Official battle narratives conceal the fear and desertion soldiers actually experienced

Evidence

Five months after the battle had been “successfully” fought, however, a military tribunal was convened to investigate the reasons why the 1st Cavalry Brigade, comprising the 1st and 3rd Cavalry Regiments under the joint command of Ahmed Bey Istanbullu, did not participate at all in the battle. The picture that evolves out of this single document is very different from that which is usually portrayed: “horses were trembling when the enemy fired their volleys at us,” “we had to retreat here and there to avoid the fire of the enemy,” “the colonel was late in ordering the trumpeter to issue the call to take the line formation.” These and other statements in this single document show that what the soldiers experienced was fear, confusion, agony, a far cry from the neat and orderly impression one gets from the “battle piece.” Most importantly, the account of the court martial goes on to reveal that Brigadier Ahmed Bey was not to be found in the position specified for him in the training manuals which give exact locations of every officer during battle. Zakī, in his account of the battle and in an attempt to explain this rather perplexing absence, says that that brigade lost its way in the fog. On investigation, however, it transpires that Brigadier Ahmed Bey had fled the battle scene with his entire brigade probably to await the result of the battle and then side with the victor. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 906

Categorization

• XREF: Court-martial records as corrective to official battle narratives parallels how A Midwife’s Tale reads legal/diary records against received history.