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The price of honor has been high, for an Empire, a nation, a
single man. And that price has been paid on battlefields all over the earth, in
the hinterlands of Empire, beyond the frontiers of national power. For England,
the world’s greatest empire in the late 1800s, the price of honor was paid with
the blood of her soldiers, in Europe, Afghanistan, India, China, Egypt, Sudan,
and Natal, and the often desolate places where that blood was shed, the
battlefields where men fought, and strove and died, became the sands of honor.
England sent her diplomats, politicians, her heroes and her soldiers in their
khaki tunics to those battlefields, and so many young men looking to make a name for themselves. In The Sands of Honor these
‘desert loving Englishmen’ will face and fight the whirlwind Army of the
Dervish, the zealots who had rallied to the banners of the Mahdi, he who was promised to come. It's Dune in the late 1800s!
On the morning of the 2nd of September, 1898, with
Kitchener’s Anglo-Egyptian Army encamped in a large defensive position against
the Nile called a zeriba, the British 21st Lancer Regiment rode out to find and
fix the enemy’s intentions. They would reach and climb the grey gravel slopes
of Jebel Surgham just off the right flank of the camp, whereupon they heard ‘a
mighty rumbling as of tempestuous rollers and surf bearing down upon a rock
bound shore.’ There they saw ‘a moving, undulating plain of men, flecked with
banners and glistening steel’ extending
over a front three to four miles wide. It was a dense mass, a deep bodied flood
of anger raging towards that hill, aiming to flow over and around it like a
mighty sea of arms. Soon the shouts of that mass were plainly heard—Allah u
Akbar! Rasool Allah el Mahdi! They
brandished thick bladed swords and long cruel spears, masses of tightly packed
warriors led by proud Emirs on horseback surrounded by bannermen and troops of
Baggara horsemen.
The Dervish Army came on as a thick dark tide on the open plain. These were the men, like the Fremen of Dune, who had stirred the restless sands of Sudan in
wild rebellion; the men who had thrown down Gordon of Khartum, one of England’s
dearest heroes. The men who had slaughtered the 8000 men led by General Hicks. They were fierce, proud, relentless as they came, and endowed
with a fanaticism that would drive them into the teeth of all the firepower
Kitchener’s army could bring to bear on them, the quick firing artillery, Maxim
Machine guns, the incessant volley fire by lines of steady infantry with their
magazine fed Lee-Metfords. And they would be met by England's best: The Grenadier Guards, the Cameron and Seaforth Highlanders, and Fusiliers from Lancashire and Northumberland; men of Warwickshire and Lincolnshire.
The vast Dervish army, approaching 60,000 in
number, could have come the previous night, like wolves in the dark, but
instead they waited for the dawn, choosing to attack beneath the eyes of Allah.
Why should they creep and snipe in the dark against these, who they would now
surely destroy? Now, there was nothing between this vast host and Kitchener’s Army
of 22,000 but the 320 men of the 21st Lancers, watching from that lonesome
desert promontory. With them, was a young Lieutenant, out to make a name for
himself, a medal seeking, glory hunting 23 year old named Winston Churchill….
On came the venomous Dervish fighters in
their fearless fury.
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36 Chapters, 350+ Pages
The Sands of Honor
By
John Schettler
Prologue – Rise of The Mahdi
Part I – China Gordon
Part II – The Work of the Faithful
Part III – On Desperate Ground
Part IV – The Road Less Traveled
Part V – Reconnaissance
Part VI – Atbara
Part VII – Omdurman
Part VIII– Consequences
Part IX – The Uninvited Guest
Part X – The Last Battle
Part XI – While the Iron is Hot
Part XII – Men of Valour
Epilogue
Time Terminology Lexicon
Genres: Historical Fiction, Military Fiction, Alternate History, Time Travel
Characters: Sir Roger Ames, Ian Thomas, Generals Gordon and Kitchener, Captain Gordon MacRae, Hicks Pasha, Sheikh Ali, the Mahdi, the Khalifa, Cavalry Colonels Broadwood and Martin, Lt. Winston Churchill, the Meridian Project Team--Paul Dorland, Maeve Lindford, Kelly Ramer, Robert Nordhausen, and a special mission for Anton Fedorov, Vladimir Karpov, Admiral Leonid Volsky, Kandemir Troyak, Sgt. Zykov, Pavel Kamenski, and BCG Kirov.
The Desperate attempt to save Gordon of Khartum, then General Kitchener's bold advance up the Nile to fight the Dervish, first at Atbara, then on to the decisive battle of Omdurman, where the life of a single man could change all future history from that day forward. Make room on your Kindle for this one!
