STANDING PROUD

It's good to attend a wedding now and again. It makes you dig out your morning dress, check for moth holes and find if it's still in fashion. Your wife looks upon the celebration of nuptials as a good excuse to plunge her account at Harrod's or Harvey Nick's into deep trouble. It makes you do lots of things out of the normal routine and, although you may grumble at the cost of a present for the bride and groom - the former, a pimply faced horror when last you saw her, and the other - never before the wedding day, you get a glow when both greet you like a favourite aunt and uncle.
It was like that when Nesta, my wife, and I were invited to a wedding of the daughter of some old friends. The ceremony was to take place in Woking, which meant an overnight stay in a reasonably adjacent hotel. We found one in a picturesque village and resolved to return and spend more time there one day.
With a few hours in hand, we ambled slowly along the A319 in the direction of Woking. Suddenly, I let out a gasp and turned my head sideways, causing the car to cross the white line in the middle of the road. I was back on track within a second or two but Nesta said: "What was that about?" I did not give her a direct answer, but looked for somewhere to turn around. A few minutes later I was driving into a place which bore the sign: 'GORDON'S SCHOOL'. "What are we doing here?" she asked. I drew up alongside a life-size statue of a British Army officer wearing a 'fez' sitting cross-legged on a heavily caparisoned camel. "That's why," I said. "It's General Charles Gordon, Governor General of the Sudan. The last time I saw the statue was when I was with the South Wales Borderers in Khartoum in 1949."
An obliging house master came along and confirmed it was the same statue I had seen forty four years previously. He explained that three years after the Sudan had been given its independence, the statue was brought home and re-erected at Gordon's School on 2nd April 1959. We sat in the car for a while; Nesta occupied herself with The Daily Telegraph crossword while I mused about happy days long ago in Africa.
I was a 22 year old officer when I travelled with the 1st Battalion South Wales Borderers from Cyprus aboard the SS 'EASTERN PRINCE' through the Suez Canal and down the Red Sea to Port Sudan. Any romantic ideas I may have had about the desert were dispelled when I saw mud-hut hovels which comprised the township and ugly piles of (Welsh?) coal used to fuel locomotives of Sudan Railways. The heat, even at that time of the year (April), was sticky and oppressive. Further inland, in Khartoum, we would find it hotter but less humid.
The journey from Port Sudan to Khartoum took about eighteen hours with one night aboard the train. Desert met the eye for a full 360 degrees, broken only by the mighty River Nile and the metal track. It was a landscape such as I had never seen before.
Every window was crowded as we approached Khartoum. Desert gave way to cultivated land irrigated by centuries-old methods of drawing water from the river. Groves of date palms provided contrast in colour to sand and gravel while crowds of natives dressed in long white 'night-shirts' raced along the track beside us.
At last, we pulled into Khartoum railway station where we were greeted by a Guard of Honour and the Regimental Band of the Sudan Defence Force. That moment imprinted itself on my mind for all time: rigid ranks of immaculately clad black soldiers wearing scarlet flower-pot 'taboosh' hats, khaki-drill smocks, shorts and long black puttees above leather sandals. This was a template of the standard for which we should aim. The band, equipped with conventional instruments, played Arab music. It was a new sound to most of us and, although military in character, it had an exotic lilt and sensuous rhythm which stirred my blood. In the months ahead, I would spend time with these fine askaris on the borders of Kenya, Ethiopia and Uganda. It was the beginning of my respect for Africa and Africans which has been a part of me from then to the present day.
A queue of Army trucks was waiting outside the station to take us to our new home in South Barracks. It was no more than a ten minute ride to the sprawling mass of stone buildings built to the same style as pre-war Indian barracks providing soldiers' accommodation, offices, messes, a parade ground, wide and well watered flower beds, tennis courts and a large swimming pool ringed by tall date palms. Company sergeant majors were soon bawling commands and letting soldiers know that if they expected a 'cushy billet' in Khartoum, they had another thought coming!
Ivor Jarman, the Quartermaster, who arrived three weeks ahead of the main body, had produced a plan of officers' accommodation and it was the first thing I saw when I entered the wide portico of the mess. My batman gave a whistle of astonishment when he saw the huge room with a high ceiling that his officer (a mere lieutenant) had been allotted.
That evening, a few of us took a taxi and drove down Kitchener Avenue to the Grand Hotel. We already felt we had entered a time warp, but we were transported even further into the 19th century when our taxi driver pointed towards one of General Kitchener's gun-boats, the 'MELIK', which he had used on his campaign of 1896-8, tethered to a tree alongside the Blue Nile. Further along the road we passed the Governor General's palace re-built on the site of an earlier palace occupied by a previous governor, General Charles Gordon, who was killed there in 1885.
The 'Grand' was, at that time, one of the great hotels of the world. It stood at the junction of the two Niles: the White Nile, with its source in Lake Victoria and the Blue Nile, which started its long journey to Egypt in the Ethiopian highlands. We stood on the bridge spanning the confluence and watched the two shades of water merge into one mighty torrent that flowed north for 1,500 miles towards the land of the Pharaohs and the Mediterranean.
We had a meal in the hotel and I sampled for the first time the national dish - 'ful sudani'. The main ingredient of this delightful platter is ground-nuts, but the delicate use of spices, which provide a subtle and mysterious flavour, make its reproduction in a cold climate almost impossible. A cool breeze blew in from the river and we watched from the veranda as the stern paddle-wheel steamer from Atbara tied up at the jetty.
Our voluble taxi driver was waiting to take us back to South Barracks and this time he drove along Gordon Avenue; another broad avenue running parallel to Kitchener Avenue and the waterfront. The battered old taxi had a flimsy framework that held some canvas over our heads, otherwise it was open to the elements. We were in high spirits but quite unprepared for the magnificent sight which lay before us. When we were half way down Gordon Avenue, the moon appeared through a gap in the clouds and illuminated a statue of a camel with its rider sitting cross legged on a heavily ornamented saddle.
The driver stopped alongside the plinth and gave us a history lesson: "This is General Charles Gordon," he said. "He became Governor of Equatoria (Southern Sudan) in 1873 and stopped the slave trade." He went on to explain that Gordon became the Governor General of the whole of the Sudan in the service of the Khedive of Egypt in 1877. He visited every part of his desert domain and was respected for his wise counsel and firm leadership. Despite his strong Christian beliefs, he was not averse to dealing harshly with those he found guilty of breaking the law. He often hanged offenders for serious crimes.
In 1880, Gordon's talent for sorting out problems which defeated politicians was recognised; he was sent to China where he single-handedly defused a situation that could have led to war. In 1881, he was posted to Mauritius and promoted to Major General. He then went to Jerusalem for a year before being recalled to the Sudan to supervise the evacuation of Egyptians from their expensive and ill-fated attempt to rule Sudan as a colony. To this end, he was appointed Egyptian Governor General of the Sudan but answerable to the British government as well.
Gordon returned to London in 1884 to warn the British government about the danger created by a mystical cleric of Islam known as El Mahdi. Prime Minister Gladstone had no intention of getting involved in another war in Africa and sent Gordon back to Khartoum with instructions to sort the problem out by himself. Later that year, the Mahdi spread his influence over huge areas of the Sudan even to the gates of Khartoum where Gordon was forced to prepare siege emplacements around the town. As an officer of the Royal Engineers with a professional knowledge of defence works and pyrotechnics, he produced many novel and effective measures to delay the inevitable entry of the Mahdi's warriors.
After ten months of ever increasing distress among the 34,000 soldiers, families and civilians of Khartoum, who resorted to eating every living thing they could find, the defences were breached and the Mahdi's forces entered the town.
General Gordon, by some accounts, had returned to his quarters in the palace. When he heard the sound of the enemy in the courtyard, he faced them in full dress on the outside staircase; he offered no resistance when they climbed the stairs and stabbed him to death. Gordon's head was cut off and delivered to the Mahdi in Omdurman, on the other side of the river. Two days later, the thunder of guns and sharp cracks of rifles were heard and two steamers came into view. They were carrying British troops who had travelled up the Nile to try and rescue Gordon. When it became obvious that Khartoum had fallen, they turned around and headed back down the river.
The British government was hard pressed to account for the abandonment of the nation's greatest hero; Queen Victoria was inconsolable and led the country in mourning. It was not until 11 years later in 1896 that a task force commanded by General Sir Herbert Kitchener (later Earl Kitchener of Khartoum) forced a passage up the Nile and re-established British presence in Khartoum. From then until 1956 the Sudan enjoyed an age of political stability and wealth from the export of its natural resources, in the main - cotton.
Even though the Sudan was known as an Anglo/Egyptian condominium, there had been little Egyptian influence there since 1884 and Governor Generals had always been British.
Since 1956, when independence was granted, the Sudan has withdrawn into its shell and a new dark age has settled upon its people. Various regimes, controlled from Khartoum, have created genocide and have brought misery to the negroid people of the south. Arabs of the north have been forced to accept the harsh rules of Islamic fundamentalism and the once prosperous economy has stagnated through mismanagement.
But back to Gordon's statue and the remarkable events that took place before it was erected in Khartoum in 1903.
It is the work of Mr Onslow Ford RA and is a replica of the original statue unveiled by the Prince of Wales (later - King Edward V11) in Chatham, the home of the Royal Engineers, on 19th May 1890. The 'Khartoum' statue was originally sited in St. Martin's Place, London where the statue of Nurse Edith Cavell, executed by the Germans during World War One, now stands. It was unveiled there in July 1902 by the Duke of Cambridge.
Lord Kitchener and Lord Glenesh (The Morning Post) thought this was the wrong place and campaigned successfully to have it transported to Khartoum. In October 1902 it was put aboard the SS 'CEDARDINE' and began its journey to Egypt. Within twenty four hours the 'CEDARDINE' was rammed by another ship in the Thames estuary, and sank. Gordon and his camel rested ignominiously in the mud forty feet below the surface until the following day when it was raised and placed aboard the SS 'LESBIAN' (Queen Victoria, now dead, would not have been amused!).
Once out of British waters, the journey to Alexandria was uneventful but when the statue began the next stage of its journey to Khartoum, on a smaller boat, it sank again. Finally, it arrived in Khartoum and was erected on a low plinth. Lord Kitchener objected and gave orders for a much higher stone plinth to be provided. He might well have been thinking about the time when his own statue would be erected a mere hundred yards away from that of General Gordon. This happened sooner than he could have imagined, following his death in 1916 when he was drowned aboard HMS 'HAMPSHIRE' after she hit a German mine off the Orkney Islands.
General Charles Gordon would have been proud to know that his statue has found a permanent home in Woking at the school which carries his name. It was founded by public subscription at the express wish of Queen Victoria in 1885, the year after his death. Since then, the school has had the reigning monarch as its patron. To this day, it retains its tradition of being organised on public school lines with a strong military influence. On ceremonial occasions, its pupils wear the unique Gordon uniform of blue tunic and trews for boys and blue tunic and kilt for girls. They make an impressive sight when they march behind their sixty strong band.

It was time to leave the school and drive a few miles further to Woking for the wedding. The bride looked beautiful, the groom was handsome and our old friends were much the same as when we last saw them. The champagne was ice cold and the food superb, but as we drove home my thoughts were of General Charles Gordon and my days as a young officer in Khartoum.