Kitchener’s Anglo-Egyptian army, equipped with artillery and Maxim guns, had slaughtered a much larger enemy force armed with obsolete spears and rifles.

In the museum there is a regimental drum sitting above a Maxim gun - whose withering fire would claim so many lives in the Great War.

So while British factories produced fewer than 400 Maxim guns in 1914, German factories produced 500 a month under licence.