Service Order. Gunner Alfred Smith fought bravely to save his officer, Lieutenant Guthrie, and was awarded a VC. Another action happened two days later at Abu Kru (the Battle of El Gubat) and the advance rescue force leader Major General Sir Herbert Stewart was mortally wounded by Remington rifle fire by the Mahdists that night. He knew it was a mortal wound, and he transferred command to a inexperienced leader, Brigadier General Sir Charles Wilson (the column's intelligence officer). Wilson was slow to organize his forces, and in tarrying another day, it was he who was the cause of that advance detachment's delay. A report in The Times newspaper says that Burnaby "fell while reforming a broken British square" (this being one of only two recorded cases of a British square 'breaking' in the 19th century). Aftermath The column was too late to save Khartoum; the Mahdists captured it two days before the column arrived, leading to the death of General Gordon. The British then withdrew from the Sudan, leaving the Dervishes of the Mahdi to rule Sudan for the next 13 years. The official public blame for this failure was left with Prime Minister Gladstone for delaying several months, to the considerable anger expressed in public of Queen Victoria, to authorize a rescue. Gladstone lost public confidence and much authority and within two months he resigned. The battle was celebrated by the doggerel poet William McGonagall: Ye sons of Mars, come join with me, And sing in praise of Sir Herbert Stewart’s little army, That made ten thousand Arabs flee At the charge of the bayonet at Abou Klea and so on for 19 stanzas. And also the battle and one of its notable participants is mentioned in the song "Colonel Burnaby", which has as its chorus: Weep not my boys, for those who fell, They did not flinch nor fear. They stood their ground like Englishmen, and died at Abu Klea The rhymes in these poems show varying attempts at pronouncing "Klea" from the English spelling, and the rhyme with "fear" shows British English arhotic pronunciation. More celebrated and of higher literary quality, but taking substantial liberties for the exact events, is the mention of the battle in verse two of Sir Henry Newbolt's poem Vitai Lampada: …The sand of the desert is sodden red, Red with the wreck of a square that broke; The Gatling's jammed and