Battle of Abu Klea

The Battle of Abu Klea took place between the dates of 16 and 18 January 1885, at Abu Klea, Sudan, between the British Desert Column and Mahdist forces encamped near Abu Klea. The Desert Column, a force of approximately 1,400 soldiers, started from Korti, Sudan on 30 December 1884; the Desert Column's mission, in a joint effort titled "The Gordon Relief Expedition", was to march across the desert to the aid of General Charles George Gordon at Khartoum, Sudan, who was besieged there by Mahdist forces.

The place is generally known in British military records as Abu Klea, which arose as a contemporary British attempt at spelling its Arabic name, 'Abu Tͅuleiħ (أَبُو طُلَيْح).

Background
The British forces consisted of the 1,100 British of the Desert Column under Sir Herbert Stewart, against a Sudanese force of approximately 12,000 fighters. While the main British force (the River Column), led by General Sir Garnet Wolseley travelled by river from Korti to Khartoum, Stewart's column was to cut across country by column directly for Khartoum, since time was running short according to what little information was available from the garrison. The force was composed of four regiments of camel-mounted troops (Guards, Heavy, Light and Mounted Infantry), formed from detachments of the various regiments in Egypt and the River Column, and a detachment of the 19th Hussars, mounted on horses. Four light field pieces and a small Naval Brigade manning a Gardner machine gun completed the force.

Battle
As the Desert Column approached the wells at Abu Klea, they were set upon by a Mahdist force. Stewart formed the troops into a square, with the cannon on the north face and the Naval Brigade, with their Gardner machine gun, at a corner. Several officers and men of HMS Alexandra were killed at the battle. As the British advanced to outflank the Mahdist force, a gap had opened up towards the rear left corner of the square. The Gardner gun was run out to the left flank of the infantry square to provide covering fire. The square closed behind them leaving them exposed. Two companies of the Heavy Camel Regiment were also wheeled out of the square to support the Gardner gun. The Gardner gun had been tested and found very reliable in Britain, but had not been tested in a desert with loose sand getting into its mechanism. After seventy rounds were fired, the gun jammed and as the crew tried to clear it they were cut down in a rush by the Dervishes. Out of the forty men in the Naval contingent, Lieutenants Alfred Piggott and Rudolph de Lisle were killed along with Chief Boatswain's Mate Bill Rhodes and five other seamen and seven more were wounded. Lord Charles Beresford was 'scratched' on the left hand by a spear as he managed to duck under the gun. The weight of the rush pushed the sailors back into the face of the square. Several Dervishes got inside the square, but found the interior full of camels and could not proceed. The troops in the rear ranks faced about and opened fire into the press of men and camels behind them, and were able to drive the Dervishes out of the square and compel them to retreat from the field.

The battle was short, lasting barely fifteen minutes from start to finish. Casualties for the British were nine officers and 65 other ranks killed and over a hundred wounded. The Mahdists lost 1,100 dead during the fifteen minutes of fighting, made all the worse by the fact only 5,000 of the Dervish force were engaged. Among the Dervish dead was Musa wad Helu, one of the Mahdist chiefs. British national hero Colonel F. G. Burnaby of the Royal Horse Guards was killed by a spear to the throat. Frank Rhodes (brother of Cecil) distinguished himself when several horses were shot under him during the engagement, earning him a Distinguished Service Order. Gunner Alfred Smith fought bravely to save his officer, Lieutenant Guthrie, and was awarded a VC. Another action happened two days later at Abu Kru (the Battle of El Gubat) and the advance rescue force leader Sir Herbert Stewart was mortally wounded leaving command to the inexperienced leader Sir Charles Wilson (the column's intelligence officer) who was slower in organising his forces.

Aftermath
The column was too late to save Khartoum; the Mahdists captured it two days before the the column arrived, leading to the death of General Gordon. The British then withdrew from the Sudan, leaving the Dervishes of the Mahdi to rule Sudan for the next 13 years. The official public blame for this failure was left with Prime Minister Gladstone for delaying several months, to the considerable anger expressed in public of Queen Victoria, to authorize a rescue. Gladstone lost public confidence and much authority and within two months he resigned.

The battle was celebrated by the Scottish doggerel poet William McGonagall:

Ye sons of Mars, come join with me, And sing in praise of Sir Herbert Stewart’s little army, That made ten thousand Arabs flee At the charge of the bayonet at Abou Klea and so on for 19 stanzas

And also the battle and one of its notable participants is mentioned in the song "Colonel Burnaby", which has as its chorus: Weep not my boys, for those who fell, They did not flinch nor fear. They stood their ground like Englishmen, and died at Abu Klea

The rhymes in these poems show varying attempts at pronouncing "Klea" from the English spelling, and the rhyme with "fear" shows British English arhotic pronunciation.

More celebrated and of higher literary quality is the mention of the battle in verse two of Sir Henry Newbolt's poem "Vitai Lampada": …The sand of the desert is sodden red, Red with the wreck of a square that broke; The Gatling’s jammed and the colonel dead, And the regiment blind with dust and smoke. The river of death has brimmed his banks, And England’s far, and Honour a name, But the voice of the schoolboy rallies the ranks, “Play up! play up! and play the game!” "The wreck of a square" is a severe exaggeration; most of the dead were Mahdists. Newbolt's reference to the Gatling is incorrect as the British force at Abu Klea had the American Gardner machine gun, whose name scans just as well as Gatling (but perhaps he knew that in listening to the poem the name "Gardner" could have been misheard as "gardener"). The Royal Artillery unit which took part in the battle still exists today, re-numbered as 176 Battery, and has the honour title "Abu Klea", awarded in 1955 in recognition of the Victoria Cross won by Gunner Smith.