Battle of Omdurman

Background

Britain had occupied Egypt since 1882. In Sudan, Muhammad Ahmad, who proclaimed himself the Mahdi, raised a revolt against Egyptian rule, destroyed William Hicks's Egyptian army in 1883 and took Khartoum in January 1885, killing Charles Gordon. The Mahdi died months later and his successor, the Khalifa Abdallahi ibn Muhammad, ruled the Mahdist state from Omdurman. In 1896 the British government ordered a reconquest, to protect British interests, the Suez Canal among them, and to suppress the slave trade; for many in Britain it was also revenge for Gordon.

Kitchener, Sirdar of the Egyptian Army, advanced methodically up the Nile behind a military railway and a gunboat flotilla. He took Dongola in September 1896 and Abu Hamed in August 1897, and on 8 April 1898 broke the army of the emir Mahmud and Osman Digna at the Atbara. Reinforced with more guns, Maxims and three new gunboats, the army left Wad Hamed on 28 August.

The Khalifa chose not to defend the Shabluka gorge or the river approaches. Churchill records that he remembered that the Mahdists had won when they attacked and lost when they stood on the defensive, and so staked everything on a great battle on the plain of Karari, north of his capital. On 1 September the howitzers and gunboats shelled Omdurman and the dome of the Mahdi's tomb while the Ansar advanced and then halted for the night. Kitchener expected a night attack, which he feared most; it never came. Kitchener's men lay in a long arc around the village of Egeiga with their backs to the river, behind a thorn zariba and shallow trenches.

The armies

The Anglo-Egyptian army was two-thirds Egyptian and Sudanese. Hunter's Egyptian Division had four brigades: MacDonald's (2nd Egyptian; IXth, Xth and XIth Sudanese), Maxwell's (8th Egyptian; XIIth, XIIIth and XIVth Sudanese), Lewis's (3rd, 4th, 7th and 15th Egyptian) and Collinson's (1st, 5th, 17th and 18th Egyptian), with nine squadrons of Egyptian cavalry under Broadwood, eight Camel Corps companies, a horse battery and four field batteries. Gatacre's British Division had two brigades of four battalions under Wauchope and Lyttelton, two batteries and the 21st Lancers. The British carried the Lee-Metford magazine rifle, some with the new Dum Dum hollow-point bullet; the Sudanese still had the single-shot Martini-Henry. Ten gunboats under Keppel carried 36 guns and 24 Maxims; on land there were 44 guns and 20 Maxims.

The Ansar fought in divisions under their flags. Churchill's order of battle has Ali wad Hilu's green flag with about 5,000 men on the left; a centre of some 25,000 riflemen and spearmen under Osman Sheikh ed-Din and Osman Azrak; the Khalifa's bodyguard of about 2,000; Yakub's Black Flag division of 13,000, mostly sword and spear; 2,000 Danagla under the Khalifa Sherif's red flag; and about 1,700 Hadendoa under Osman Digna. Thousands had breech-loaders or muskets, but most fought with sword and spear. They had a few guns and fewer than 2,000 horsemen.

The battle

Dawn, 05.45–06.30. At about 05.45 the Lancers' patrols on Jebel Surgham saw the Ansar front, nearly five miles long, begin to advance across the plain. Ali wad Hilu and Osman Sheikh ed-Din swung north towards the Kerreri Hills; the centre came straight at the zariba; the 'White Flags' came over the southern shoulder of Surgham. Two Mahdist guns opened the battle; four batteries answered at about 3,000 yards, and the gunboats and the 32nd Field Battery hit the White Flags at 2,800.

The first attack, to about 08.00. Churchill says the Khalifa's plan was layered. About 15,000 men under Osman Azrak, drawn mostly from Osman Sheikh ed-Din's army, would assault the zariba. If they failed, Kitchener would leave his defences to march on the city, and the Khalifa's reserve behind Surgham and Ali wad Hilu's men in the Kerreri Hills would fall on him in the open from south and north. The frontal assault died under shell, rifle and Maxim fire about 800 yards from the British brigades and 300 from the Sudanese. Osman Azrak rode on towards the firing line until he was shot dead. By 08.00 the attack had failed, with more than 2,000 Ansar killed.

Kerreri. Osman Sheikh ed-Din's division, nearly 15,000 strong, fell on Broadwood's cavalry and Camel Corps on the Kerreri ridges. Broadwood fell back northwards rather than into the zariba. The Ansar outran the camels over the rocks and nearly cut them off against the river until a gunboat's Maxims and quick-firers broke up the attack. Broadwood then drew the division three miles north, out of the battle, at the cost of two horse-artillery guns, which were later recovered.

The 21st Lancers. With the front clear, Kitchener marched on Omdurman to reach it before the Ansar. The Lancers, sent to clear the ground ahead, charged what a patrol reported as 1,000 men. Osman Digna had posted 700 Hadendoa in a khor south-west of Surgham, and the Khalifa had sent four 500-strong regiments under Ibrahim Khalil to reinforce them. Fewer than 400 Lancers struck about 2,700 men. In two minutes they lost five officers, 65 men and 119 horses killed or wounded, then dismounted and fired with their carbines until the Ansar fell back in order to Surgham. Lieutenant Winston Churchill rode in the charge. It had no bearing on the main battle; he called it 'a private quarrel'.

MacDonald, about 09.15–11.30. At 09.15 the army was marching south in echelon, with MacDonald's brigade, given three batteries and eight Maxims, isolated at the rear. Yakub now launched the Khalifa's reserve, some 15,000 men under the Black Flag, against him from behind Surgham. MacDonald opened with his guns at 1,200 yards. Kitchener turned the army to face west: Maxwell's Sudanese stormed Surgham, Lewis and Lyttelton came into line, and Wauchope doubled back to fill the gap. When the 7th Egyptians wavered, Hunter steadied them with two companies of the 15th. Yakub and the Black Flag's defenders died where they stood.

Then Ali wad Hilu and Osman Sheikh ed-Din came down from Kerreri onto MacDonald's flank, too late to strike at the same time as Yakub. Between about 09.50 and 10.15 MacDonald moved his battalions one at a time to face the new attack. The IXth Sudanese wheeled into line without orders. The brigade lost over 120 men in twenty minutes and was down to about three rounds a man when the Lincolnshire Regiment came up on its flank and fired section volleys. About 400 Ansar horsemen charged and were shot down. At 11.30 Kitchener ordered the march on Omdurman resumed, remarking that the enemy had been given 'a good dusting'.

Aftermath

Churchill gives the Ansar losses as 9,700 killed, 10,000–16,000 wounded and 5,000 prisoners; Kitchener lost 482 killed and wounded. Many Ansar wounded were not simply left to die. Michelle Gordon's study of the photographs and soldiers' letters concludes that wounded and surrendering men were killed, that Sudanese soldiers took revenge on the Baggara, and that emirs were singled out. She quotes Colonel John Maxwell's private admission that he 'quietly made away with a bunch of Emirs'. Ernest Bennett, a correspondent at the battle, condemned the killings in the Contemporary Review; Bennet Burleigh defended Kitchener; Churchill agreed privately with Bennett but toned down his criticism in the 1902 edition of The River War.

The Mahdi's tomb had been shelled on 1 September. After the battle it was demolished, the Mahdi's body was dug up, the skull kept and the rest thrown into the Nile. The British public was more outraged by this than by the treatment of the wounded, and Kitchener had to explain himself to Queen Victoria. The tomb was rebuilt in 1947.

The Khalifa escaped south with Osman Digna, Osman Sheikh ed-Din and Ibrahim Khalil, and was killed at Umm Diwaykarat in November 1899. Days after the battle Kitchener went on to face the French at Fashoda. He was made Baron Kitchener of Khartoum. Anglo-Egyptian rule lasted until 1956. In Sudan, Karari holds a special place in memory, though, as Reem Abbas notes, Sudanese fought on both sides.

Wargaming it

Omdurman is two or three games on one table. The main battle suits battalion-level rules, with each Ansar flag division a command and turns of about 15 minutes, on a table running from the Nile and the zariba to Surgham and the Kerreri Hills. The British-Egyptian player has the guns, magazine rifles and gunboats; the Ansar player has numbers, ground and timing. Played straight, the first attack is a shooting gallery. It becomes a game when the Ansar player gets to run the Khalifa's real plan. Pin the zariba, draw the army out onto the march, then strike from Surgham and Kerreri together.

The key terrain is Surgham, which hid the Black Flag; the khor where the Lancers met Ibrahim Khalil; and the rocky Kerreri ridges, where camels were slower than men on foot. The gunboats need river rules and a limit on how many can be on hand. The Egyptian and Sudanese battalions should not be rated alike: the Sudanese were eager but fired wildly, and the 7th Egyptians wavered.

The Lancers' charge and Broadwood's retreat through the Kerreri Hills each make a good skirmish-scale game.

The what-ifs: the night attack Kitchener feared and never got; Ali wad Hilu and Osman Sheikh ed-Din attacking with Yakub, not after him; Broadwood obeying the order to come into the zariba; MacDonald less steady, or the Lincolns slower. Churchill thought the result could not have changed, only the cost. Let the players test that.

Maps and pictures