To the faithful loyalty of a dog he added the heart of a lion.
He loved his officer, and feared nothing in the world.
With the
introduction of this element the Egyptian army became a formidable
military machine. Chance or design has placed the blacks ever in the
forefront of the battle, and in Lord Kitchener's campaigns on the Nile the
losses in the six Soudanese battalions have exceeded the aggregate of the
whole of the rest of the army.
It was well that the Egyptian troops were strengthened by these valiant
auxiliaries, for years of weary war lay before them. Sir Reginald Wingate,
in his exhaustive account of the struggle of Egypt with the Mahdist power,
[MAHDISM AND THE EGYPTIAN SOUDAN, Sir Reginald Wingate] has described the
successive actions which accompanied the defence of the Wady Halfa
frontier and of Suakin.
The ten years that elapsed between Ginniss and the first movements of
the expedition of re-conquest were the dreary years of the Egyptian army.
The service was hard and continual. Though the operations were petty, an
untiring vigilance was imperative. The public eye was averted. A pitiless
economy was everywhere enforced. The British officer was deprived of his
leave and the Egyptian private of his rations, that a few pounds might be
saved to the Egyptian Treasury. The clothing of the battalions wore thin
and threadbare, and sometimes their boots were so bad that the soldiers'
feet bled from the cutting edges of the rocks, and the convoy escorts left
their trails behind them.
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