General Sir F.R. WINGATE, G.C.B., G.C.V.O., K.C.M.G., G.B.E., D.S.O.
The whole history of the evolution of the Sudan is epitomised in the bare, sun-scorched Christian graveyard of Wadi Halfa. The sandy, high-walled enclosure is the common resting-place of four successive generations of British Empire builders: first, of soldiers who fell in the Gordon Relief Expedition; secondly, of men who died while building the railway which proved the key to Lord Kitchener's success; thirdly, of soldiers who perished in the war of 1898; lastly, of civil servants who have died while administering the country since its reconquest.
Staveacre and I touched a much earlier phase of history when we discovered and bought derelict French helmets and cuirasses of 1798 that must once have been the booty of some Mameluke. Who would wish for more romantic trophies?
The Turkish war added gravity to the Battalion's responsibilities in the Sudan. The idea at the time was to treat it passively, so long as the Turks did not molest British Moslems on pilgrimage to Mecca. The Arabs were known to have little sympathy with the Ottoman Turk and his pretensions to religious authority; so Jiddah was not to be starved by non-intercourse. The Turks themselves made such a policy impossible by their raid against the Suez Canal in February, 1915, and the inception of the Dardanelles Expedition marked the final victory of the school of thought which put its faith in an Eastern offensive. Some sort of offensive, whether against Gallipoli or Alexandretta or Haifa, had become perhaps a moral necessity.
We learnt in the Sudan how Turco-German machinations were necessitating a more active policy towards the Porte. I acted as prosecutor at the public trial of a Sudanese by general court martial in the court-house of Port Sudan in the second week of December, 1914. He had risen from sergeant's rank in a Sudanese regiment to be Captain of the Egyptian Coastguard in 1907. Cashiered in 1912, he served Enver Pasha in Tripoli, became an officer of Abdul Hamid's bodyguard, and afterwards a Major of the Baghdad Gendarmerie. Long before November, 1914, he had busily plotted for a rising in Egypt and the diffusion of German propaganda all over the Sudan. Under Enver Pasha's personal direction he disguised himself in a pilgrim's robe, styled himself Suleiman Effendi, and crossed the Red Sea from Jiddah with six pilgrims. One of these was an Howrowri Arab from Kordofan. The rest were Falatas or Takruri--_i.e._ pilgrims from British West Africa to Mecca--a class whose whole existence is spent on pilgrimage, brightened by spells of residence and family life at centres like Omdurman, and this man planned to pass as a pilgrim among pilgrims. The party was asked by the sheikh of the Takurna village, near Port Sudan, where they came from. They replied: "Omdurman." On the 16th November he, in beggar's clothes, sought an interview with a Bimbashi of the Egyptian Army, at Port Sudan. He told him and his adjutant that he had come on a secret mission from Enver to rouse the Sudan against the British and to ascertain native feeling at Port Sudan, Khartum, Sinja, Wad Medani, Kordofan and El Obeid.