying interval the second brigade nearer the river, the first almost in line with it and on its right hurried on, eager to see what lay beyond the ridge. All was quiet, except for a few 'sniping' shots from the top of Surgham.
The Dervish left began to stretch out across the plain towards Kerreri as I thought, to turn our right flank. Their centre, under the Black Flag, moved directly towards Surgham. The right pursued a line of advance south of that hill. This mass of men were the most striking of all. They could not have mustered fewer than 6,000. Their array was perfect.
Not long after eight o'clock the Khalifa, seeing the hopelessness of attempting to cross the zone of fire around el-Gennuaia, now thickly strewn with his dead, drew off the survivors beyond the ridge of Gebel Surgham; and those who had followed Broadwood's horse also gave up their futile pursuit, and began to muster on the Kerreri ridge.
Occasionally the flotilla flashed their search-lights upon Jebel Surgham, and swept the scrub and desert in front of the troops. The enemy's scouts, however, were never disclosed in the radii of the electric beams.
In an instant the Sirdar, who stood near the right of Wauchope's brigade, passed an order for the three batteries on the left Major Williams', Stewart's, de Rougemont's to open fire. The guns were laid at 2800 yards, a range the delight of gunners, and sighted to the west of Surgham, where the black flag and the largest mass of the enemy were. The hour was 6.35 a.m.
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