A generous gazette of honours was published.  With a single exception, which it would be invidious to specify, all the officers of the Egyptian army were mentioned in despatches.  Sir H. Kitchener, Colonel Hunter, and Colonel Rundle were promoted Major-Generals for distinguished service in the field; a special medal—­on whose ribbon the Blue Nile is shown flowing through the yellow desert—­was struck; and both the engagement at Firket and the affair at Hafir were commemorated by clasps.  The casualties during the campaign, including the fighting round Suakin, were 43 killed and 139 wounded; 130 officers and men died from cholera; and there were 126 deaths from other causes.  A large number of British officers were also invalided.

CHAPTER VIII:  THE DESERT RAILWAY

It often happens that in prosperous public enterprises the applause of the nation and the rewards of the sovereign are bestowed on those whose offices are splendid and whose duties have been dramatic.  Others whose labours were no less difficult, responsible, and vital to success are unnoticed.  If this be true of men, it is also true of things.  In a tale of war the reader’s mind is filled with the fighting.  The battle—­with its vivid scenes, its moving incidents, its plain and tremendous results—­ excites imagination and commands attention.  The eye is fixed on the fighting brigades as they move amid the smoke; on the swarming figures of the enemy; on the General, serene and determined, mounted in the middle of his Staff.  The long trailing line of communications is unnoticed.  The fierce glory that plays on red, triumphant bayonets dazzles the observer; nor does he care to look behind to where, along a thousand miles of rail, road, and river, the convoys are crawling to the front in uninterrupted succession.  Victory is the beautiful, bright-coloured flower.  Transport is the stem without which it could never have blossomed.  Yet even the military student, in his zeal to master the fascinating combinations of the actual conflict, often forgets the far more intricate complications of supply.

It cannot be denied that a battle, the climax to which all military operations tend, is an event which is not controlled by strategy or organisation.  The scheme may be well planned, the troops well fed, the ammunition plentiful, and the enemy entangled, famished, or numerically inferior.  The glorious uncertainties of the field can yet reverse everything.  The human element—­in defiance of experience and probability—­ may produce a wholly irrational result, and a starving, out-manoeuvred army win food, safety, and honour by their bravery.  But such considerations apply with greater force to wars where both sides are equal in equipment and discipline.  In savage warfare in a flat country the power of modern machinery is such that flesh and blood can scarcely prevail, and the chances of battle are reduced to a minimum.  Fighting the Dervishes was primarily a matter of transport.  The Khalifa was conquered on the railway.