In the action the Dervishes probably had some eleven thousand
men killed and sixteen thousand wounded. The prisoners number about four thousand. The losses on our side were, we are thankful to say, extremely light. We had only two officers killed, Captain Caldecott and Lieutenant Grenfell, and one correspondent, Mr. Hubert Howard. The loss in British soldiers and non-commissioned officers was twenty- five. One native officer was killed, and twenty native rank- and-file. Our wounded were thirteen British officers and one correspondent (Colonel Rhodes), nine native officers, ninety- seven British soldiers, and two hundred and twenty-one native solders. The death of Mr. Hubert Howard, the second son of Lord Carlisle, who rode with the Lancers in their charge, and was later in the day killed by what was probably the last shot fired in Omdurman, has caused widespread regret. Gallant and high-spirited like all his race, he was as fine a type of the adventurous young Englishman as it is possible to find. A barrister by profession, he was by nature a knight-errant—if that phrase may now be used of one who had nothing theatrical or sensational in his nature—and wherever there was fighting he was irresistibly drawn. He served as a war correspondent in Cuba, and also in Matabeleland, where he
was wounded. In acting as the correspondent of the Times he was performing a very real public duty, and he died as worthily as any soldier on the field. The concluding lines of the striking poem by Mr. Newbolt which we print in another
column may be written over Hubert Howard's grave as truly as over that of any of our soldiers who fell at Omdurman :—
" ',Qui procul hinc'—the legend's writ— The frontier-grave is far away- ' Qui ante diem periit : Sed miles, sed pro patria."
Previous page
