STORIES OF THE BATTLE—OMDURMAN. 201 At 6.30 a.m., when the action was almost in full swing, as Private Davis and Corporal Taylor, R.A.M.C., were carrying a wounded soldier upon a stretcher to the dressing hospital, Davis was shot through the head and killed, and Taylor was severely wounded in the shoulder.

Whilst our batteries were hurling death and destruction from the zereba at the Khalifa’s army, Major Elmslie’s battery of 50-pounder howitzers was battering. the Mahdi’s tomb to pieces and breaching the great stone wall in Omdurman. The practice with the terrible Lyddite shells was better than before, and the dervishes, even more clearly than we, must have seen from the volcanic upheavals when the missiles struck, that their capital was being wrecked. It must have been something of a disillusion to many of them to note that the sacred tomb of their Mahdi was suffering most of all from the infidels’ fire. Several of the gunboats assisted in the bombardment, but their chief duty was to drive all bodies of the enemy away from the river.

Major Elmslie threw altogether some 410 Lyddite shells into Omdurman. Most of them detonated, but there were a few that merely flared. It was the fumes from these that imparted a chrome colour to the surrounding earth and stonework. Why the Khalifa did not make greater use of his artillery and musketry became more of a puzzle than ever when we saw how well provided he was in both respects. He had a battery of excellent big Krupps that were never fired, besides eight or ten machine guns. As for rifles, his men must have carried at least 25,000 into action