SOME EXPERIENCES IN EGYPT. 
63 
Well, after we got into Dabeeka we had some time to wait, and the next three 
weeks or so we were moving slowly up country expecting to come in contact with 
the Dervishes every day and never doing it until the 6th of April, when we event¬ 
ually moved out of camp and marched out to attack the Dervishes’ position which 
we did on the 8th of April. We marched along the river three miles and then 
out into the Desert through the night and arrived in front of the Dervish position 
in the morning. There we halted for about two hours and then advanced on to 
the position. I do not know that there is anything beyond one interesting par¬ 
ticular that I can tell you about the Battle of Atbara. I think about the most 
interesting thing I saw there was the Artillery fire with which the battle opened. 
I was on the extreme left of the whole line, and the guns were all massed 
together on the extreme right, and they were firing across the line, so to speak, 
into the Zareba and the effect of the shrapnel, so far as one could see, was some¬ 
thing beautiful. The Egyptian gunners might well be proud of the practice that 
was carried out that day. I never saw anything more beautifnl than the way the 
whole Zareba, a very long line, was covered from end to end with bursting shrap¬ 
nel. The actual result of the fire it was of course difficult to sav, because nobody 
got inside the Zareba to look till the infantry got in and they had fired by 
that time a good many rounds and it was difficult to say what was the result of 
the infantry fire and what was the result of the artillery fire; but judging from 
the way the shells were bursting it must have been very considerable (loud 
applause). 
The Chairman : I will now ask Major Young to speak who commanded the 
Egyptian Horse Artillery Battery. 
Major N. E. Young : Commanded Egyptian Horse Artillery Battery (on 
active service for the last two and half years) Sir Henry Brackenbury, ladies 
and gentlemen—I am afraid I must ask your indulgence which Major Abdy has 
kindly promised me as this is the first time I have ever tried to speak in public. 
What I have to say is of very little interest 1 am afraid to the Ladies, being 
purely technical matters. First of all, I wish to say how I found the very 
great necessity of a very light gun for Horse Artillery. We were con¬ 
stantly called on to make very long marches such as that march which 
Major Hunter-Blair has just described, which we covered in 73 hours, and 
we had to do it all at a walk. It was hot weather and very often we went 
long distances without water. Also in accompanying cavalry on the re¬ 
connaissances on the Atbara business, besides the fighting, we had to cover distances 
up to 25 miles without water in the hot sun, and it was very trying. We had 
eight horses in the teams, little horses. The gun that I had was one of 20 cwt. 
behind the teams ; it was a Krupp gun throwing a shell of about 9 lbs., but it 
got very heavy at the end of those days. I found that percussion shell of 
some kind was almost absolutely necessary to be used against savage horsemen, 
so quickly do they alter their formation and scatter or retire or move the moment 
you fire at them, so that once you loaded with time shrapnel, if they moved the 
shell had to be fired, and very often they were quite useless. With the new 
Maxim-Nordenfelt gun that will not be the case, because the shrapnel can be 
unloaded again, which I think is a very great advantage of these quick-firing 
guns. We found also the very great labour of running up. The men sometimes 
got extremely tired, and on the top of that Kerreri hill, the men found it very heavy 
work. It was very rocky ground and if we could have fired without running up 
so often we should have done more execution, because one has not many men to 
work the guns in the Horse Artillery, and they get extremely tired. A non¬ 
recoiling piece, at least it recoiled very little, with which the Field Batteries were 
provided, they at any rate felt the advantage of. There was no inconvenience from 
