Anniversaries
British technology wins the day at the battle of Omdurman
It was dawn on 2 September 1898, and I in Omdurman, the young Lieutenant Winston Churchill was breathing hard with excitement.
After almost two decades of war in the Sudan, Herbert Kitchener’s British army had finally reached -hartoum. Against them, stood tens of thousands of Dervish swordsmen. The enemy army, remembered Churchill, was a spectacular sight. Stretching “four miles from end to end... this mighty army advanced swiftly. Above them waved hundreds of banners, and the sun, glinting on many thousands of hostile spear points, spread a sparkling cloud.”
For Churchill, the highlight of the battle was undoubtedly the swashbuckling cavalry charge of his 21st Lancers. Many of his fellows were unhorsed, and were forced to defend themselves against a tide of enemy fighters. Churchill himself was almost surrounded, and only escaped by blasting his way out with his Mauser pistol.
But the real story was the triumph of British technology. Although Kitchener’s men were outnumbered, they had Maxim machine guns and dum-dum bullets. Armed with older weapons, the Dervishes did not stand a chance. Within hours, some 10,000 of them were killed, while Kitchener lost just 48 men. “It was not a battle,” wrote one observer, “but an execution.” Afterwards, even Churchill shook his head at the sight of the fallen. “There was nothing dulce et decorum about the Dervish dead,” he wrote. “Yet these were as brave men as ever walked the Earth.”