SUDANESE IRREGULARS 63 



the former, and learned from them to talk of " my 

 rights," when the best one can do falls far short of 

 the promises made to them on enlistment. 



I have had a great deal to do with them. In the 

 Western Bahr el Ghazal I had a body of 150 of them, 

 20 of whom only were from Khartum or enlisted 

 from the disbanded 14th Regiment which revolted. 

 This score, at heart right good fellows when taken the 

 right way, soon were broken of their bad ways. Then 

 with the remaining men, raw savages, their equal 

 would be hard to find. To No. 3 Company of the 

 Jehadia no work was too hard, no march too long. 

 Obliged (by order of the Mudir) to do without carriers 

 — unlike the regulars, who require as much transport 

 as a European soldier — with cast-off clothing, odds and 

 ends of equipment (rifle-slings used to be made from 

 the hides of the game I shot), with no water-bottle 

 save the gourd picked up in a village, these men were 

 wonderful. Sir Ian Hamilton mentions, as an almost 

 incredible fact, that 1000 Japanese marched 85 miles 

 in 48 hours. What the conditions under which they 

 did so were I do not remember ; so except for dis- 

 tance there can be no comparison. In the same time 

 a party of Jehadia marched about 90 miles through 

 fairly dense forest on a forest path through undulating 

 country, part of it a morass, with the necessary ser- 

 vices of protection out, and carrying the whole of 

 their transport (food, &c.) themselves. This was a 

 march which wound up a patrol of twelve days, during 

 which our average day's march had been over 20 

 miles. A fortnight later the same men marched 400 



