The Guns of El Kebir (Simon Fonthill Series)

by John Wilcox

  Jenkins was cooking when Simon found him. He had purloined a two-man bivouac from somewhere, lit a fire at its entrance and foraged a large pot, the contents of which he was stirring with his bayonet, his bandaged arm tucked inside his shirt. He looked tired but unperturbed, doing his job without fuss. A rock, a solid rock. Simon felt a sudden surge of affection for his old friend.

  ‘How is the arm now?’ he asked.

  Jenkins gave a glum smile. ‘Stiff an’ achin’ a bit, but I’ll live. More’n you can say for the old CO, though, eh?’

  ‘Yes.’ Simon lowered himself down and sat cross-legged.

  ‘What did the General want? When do we get our Victoria Crosses?’

  ‘We don’t. Civilians can’t get army decorations, but we are going to be given six months’ extra pay – and so is dear old Ahmed.’

  Jenkins’s face broke into the familiar beam that seemed to stretch his great moustache to his ears. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘that’s more like it. Blimey! We shall be rich.’ Then the smile slowly left his face and he looked down into the pot he was continuing to stir. ‘So, what . . . er . . . are you goin’ to be doin’ now, bach sir?’ He continued staring down into the pot. ‘With Miss Alice, like?’

  ‘Ah yes.’ Simon fixed his gaze on Jenkins’s wounded arm. ‘Shouldn’t that arm be in a sling?’

  ‘They gave me one, but I can’t cook with it like that. What are you goin’ to do about Miss Alice?’

  ‘Yes.’ Simon looked up at the sky and then into the coals of the fire. ‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.’

  ‘Go on, then. I’m not goin’ anywhere.’

  ‘Quite. Yes. Well.’ Simon looked directly at his old friend at last in desperation. ‘Look. Do you think she will have me?’

  Slowly Jenkins withdrew his bayonet from the pot, licked the end and nodded in satisfaction. ‘Comin’ on well,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The stew. Comin’ on well.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  A deep smile spread across the Welshman’s face. ‘Of course she’ll ’ave you, man. She loves you, an’ in my opinion she always ’as. God knows what she was doin’ goin’ off with the Colonel in the first place, though you tried to explain all that to me. But the way’s clear now, isn’t it? I suppose you’re poppin’ off now to propose?’

  ‘Well . . . I don’t know. I wanted to talk to you first.’

  ‘Very kind of you, I’m sure.’ Jenkins dipped the bayonet back into the cauldron and resumed his stirring. Head down, he asked, ‘An’ when she’s said yes, where will you be livin’, then, when you’ve sort of settled down, like?’

  Simon frowned. ‘I don’t really know. But Alice will inherit what I understand is quite a large estate in Norfolk, so perhaps it will be there, although I would not fancy the thought of living on her late husband’s money, so to speak.’

  Jenkins snorted. ‘Well, it’d be poetical justice, if you ask me, after all he did to bring you down in the army, an’ after for that matter.’

  ‘I never thought of it quite like that, but I still don’t like the thought. You’d come with us, wherever we are, of course.’

  The Welshman looked up sharply. ‘What?’

  ‘You would come to live with us. Naturally. I would still want a servant – and a friend. I couldn’t do without you, you know that.’

  Jenkins shook his head. ‘No, bach sir. Very kind, I’m sure, but you wouldn’t want me ’angin’ about the place, gettin’ drunk an’ all that.’

  ‘Nonsense, and anyway . . .’ His voice tailed off.

  ‘Yes?’

  Discomfort sat on Simon’s face. ‘I hate talking like this when I don’t know if Alice will have me, but the fact is, I can’t quite see either of us – that’s Alice and me – just staying at home, farming all the time, even if we have children. I am jumping to conclusions, but knowing her, I think she will want to go on reporting again, if ever there was a good campaign to follow, although I wouldn’t be too happy about that. But I will feel restless if you and I can’t do a bit of scouting again for someone like Wolseley. Someone one can respect, you know.’

  A slow smile spread across Jenkins’s face. ‘Really? Ah well, bach sir, that could be quite interestin’ now, couldn’t it? Quite interestin’.’

  Simon rose to his feet and stood, still without certainty. Then his face lit up. ‘Ah. I knew there was something I had forgotten to tell you. It seems that someone hit Smith-Denbigh over the head on the eve of the battle and took his clothes so that he had to walk back naked through the lines.’

  Jenkins lifted his great eyebrows. ‘Good gracious me! What a thing to ’appen.’

  ‘Yes, I don’t suppose you know anything about it?’

  ‘Who? Me, sir? No, sir. Not me, sir. But it’s all very interestin’.’

  ‘Yes, well, I thought you ought to know.’

  ‘Thank you. Very interestin’.’

  Simon took a deep breath. ‘Dammit. I’m going to go and see Alice now. This very minute.’

  ‘Are you takin’ ’is sword?’

  ‘What? Oh no. Not quite appropriate just now, I think. She can have it later.’ He gulped and stood still. ‘Right. Right. Yes, well. I’m off.’ And he set off at last with a resolute step.

  Jenkins looked after him sadly. ‘Good luck. Bring ’er back for a bit of stew.’ But Simon did not hear.

  Author’s Note

  As with all the Simon Fonthill novels, I have woven fiction around a solid thread of fact. The fact, of course, is the British invasion of Egypt in 1882 to put down the insurrection of Colonel Arabi, and the subsequent campaign of Lieutenant General Sir Garnet Wolseley, culminating in the battle of Tel el Kebir. This war, this ‘little war’, led to the British occupation of Egypt, which lasted for the next seventy-four years and was ended by what the British called ‘the Suez Crisis’. This seminal event of 1956, which comprehensively removed whatever hope Britain still retained of being regarded as a global power, shared, in a deliciously cyclical manner, several of the main features of the Arabi revolt: it was caused by an uprising of a nationalist leader holding the rank of colonel in the Egyptian army; fears of the British losing control of the Suez Canal prompted the invasion; and the French initially played a part, though a less prominent one than the Brits.

  The Suez invasion of 1956, however, was a political and economic disaster for the British, while Wolseley’s campaign was undoubtedly a masterpiece of logistical and strategic planning. His night march and dawn attack on the Egyptian entrenchments was hailed by Hugh Childers, Gladstone’s Minister of War, as ‘the most perfect military achievement England has seen for many a long year’. Equally important was Wolseley’s handling of his cavalry after his victory. By sending it out in force to pursue the remnants of Arabi’s fleeing army to the very gates of Cairo, he was able to prevent any defence of that city and to enable ten thousand Egyptian troops to be peacefully disarmed and returned to their homes. Even the critics in Berlin, Paris and Vienna were forced to concede that the whole exercise had been meticulously planned and executed – so very different from the repetition in 1956, when the American-inspired threat of a run on the pound forced the British government into the humiliating position of having to abandon its occupation of the Canal Zone and withdraw its forces.

  In December of 1882, Arabi and seven of his chief lieutenants were tried in Cairo on charges of rebellion against the Khedive, found guilty and sentenced to death. As Wolseley had promised, however, the Khedive commuted the sentences to ‘perpetual exile’ and Arabi was transported to Ceylon, returning to Egypt in 1901, where nobody remembered him. I have taken Arabi’s arguments in his interview with Alice from his defence at the trial, as reported in several of the books contained in the brief bibliography in my Acknowledgements.

  My descriptions of the main battle and the skirmishes that preceded it are as accurate as my readings of respected contemporary and later accounts can make them. As far as I know, however, the tower in Tel el Kebir
was not blown up before the battle. It was certainly built in the time of Mohammed Tewfik, the Khedive of Egypt from 1879 – 92, and there is no record of it having been used in the battle. However, when I climbed to its top in 2006, I felt that it would have made an ideal spotting site for the Egyptian guns during the battle, and the fact that it is now known as ‘Orabi’s Tower’ makes me suspect that it played some role in the events of that time.

  Wolseley did take a huge risk in advancing his army on foot across the desert in the darkness before attacking at Tel el Kebir. The sky was overcast and the young naval navigator’s skill in celestial navigation was therefore negated. Compasses were used in the darkness by the officers who advanced ahead of each British section to lead the way, but as Simon feared, the long British line did bulge at its southern extremity and the first division in the north was accordingly late in attacking, although the Highland Brigade, immediately behind Simon, sustained the highest casualties in the battle. In this context, I must confess to exaggerating slightly the effect of the Egyptian artillery on the belated advance of the first division. I did so in order to give Covington a proper send-off. He has been such a strong character in the first five novels of the Fonthill story that I felt he deserved to go with a rather louder bang than that of, say, a sniper’s bullet.

  The incident I described briefly of a battery of the Royal Artillery driving its guns over the Egyptian defences in aid of the Jocks did occur, and the unit went down in Gunner history as ‘the Broken Wheel Battery’.

  Of course, Simon, Jenkins, Alice, Ahmed, George, Smith-Denbigh and Covington are all fictional characters, although a real-life Captain Coveney was wounded during the battle. In addition to Wolseley and Arabi, the other senior officers I have mentioned all existed, and Wolseley did make a feint to invade at Alexandria before slipping away to invade at Ismailia. A fake message was sent from that town, under the name of the traffic manager there, and was instrumental in forestalling any attack by the Egyptians during the landing of the British troops and supplies.

  A young woman as a war correspondent for a distinguished British daily newspaper? Yes, completely and utterly credible, for, as I have described in previous Simon Fonthill stories, there were precedents for English women as foreign correspondents for British national papers reporting from war zones in both the Franco-Prussian War and the first Anglo-Boer War of 1881. Determination, guts and competence existed in British womanhood long before the Suffragettes!

  JW