![]() ![]() At least, that is my memory of Churchill’s reporting I don’t have a copy of The River War in hand, and Amazon doesn’t offer the appropriate chapter for review so I can’t quote Churchill directly. This army would physically fight, not just stand alongside the living offering support in spirit. In his account, I recall that Churchill reported the Khalifa had told his troops just before the battle that an invisible army of dead Muslims would join them against the Anglo-Egyptian force the next day. The Muslim leader at Omdurman was known as “the Khalifa,” and had assumed leadership after the death of “the Mahdi,” a charismatic religious leader who began a millennial movement whose army captured Khartoum, killed British General Gordon, and gave rise to an Ango-Egyptian military campaign up the Nile to recapture Khartoum and suppress the movement. Churchill participated as a young cavalry officer, seeing combat in a costly charge against the Islamic Dervish forces. ![]() Some time ago, I read a one-volume, paperback edition of Winston Churchill’s famous 1899 account of the Nile campaign to recapture Khartoum, which culminated in the Battle of Omdurman. ![]() This army is thus not a moral or psychological force alone, but a physical presence that can kill and wound but not be killed or wounded itself. In ‘The Return of the King,’ an army of the dead rallies to the returning King of Gondor, physically combatting his enemies and turning the tide on the battlefield. I have a minor question for Tolkien fans. ![]()
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