He later reported to his mother that the pistol was “the best thing in the world.” Had he been armed conventionally with a cavalry saber rather than this German repeater, he might very well have been unhorsed and killed on that arid Sudanese battlefield.įorty-two years later, when Great Britain was engulfed in WWII, it was the force of a single personality that galvanized the British people to resist against all odds. In the midst of this battle, young Cavalry Lieutenant Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill killed or wounded three Dervishes at contact range with the Mauser C96 pistol his mother had purchased for him in that Birmingham gun shop. After a engagement that involved one of the last cavalry charges delivered by the British Army, the Dervishes were repelled. Four hundred British cavalrymen were subsequently surrounded by more than 2,500 Islamic infantrymen who had waited in concealment until the British were committed. In the resulting melee, the 21st Lancers, a British light cavalry regiment, advanced to clear the plain. The British enjoyed the advantage in artillery, modern rifles and machine guns but were still outnumbered two-to-one. These warriors were also more commonly known as Dervishes, and their fierceness was the stuff of legend. Kitchener was supported by organic artillery and a flotilla of 12 British gunboats moored nearby in the N ile River.Īrrayed against these 25,000 Commonwealth troops was more than twice their number of Islamic fighters. This battlefield is located outside the modern-day city of Khartoum in the central Sudan. The general deployed his men near the Sudanese village of Kerreri, about 11 kilometers north of Omdurman. Kitchener’s force numbered some 8,000 British regulars along with roughly 17,000 Egyptian and Sudanese troops.
Kitchener’s forces were arrayed against the army of Abdullah al-Taashi, the successor to the self-proclaimed Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmad. After numerous subsequent martial encounters within various English-held territories, the officer was posted to the army of General Sir Herbert Kitchener in the Sudan. The young officer found himself under fire for the first time in Cuba on his 21st birthday. He settled on an odd-looking handgun imported from Germany and purchased it for use on his subsequent military forays. In desperation, this lieutenant borrowed money from his mother and perused the wares at Westley Richards & Company in Birmingham, England, an esteemed gun shop of the era. In the waning years of the 19th century, a cavalryman’s primary weapon remained the saber, and this particular young soldier’s injury made effective use of such a heavy blade impractical. Where previously he had been one of the most adroit polo players in his regiment, from that point forward he was forced to play the game with his arm strapped securely to his side. While disembarking from the boat that had borne him to his new posting, the young man badly wrenched his shoulder. In October of 1896, an English cavalry officer was posted to Bombay, India. Sometimes the affairs of nations, and indeed the world, can turn on the most curious details.
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