The March to Magdala

Zulla, January 19th.

This has been a week altogether barren of events. No move of any kind has been made, or is at all likely to be made, for another fortnight at the very earliest. The transport train is exclusively employed in taking provisions to the front, and this is a very tedious process. The mules and ponies carry nominally a burden of two hundred pounds each, the camels four hundred pounds; but there are very few indeed of the former capable of bearing their proper burden, and I think I may say not one of the latter. Were an attempt to be made to load them to their full weight, the result would be that one-third of the animals at least would break down in the first two miles. A great number of animals are in hospital; but a vastly-greater proportion are still able to perform a certain amount of work, but nothing like their full quota. These are afflicted with coughs and lung-affections, which will, sooner or later, bring them into hospital, and thence to their graves, the victims of overwork, when in a weakened state, from irregular and scanty supplies of food and water. The transport train is at present so essentially the corps upon which the movements of the army depend, that it will not be out of place if I explain at some little length the constitution and duties of the corps and its officers. The transport train is commanded by Major Warden, and is divided into fourteen divisions, each of which, when complete, contains two thousand animals and twelve hundred men, including drivers, farriers and smiths, saddlers, &c. Each division is commanded by a captain, who has two subalterns. He has four inspectors or sergeant-majors, two second-class inspectors, sergeants; five third-class inspectors, corporals – all European soldiers. He also has two second inspectors and five third inspectors – natives; and one hundred native soldiers, who are supposed to act as assistants.

It will be seen that each division is as strong as three cavalry regiments; it is composed entirely of drivers collected hastily from all parts, Egyptians, Arabs, Italians, Greeks, Hindoos, &c. – all men without the smallest conception of military discipline; and to manage this vast body of men and animals there are a captain and two officers, and eleven white noncommissioned officers. Were each division stationary, or did it move in a body together, the task would be comparatively easy; but it is scattered over the pass, in convoys of from 200 down to little parties of twos and fours, with officers’ baggage. The rules which have been drawn up for the regulation of the corps are admirable on paper, but utterly impracticable on service. Each native soldier is supposed to have control over twelve drivers and twenty-five mules, and is himself amenable to a head muccadum, or fourth inspector, he to a third, the third to the second, &c. “Each man in charge of a squad is to see that every animal brought in from duty is groomed, has the feet picked and cleaned, the provender put before him, the back well sponged with hot water.”“The saddles will invariably, when taken off the animals, be placed upside down to dry, pads towards the sun, and afterwards neatly piled up with the equipments affixed to each, in rear of each squad, dressing from the right of the line.” All these, and many similar rules, are admirable in theory; utterly impracticable in the field. A convoy arrives late at night. Its first task is to unload, and then to place food before the animals, and to water them if water is attainable; then drivers and animals lie down alike exhausted, and grooming, picking feet, and arranging equipments, dressing from the right, are alike unheeded. The officers of this corps have an almost impossible amount of work to get through. They are supposed to see their animals watered, to parade those which have to start, to see them fed, to see them groomed, to examine their backs, to see that the numerous convoys start at the right time, to look after the polyglot variety of drivers, most of them speaking Arabic, and other unknown tongues. Then they have to look after the native soldiers, to send in reports innumerable, and to keep office-books; they have to perform quartermaster duties and paymaster duties; they have the pay-sheets, family-payment rolls, returns of stores, equipments, defaulter-sheets, &c. to make out with their own hands, unless they take one of the few European inspectors from his work to act as clerk. “They are further responsible for the good order and condition of the cattle, and the due preservation and completeness of their equipments, and must see that each individual soldier, noncommissioned officer and inspector, does his work.” In addition to all this, at present they have to be on the pier, seeing the animals landed, and to inspect the putting together and fittings of the saddles and equipments, and the issue of warm clothing to the drivers.

This is a slight sketch of the duties which these three officers have to perform for 2000 animals and 1200 men, with half-a-dozen European noncommissioned officers to assist them. The inspectors, too, have been in many cases selected by the officers commanding regiments, without the slightest reference to their acquirements. Very many of them can hardly speak a word of Hindoostanee, and are of course perfectly useless. All this greatly augments the labour and difficulty of the officer. To say that these last are at work from morning to night is nothing. It is one incessant round of toil, from five in the morning till seven at night, and then reports and accounts. If the officers could but do their work their own way, each for his own division, they would do it – roughly perhaps, but effectually; but it is this constant demand for reports, and the changes which are constantly being made in the arrangements, which make the work far too much to be got through. The great mistake which was committed was the sending any Hindoo inspectors and soldiers unless all, or at any rate the greater part, of the drivers had been also Hindoo. Hindoo drivers would have obeyed Hindoo inspectors and soldiers; the Arabs and Egyptians, who form the great proportion of the drivers, laugh in their faces. A Hindoo, too, is not an inventive man – give him his orders, be quite sure that he understands them, and he will carry them out as long as all goes straight; but he is a very helpless man if things go wrong. These mule-drivers are the most utterly reckless of men. If a mule breaks down, they leave him and his load upon the road. If one breaks down in a narrow spot they will be a good hour before they come to the resolution to pull him out of the way and continue their journey. If a cart-wheel gives out, there it may lie. If an animal has a sore back, or has the disease, or any other malady, it will never occur to them to say a word about it until he falls helpless. Altogether, the drivers of the train are a very reckless lot, who essentially want looking after. The pay offered to the inspectors of the different classes is very good, and there would have been no difficulty in obtaining volunteers from English regiments throughout India, it being of course made a sine quâ non that they should have had some colloquial knowledge of Hindoostanee. There should have been at least fifty to each division, and then no convoy of over twenty mules would ever have gone out without a European to look after them. If one of the animals had been ill or lame the inspector would report it; if a mule dropped he would see that the burden was divided among the others; if a wheel had broken he would make some shift or other to patch it up. He should have carried side-arms, and would have seen that the animals kept together without straggling, and would have prevented any looting on the part of the natives. In fact, he would have saved his pay twenty times over. It is this utter recklessness on the part of the drivers which has contributed largely to the great mortality among the animals. They will work the poor beasts with the most terrific sore backs, until in their agony they can go no further; then they will turn them loose and steal another from the lines, so that the veterinary surgeons only find out that animals are ill when they are utterly beyond work. Were sore backs, lameness, and disease only reported at the right time, a few days’ rest and a little care would set most of the animals up; now, frequently the first intimation is received from someone who, riding along, has seen the poor beast lying down by the roadside dying.

There has been great discontent excited among these hard-worked officers of the transport train – some of whom have been at work in Egypt or India since August last; others of whom have borne the brunt of the worst time here – at the introduction of a number of other officers over their heads. The corps was constituted as a corps some months since, and the officers have been placed according to their regimental rank. According to all rule and precedent, every officer gazetted to the corps after that would hold rank – that is, local rank – according to the date of his gazetting into the corps. Instead of this, they have been placed according to their date of commission as captain, consequently the whole of the captains who have been at work here from the landing of the expedition – who have borne the toil and anxiety from the first – find two or three officers placed over their heads, and, in fact, if this procedure continue, will at the end of the campaign be six or seven lower on the list than they were before. This is the more inexcusable, as fourteen divisions were to be formed, and fourteen captains were gazetted, thus making the corps complete; and each man hoped, and had a right to expect, to have a division. Indeed, at first even the authorities recognised this; and these captains, who wished to come out to Abyssinia, but could obtain no other appointment, were gazetted as subalterns in the transport train; and as this was subsequent to the gazette forming the corps, it was naturally supposed by the other officers that they came in as junior of that rank. When, however, the first vacancy occurred in the captains, instead of the senior lieutenant obtaining promotion as he expected, one of these captain-subalterns was promoted to the vacancy; and, as he was an old captain, he actually not only jumped over the heads of all the subalterns, but over those of every captain who was here when he landed, and thus become second in command of the transport train. Since then other appointments have been made, and the original captains at present find themselves going gradually down instead of rising in their corps. This, after such work as they have gone through, is not a little hard, and is, I believe, quite without precedent in the service.

The arrangements for the position of the divisions have been so frequently altered during the past fortnight that I am quite unable to say where they are now posted. It was originally arranged by Captain Twentyman – at the time he was in command – that each division should have one station, and pass the stores from station to station. This was afterwards entirely altered, and it was ordered that each division should work from Koomaylo up to Senafe, and a captain was sent up to send the animals down for the purpose. Forty-eight hours afterwards another captain was despatched to entirely countermand these orders, and to make perfectly fresh arrangements, and these again have been altered during the last day or two. I need not say that these constant and needless changes add very greatly to the difficulties with which the officers of the train have to struggle. At present the stores from here to Koomaylo are carried by camels, and thence taken up by mules, oxen, and ponies from station to station.

Strangely enough, the through system, as it was called – that is, the sending animals right on for days with the same loads – was persevered in to the very end of the campaign, although it could be mathematically proved that the relay system was in every respect greatly superior. Captain Ellis, of the transport train, sent in a table to the authorities, which proved conclusively that the same number of mules would carry one-sixth more goods in a given time by the “relay” system than by the “through.” But the other advantages were even greater; an officer stationed at any given place had the men and animals of his division always under his eye. He would get to know both man and beast; he would soon find out which men did their work and which failed in it. The drivers and mules would each have its allotted place, and an infinity of confusion would be avoided; the arrangements for drawing forage for the animals, and food for the men, for cooking, &c. would have all been simple and practicable. Indeed, in every single respect, the relay system possesses immense advantages. It could not, of course, have been adopted beyond Antalo, but the saving of labour and life, the increase of efficiency, regularity, and discipline, from its introduction between Zulla and Antalo, would have been enormous.

I am unable to say how many animals are at present at work – probably nine or ten thousand, and this number, devoted entirely to the conveyance of commissariat stores as they are at present, would carry really large amounts forward, were it not that they carry their own forage, and were they of proper strength; but unfortunately a very large number of them have lung-disease, brought on by insufficient and irregular water and food. The number in hospital is terrible. There are at present about 700 mules and 700 camels in hospital, and the deaths are over 200 a-week. This is a terrible mortality; but were all the others in good working order, it would matter comparatively little; the worst is, that very many are poorly, and will fill the hospital ranks far quicker than death or discharge empty them. There are nominally ten veterinary surgeons to the force under Veterinary Surgeon Lamb, an officer of great experience; only five of the ten have arrived, and these are terribly overworked, as they have no staff, and have to inspect, prescribe, and administer medicines themselves. No time should be lost in filling up the ranks of the veterinary surgeons, and in giving them assistance, for when the numbers are complete they will have at least 100 such animals each to attend to, and these not trifling cases, but terrible sore backs, the last stages of lung-disease, and the local plague. The authorities appear to have thought the lives of the native drivers, officers, and non-commissioned officers, of no consequence whatever, for although there will be 280 Europeans and 18,000 native drivers when the corps is complete, there is not a single surgeon appointed for them! And this although the great part of the force will be stationed at small stations along the road, at which there will be no troops whatever, and of course no medical officer. The men are very liable to broken limbs and injuries from the kicks of the animals, and to illness from hardship and exposure; and yet to this numerous body of men, nearly equalling in number the whole of the rest of the expedition, there has not been a single medical man appointed!

The animals which appear to support the hard work and irregular food with the least deterioration are the bullocks. Of these a very small number indeed have been ill, and the deaths amount to only one or two weekly. They look in really good condition, and perform their work admirably. Indeed, the greater part of the mules and ponies look in fair condition, and they have certainly no lack of food, except at the up-stations. Very great credit is due to the commissariat department, who have done very well, and against whom one never hears a complaint. Since the first landing they have had an abundance of stores for the men; and no instance has, as far as I have heard, occurred of men being unable to obtain their proper rations. The Commander-in-chief is making every effort to strengthen the transport train, and has gazetted a number of unattached subalterns for it. He has also, I believe, applied to the native regiments here for volunteers for that corps; among the subalterns, I hear, there have been few, if any, answers in the affirmative. I understand that the European regiments have also been applied to for volunteers among the noncommissioned officers and men, to act as inspectors in the train. Among these, as among the officers, I hear the appeal has not been responded to. The work of the train is tremendously hard; and men fancy, and perhaps with reason, that they have less chance of going forward to the front in the train than they would have in their own regiments. There would have been no difficulty originally in obtaining any number of men from the regiments not coming to Abyssinia, as men would have volunteered for the very reason that makes the men here refuse to do so – namely, that they wished to see the war; in addition to which, as I have said, the pay in the train is really very good.

But, after all, what is most required by the transport train is a commanding officer of far higher rank than a major. The transport train is, as I have shown, a collection of fourteen divisions, each as numerous as three cavalry regiments, the whole equalling in men alone the rest of the expedition. To command this immense corps a brigadier-general of energy and standing should have been selected – a man who would see the work done, and at the same time insist on being allowed to carry out his plans in his own way, without interference from others. As it is, everyone has advice to offer to the transport train, and, while throwing the blame of everything that goes wrong upon their shoulders, men do little to assist them; think nothing of sending for transport animals, and then keep them waiting for hours; start at times which render it impossible that the animals can be watered; send in their requisitions at all sorts of odd times; and, in fact, show no regard whatever for anything but their personal convenience. Major Warden does his best, and works indefatigably; but it requires an officer of much higher rank and of great firmness and decision. The present would be a great chance for an officer to make himself a name. To have successfully managed so enormous a corps as the transport train under such extreme difficulties as have already, and will in future visit it, would be a feather in the cap of the most distinguished officer.

It is a moot question, whether it would not have been far better to have done here as in India – namely, to put the transport train under the commissariat; and the overwhelming majority of opinion is, that this would have been a very preferable course. In the first place, the commissariat have no responsibility whatever. They have simply to hand over at Zulla so many thousand bags of rice, sugar, biscuit, &c., and to say to them, “Deliver them in certain proportions at such and such stations along the road.” This done, their responsibility ceases. If there is a deficiency anywhere, they have only to say, “We handed over the stores at Zulla in ample time, and if they have not arrived it is no fault of ours.” I cannot but think that it would be far better for the commissariat to have a transport train of their own. In India they have proved over and over again that they are capable of carrying out their transport arrangements admirably. During the mutiny there was hardly a case occurred where the commissariat did not manage to have the food up ready for the men at the end of the day’s march. For the conveyance of military stores and baggage, the transport train should be perfectly distinct from that of the commissariat. So many mules and drivers should be told off to each regiment, and that regiment should be responsible for them. One of the officers and a sergeant or two would be told off to look after them, and see that they were properly fed, watered, and looked after. The transport-train officer with the division would be in charge of spare mules, and exchange them when required for regimental mules which might have fallen sick by the way; in addition to which, a certain proportion of spare mules for casualties might be handed to each regiment. In case of a halt of a few days only, the mules would remain in charge of the troops; but if the halt were likely to be prolonged, the mules would be handed over to the transport officer, and by him used to assist the commissariat, or upon any duty for which they might be required.2

The elephants have been handed over to the commissariat train. They walk backwards and forwards between this place and Koomaylo, and take large quantities of stores forward. The natives are never tired of watching the huge beasts at their work, and wondering at their obedience to us. This astonishes them, indeed, more than anything they have seen of us, with the exception of our condensing water from the sea. One of them was speaking the other day to an officer, who is thoroughly acquainted with Arabic. “You say you are Christians,” the Shoho said; “this cannot be, for you wear no blue cords round your necks. You are sons of Sheitan. You are more powerful than the afrits of old. They could move mountains, and fly across the air, but they could never drink from the sea, they could never change salt-water into fresh. You must be sons of Sheitan.”

No troops have gone forward this week, with the exception of two companies of the 25th Native Infantry, who have gone out to Koomaylo to furnish guards and fatigue-parties there. No troops have landed, with the exception of considerable numbers of the Scinde Horse. I was anxious to see this regiment, which I have seen highly praised in books, but which Indian officers with whom I have conversed on the subject have generally spoken of in terms the reverse of complimentary. I confess that their appearance is not imposing. The men are dressed in long green frock-coats, green trousers, black belts, and sabretasches, red sash round waist, and red turban. A picturesque uniform in itself; but the long coat has a clumsy effect on horseback. Their horses are, without exception, the very ugliest set of animals I ever set eyes on. A greater contrast between these men and horses and the smart 3d Cavalry at Senafe could hardly be conceived; and yet the men individually are a fine set of fellows, indeed are almost too heavy for cavalry. The great point which has always been urged in favour of the Scinde Horse is, that they carry their own baggage, and are independent of commissariat or transport train. This is, of course, a most valuable quality; and in India, where forage and provisions are purchased readily enough, it is probable that the regiment may be able to move about to a great extent on its own resources. Here it is altogether different, and the regiment have indented upon the transport train for just as many baggage-animals as other cavalry corps would require. The only use of the herds of ponies which they have brought with them is, to carry very large kits for the men’s use – a matter of no advantage whatever to the public service, and, on the contrary, involving great expense, as these ponies were brought from India at the public expense, and have now to be fed and watered. I shall probably have to return to this subject during the campaign, as this system is one which has been strongly advocated and as strongly attacked among Indian officers. The railway continues to creep forward, and the first engine made a trial trip to-day upon it. Although there is little more to do than to lay the sleepers into the sand and to affix the rails, there is at present only a mile complete. One dry watercourse has been crossed, and here iron girders have been laid; but these nullahs should be no obstacle whatever to the progress of the work, as parties ought to be sent forward to get the little bridges, or any small cuttings there may be, finished in readiness, so that no pause may be occasioned in the laying the line. The country, with the exception of these little dry watercourses, which are from three to five feet deep, is perfectly flat; and the railway might, at any rate, be temporarily laid down with great ease and rapidity, especially with such a number of men as are employed upon it. As the work is being carried on at present without either method or plan or judgment, it is impossible even to predict when it will be finished to Koomaylo.

It is a great pity that the matter was not put into the hands of a regular railway contractor, who would have brought his plant, gangers, and plate-layers from England, viâ Egypt, in three weeks from the date of signing the contract, and who would, with native labour, have had the line open to Koomaylo, if not to Sooro, ere this. I am not blaming the engineer officers who are in charge of the railway. They exert themselves to the utmost, and have no assistance in the way of practical gangers and platelayers, and have neither tools nor conveniences of any kind. Indeed, the actual laying down of a line can hardly be considered engineers’ work. An engineer makes the surveys and plans, and sees that the bridges, &c., are built of proper materials; but he is not a professed railway-maker, and is ill-calculated to direct a number of natives, who neither understand his language nor have a conception of what he is aiming at. It needed a body of thorough navvies, a couple of hundred strong, such as we had in the Crimea, to show the natives what to do, and to do the platelaying and skilled portion of the work themselves. When I say the railway has been, and will be, of no use to the advancing expedition, I of course except the line of rails down upon the pier and up to the stores, as this has been of the very greatest utility.3