Mehmeetma, sleeping little desert town
with mud-brick walls baked camel brown
FOR QUEEN AND PLANET! cheer the soldiers of the Crown
our mud-brick walls they have come to tear down??
TO THE WALLS! respond our imams of renown
war-bands and jehadis now gather round
enemy boots and cavalry raise choking dust yellow brown
boiler stoked coal smoke steam carriage fires round after round
behind those walls women children jehadis hunker down
the bravest of the brave war-bands charged the soldiers of the Crown
and "victory" is ours...even though those walls came tumbling down
Mehmeetma, again sleeping little desert town
-- Joel "Kipling" Sams
Lead elements of the Desert Column under Colonels Finnley and Samuels had been loitering outside the crumbling walls of the Nile River town of Mehmeetma for several hours before the rest of the column arrived. They had seen plenty of Ansar, plenty of fortified positions and more then enough artillery to make it clear that the Mahdists were not going to give up this piece of real estate easily. Their recommendations to the general to find another site to rendezvous with the river column were completely ignored and General Grahame ordered the Steam Carriage to be refilled with water and to prepare the attack. He said, these heathens would run at the first sight of his mechanical monster.
Colonel Finley had seen that the majority of the Ansar artillery was weighted to the the left end of the town and so wisely ordered the steam carriage crew to attack up the right flank toward some improvised sections of wall. In support were the 17th Sikhs and the Black Watch Battalion (both at half strength due to the fighting that had occurred the two previous days). He also deployed the 19th Bengal Lancers on the far left flank to provide a mobile reserve for Colonel Samuels force that had been assigned to carry the main gate of the town. Colonel Samuels placed the KRRC and Light Infantry depleted battalions on either flank of his artillery and naval maxim gunners and the whole force began to rumble forward.
Long range and ineffective shots were traded until Colonel Samuels artillery was nearly in effective range. He then halted and began to pound the town into rubble. On the right flank Colonel Finnley continued to move forward and his steam carriage began pounding the buildings and walls of the town also.
On the left flank the town defenders under Emir Ibn Demanas realized that the British might be willing to sit outside town all day and pound them into submission. He was having no of that and moved forward aggressively with his Jehadia, war band, and even prolonging his Krupp artillery forward to engage the British. On the right flank Emir Ibn Sametmas was more disciplined and held to his defensive lines, pouring every shot he could into the British.
A wild struggle broke out in the center of the battle line as the Ansar war band rub charged into the KRRC, were beaten off by a counter charge from the 19th Bengal Lancers, then charged into the British Artillery and Gatlings, destroying them before counter charging the Lancers and driving them from the field. This was the deciding factor in the battle, even as line infantry elements of the Light Infantry and the Black Watch moved through the demolished walls to enter the town, General Grahame decided the casualties were too high, his left flank too exposed, and the enemy still too willing to continue the fight (the appearance of a Thunderspear war band near his steam carriage may have been a deciding factor) and ordered a general withdraw.
We hadn't played for some time and forgot, for a time, some of the basic rules, but the game went very well and was quite balanced and enjoyable. I used a modified command and control movement rule where there was a card for each unit on a side and each command would take an action each time the card came up. So there were just 10 action cards in the deck (as opposed to the 20 that there would have been with my original command and control system and things went much faster we played 11 turns in just under 3 hours). -- Tom Graves
