Number 52 – They gunned down tens of thousands of defenceless Africans

Lets count the inaccuracies in this one.


1- “On a desolate African plain in 1884” wrong 1898

2- “eight thousand British infantrymen” wrong twenty five to twenty seven thousand Egyptian and British soldiers

3- “carrying high-powered machine guns met a horde of Ottoman soldiers” wrong they did not “meet” them, they were attacked by them

4- “armed with nothing more than spears and a few old muskets” wrong they had old rifles and spears, it is not known how many rifles, but with an army numbering more than fifty thousand men you can be sure that they had more than a “few” rifles

5- “Winston Churchill even celebrated the Battle of Omdurman” wrong, in his book 'The River War: An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan' Churchill actually gives a surprisingly balanced, well thought out account of the war and criticizes the military leaders of the time.

Not bad really Mr Grasse, why let the facts get in the way of a good story.