Omdurman 1898: Churchill's Lancer Charge and MacDonald's Brigade Holds

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On September 2, 1898, Herbert Kitchener's Anglo-Egyptian army of about 25,800 men met the Khalifa Abdullahi's 35,000 to 50,000 Mahdist warriors outside Omdurman, the culmination of a reconquest of Sudan fueled by the memory of Charles Gordon's death at Khartoum in 1885. Kitchener had laid railway across the desert and brought gunboats up the Nile, and at Egeiga he placed his back to the river behind thorn zaribas. At 6 a.m. Osman Azrak led 8,000 men at the British center, and artillery opened at 2,750 meters, followed by Maxim guns, section volleys and the new expanding Mark IV bullets from the Dum Dum arsenal. No attacker got within 50 meters.

Kitchener then advanced on the city, sending the 21st Lancers ahead. Their charge, with 23-year-old Winston Churchill leading a troop, plunged into a hidden dry riverbed holding 2,500 infantry. Wheeling south, Kitchener left Hector MacDonald's brigade of about 3,000 Sudanese and Egyptian troops exposed, and 15,000 Mahdists poured from Surgham Hill. MacDonald re-formed under fire into an L and then an inverted V and held until help arrived. By 11:30 roughly 12,000 Mahdists were dead against 47 or 48 on the Anglo-Egyptian side.

An eyewitness wrote that it was not a battle but an execution, with bodies spread evenly over acres.
Three Victoria Crosses went to Lancers who pulled comrades out of the riverbed melee.
Ernest Bennett and Bennet Burleigh fought in print over reports that wounded Mahdists were killed on the field.
Churchill toned down his criticism of Kitchener between the 1899 and 1902 editions of The River War.
Theaters showed faked combat films, and Mahdist poets' writings were destroyed or burned by their own authors.

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