use ABC pay for its services.


3
In 1979, ABC discharged warehouse manager Wilford Harris, without warning or a hearing.  Harris was sixty-six years old and had been with the company forty-nine years.  Over the years, Harris had been told by supervisors that he could expect to be employed by ABC until the age of seventy, and that he could expect a substantial pension upon retiring.  After a formal demand, Harris learned that ABC had no intention of providing him with a pension.  Earl Kruse, an ABC employee for twenty-five years, received monthly checks from ABC after his retirement.  Kruse's checks were discontinued after Harris demanded a pension.


4
Harris filed this action in federal court for civil enforcement of his pension benefits under 29 U.S.C. Sec.mission, to evacuate troops and civilians, is unsanctioned by the British government, which will disavow all responsibility if he fails. He is given few resources and only a single aide, Colonel J. D. H. Stewart (Richard Johnson). After an attempt to recruit former slaver Zobeir Pasha (Zia Mohyeddin) fails, Gordon and Stewart travel to Khartoum, where Gordon is hailed as the city's savior upon his arrival in February 1884. He begins organising the defences and rallying the people, despite Stewart's protests that this is not what he was sent to do.

Gordon's first act is to visit the Mahdi in his insurgent camp, accompanied by only a single servant. He gains the Mahdi's respect and, in the verbal fencing at the parley, discovers that the rebel leader intends to