Bayonets Along the Border

by John Wilcox

  Barton shook his head wearily. ‘No. I didn’t evacuate it. It wasn’t taken when I was ordered to report back to Jamrud and then I was told to remain here. I have been on hot bricks hoping that your wife had survived, Fonthill. We have been in daily fear of an attack by the Pathans but it has never materialised. But enough of that, we must get her inside now.’

  ‘Is there a doctor here?’

  ‘I fear not. But we have a subaltern here who was once a medical student. He has been useful to us before. I have sent for him and we have prepared a bed for her.’

  Alice was now completely unconscious and perspiring freely. Between them, Fonthill and Jenkins carried her into the fort’s interior where Barton led them to a room containing a single bed – the fort’s sickbay, he explained.

  They were joined almost immediately by a middle-aged major, whom Barton introduced as the commander of the fort, and then by a young, heavily moustached lieutenant named Barnes, who immediately knelt beside Alice, put his hand to her forehead and took her pulse. He spoke over his shoulder to Fonthill.

  ‘How long has she been like this?’

  ‘About two days.’

  Then Barnes noticed Alice’s bandaged forearm and immediately began untying it. He wrinkled his nose when he inspected the wound. ‘What the hell is this?’ he demanded.

  ‘It was cut with a knife or a sword. I don’t know how or when. A Pathan did it.’

  ‘Ah.’ The young man shouted over his shoulder and a tall Sikh appeared. Without looking up, Barnes gave a string of orders to the man, who inclined his head and disappeared. Then the subaltern laid his hand on Alice’s breast and immediately covered her to the chin with the bed sheet. He turned to Simon.

  ‘I’m afraid I am not a doctor, sir,’ he said. ‘Only did two years at Edinburgh studying medicine before the family ran out of money and I had to join the Indian army.’

  Simon summoned a smile. ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘But this lady is my wife and is very, very …’ His voice broke for a moment, then he recovered. ‘She is dear to me. She was captured by the Pathans when Fort Landi Kotal fell and she has been under considerable stress before we,’ he gestured to Jenkins and Inderjit, standing in the background, ‘were able to rescue her. Please do all you can to save her.’

  Barnes nodded. ‘The nearest doctor is at Peshawar, of course. We are surrounded by tribesmen, although they don’t seem to want to attack us, and we haven’t been able to run a train for days, so we cannot risk taking her there yet. But I will do my best here.’

  He put his hand back onto her brow then he continued. ‘She has a high fever and my guess is that it is caused by septicaemia, or blood poisoning, which has resulted from this damned wound. I am afraid this is a dangerous condition, which I must warn you could adversely affect the vital organs such as the liver and the heart.’ He cleared his throat. ‘You must understand that I have no drugs here that could treat it and the condition could result in death.’

  Fonthill shook his head. ‘No. It could not. It must not.’ He seized the young man’s arm. ‘What can you do, Lieutenant?’

  ‘Yes, there are things I can do. I can drain the wound and hopefully get the poison out and, of course, work to reduce the fever, get her to take plenty of liquids and so on. The next twenty-four hours will be critical. We must hope that your wife, sir, has a strong constitution that will fight the poison in her body. Has she always been strong?’

  ‘Yes, thank God. But she has been through a lot.’

  ‘Very well.’ He was interrupted by the arrival of the Sikh carrying a bowl of water, a sponge, compresses and a package containing what looked like a tube. ‘Ah good, thank you, havildar. Can you get a punkah wallah to motivate this fan?’ he nodded upwards to where a long piece of calico hung from the ceiling. ‘Now, if you would all kindly leave the room I will do what I can.’

  The next forty-eight hours were the most distraught of Fonthill’s life. He sat for hours holding Alice’s hand, occasionally mopping her brow and changing the compress on her head as the fan above them stirred the air in that tiny room. The subaltern came in regularly to check her progress – or rather lack of it, because the fever seemed to increase and Alice lay moaning and tossing her head as perspiration dripped down her face. Barnes produced a strange glass tube that he held under her tongue for some minutes.

  Eventually, he removed it and held it up to the light to examine a gauge marked on its side. ‘It’s called a thermometer,’ he told Simon. ‘I’d forgotten I’d still got it. It’s been around for years but it was refined in the 1860s. Measures the patient’s temperature, when the heat pushes the mercury up the tube. You have to have it inside the mouth for at least five minutes but that’s an improvement. I gather it used to take at least twenty minutes to record any movement.’ He sighed. ‘Doesn’t help much, anyway, because I know she’s got a high temperature and I don’t need this thing to tell me that. Mind you, that wound looks a bit healthier now I’ve drained it and put ointment and a clean dressing on it. Keep your spirits up, sir. She’s a fighter. I can tell that.’

  Fonthill nodded wearily. ‘Thank you for what you’re doing,’ he said and held his wife’s hand even more tightly.

  The turning point came by the evening of the second day. Simon had fallen fast asleep with his head on the sheet covering Alice, while still gripping her hand. Suddenly he awoke to find that she had stopped turning and was lying quite tranquilly with her eyes closed.

  ‘Oh God!’ he cried. ‘Alice, Alice don’t leave me. Don’t—’ He stopped as, lazily, she opened her eyes. ‘Hello, darling,’ she murmured. ‘I’ve had such terrible dreams. Have you been here long?’

  He burst into tears of relief and buried his head on her breast. She patted his hair. ‘Goodness, Simon,’ she said. ‘Don’t take on so. They were only dreams. Do you think I could have a cup of tea?’

  Barnes was summoned and announced that the fever had broken but still needed care. Tea was brought and then Jenkins and Inderjit, followed by Barton and the major, gathered round her bed. Barnes then ushered them all out and managed to find a pill to help Alice to sleep.

  Once outside, Simon pumped his hand. ‘I don’t care what sort of soldier you are, Barnes,’ he said, ‘but you’re a bloody fine doctor. Anybody can be a soldier but it took a damned good doctor to bring my wife back from the dead. I can’t thank you enough.’

  The young man sucked in his moustache in embarrassment. ‘She did it herself, actually sir,’ he muttered. ‘Damned fine constitution, I would say. But she still needs to rest and I’m afraid I need to get back to my platoon. Let her sleep and feed her with as much liquid as she needs. I will be back the day after tomorrow.’

  Fonthill nodded. ‘Does it look as though the Pathans still might attack?’

  ‘Don’t think so. That’s what the patrolling is all about. We’re trying to find out what’s happened to them. We think that probably the Afridis have gone home with their loot from the forts to lick their wounds and the mullahs are still trying to raise their fellows in the south, the Orakzais, to come to their aid. That and the fact that General Lockhart in Peshawar is gathering a pretty formidable army to attack them. But the major will tell you more.’

  ‘Thank you again, Barnes. Come back safely from that patrol. The army has plenty of subalterns but not many good doctors. Oh, and don’t break your thermometer thing.’

  Alice’s condition improved considerably over the next few days and, for the first time, she was able to tell Fonthill and the others exactly what had happened to her since they had left her in Landi Kotal. An embarrassed Barton also insisted on explaining that, on reaching Jamrud in response to an order from his superior in Peshawar, Commissioner Sir Richard Udny, he had been instructed to remain there and, furthermore, his request for reinforcements to resist the coming attack on Landi Kotal had been ignored.

  ‘I’ll tell you, Fonthill,’ he confessed, ‘it was not much fun staying here watching my chaps who had escaped from Kotal march in.
They spat at the troops all waiting here, nice and safe behind their high walls. Not their fault, of course. We had been ordered to stay put here.’

  ‘For God’s sake, why?’

  ‘Just don’t know. Presumably Udny thought that it was too late to send troops out along the Pass because they would be exposed to attack there. Once at the fort, I am sure I could have stopped the surrender – particularly if the four companies of regular infantry and the two guns I had asked for had been sent to back up my Khyber Rifles in the fort. There were twelve thousand troops hanging about in Peshawar, so they could easily have been spared. Disgracefully bad show.’

  Fonthill enquired if anyone had heard whether the Guides under Appleby-Smith had reached Peshawar but nothing had been reported to Jamrud. Within two days all the scouts sent out to scour the surrounding area had returned to report that the hills seemed clear of Pathans. The telegraph line to Peshawar had remained uncut and it was decided to run a train back up the line from the capital. Barnes agreed that Alice could make the journey and she, Simon, Jenkins and Inderjit departed five days after their arrival at Jamrud.

  Peshawar had changed since the party had left it five weeks before. Now the rather sleepy town had become a vibrant army depot as troops flooded in to make up Lieutenant General Sir William Lockhart’s Tirah Field Force. Khaki-clad soldiers thronged the streets as Fonthill and his companions made for the little hospital in the centre of the town. Simon noted some of the most famous cap badges in the Indian and British armies: from the Gordon Highlanders and King’s Own Scottish Borderers to the ‘bread and butter’ shire regiments of England, such as the Derbys and the Northamptons; plus the elite units of the Raj, like the Bengal Lancers, Hodson’s Horse, the Royal Corps and Guides and the Gurkhas. It was as if the whole of the Indian subcontinent had been scoured to find the best fighting troops to send to the Frontier. The Empire, it seemed, was on the march and out for revenge.

  At the hospital, Alice, now recovered from the fever but still weak, was welcomed by an army doctor, who immediately put her to bed in a large, comparatively cool ward which she had virtually to herself.

  There she held out her hand to her three companions. Tears were in her eyes as she said: ‘You are my three knights – not in shining armour, but in filthy turbans – who came to my rescue. I can’t thank you enough for getting me out of that camp and looking after me so well.’ And she insisted on kissing Jenkins and Inderjit before they left her alone to say goodbye to her husband.

  ‘I don’t want to stay here long,’ Alice told Simon, holding his hand. ‘I intend to get on my feet as soon as I can.’

  Fonthill shook his head. ‘No, my love. You will stay here as long as the doctors tell you to. You have lost strength and you must recover it.’

  ‘Nonsense. Give me three days and I will be out.’

  ‘Then you will soon be back in again.’ He frowned. ‘Alice, don’t you appreciate the narrow escape you had? That man – Ali, was it? – would undoubtedly have killed you. Your whole system has been under great strain.’ He smiled. ‘You may still be beautiful but you are no longer young, my dear. You must stay here until you are better.’

  ‘And what are you going to do?’

  Simon’s smile disappeared. ‘I am going to see General Lockhart and offer him my services in his campaign. I now have a personal score to settle with this Pathan leader and his bloody mullah.’

  Alice struggled to sit up. ‘You will not go without me.’

  ‘I most certainly will – if the general will have me.’

  ‘But I have work to do. I must report on this campaign.’

  ‘You will stay here until you are better. Now lie back and try to get some sleep. You need to build up your strength. I will return tomorrow.’

  ‘One request then, my darling.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I need a notepad and pen and ink.’

  ‘What on earth for?’

  ‘I have a story to write for the Morning Post. And it’s an exclusive this time because it’s my own story, something that happened to me. Can you let me have them by this afternoon please?’

  ‘No. You must rest. But I will compromise and bring them tomorrow. Now lie back and think of the Queen and all who are fighting for her.’

  He pushed her gently back onto the pillows, kissed her lightly, waved and walked away, her eyes following him all the way.

  Fonthill and his companions had booked into the little hotel where they had stayed before – chosen because it was not marked ‘Europeans only’, so that Inderjit was able to stay also. Then Simon visited the offices of Commissioner Udny, ‘Udny the Unready’ as he was now called in Peshawar as a result of his refusal to send troops to Fort Landi Kotal. Fonthill had no wish to see the commissioner, whom he blamed for Alice’s fate, but enquired of his young assistant if anything had been heard of Appleby-Smith’s squadron.

  To his relief, he learnt that it had arrived in Peshawar – unhurt, it seemed by any further skirmishes – and had only yesterday journeyed on to the Guides’ base in Marden. And yes, a most important letter had been deposited into the commissioner’s care and been immediately couriered on to the Viceroy in Simla. But Simon learnt more.

  General Blood’s campaign in the north, it seemed, had been successful and he now completely controlled the Buner Valley. Nevertheless, the Revolt was still gathering force all along the North-West Frontier and fighting had broken out in the land of the Orakzais just a few miles south of Peshawar itself. General Lockhart had now arrived in the city and was pulling together the largest army raised in India since the Mutiny, so reflecting the British government’s alarm at the threat posed to the greatest jewel in its Empire.

  In all, Fonthill was told, 34,500 fighting men and 20,000 supporting non-combatants, plus 72,000 pack animals, were gathering in Peshawar to form the Tirah Field Force. The force consisted of two divisions, made up of six mountain batteries, two companies of sappers, four British and four native field hospitals, a machine gun detachment, three battalions of light infantry, one regiment of infantry, two cavalry units and an artillery battery. This force would be confronted by an estimated 50,000 Afridis and Orakzais, all of whom had now flocked to the banner of the redoubtable Mullah Sayyid Akbar, who had been extremely active in the Khyber and also to the south of the great Pass.

  Fonthill took note, established where exactly Lockhart had made his headquarters and diverted there on his way back to the hotel. He had been able to change his Pathan clothing for anonymous khaki at Jamrud, although, even so, he was received at the general’s HQ with some suspicion. He was, however, allowed to scribble a note for Lockhart, introducing himself and begging permission to call on him as soon as possible.

  It was pleasing on returning to the hotel, then, to find a note already there and waiting for him from the general. It regretted that their paths had not crossed previously but congratulated him on his part in the defence of Malakand, his success in extracting a promise of non-involvement from the Amir of Afghanistan and also on his ‘amazing achievement in penetrating the Pathan camp and extricating your wife’. It briefly described Lockhart’s mission now and invited him to call within the day, if possible, to discuss matters that ‘might be of mutual interest’.

  Fonthill’s senses were immediately aroused and his first thought was to summon Jenkins. Then he realised that the duo had, perforce, recently become a trio and that something had to be done about that. Inderjit was not his property and ought to return to his unit. He summoned the daffadar, who immediately handed him a telegram addressed to the Sikh. It ordered him to make his way to Marden as soon as possible to rejoin his troop.

  Simon read it and immediately held out his hand to Inderjit. ‘Of course you must go, old chap,’ he said. ‘We can’t keep you away from your unit and your career. But I can’t thank you enough for all you have done in helping Alice to escape. Jenkins and I could not have survived for more than a couple of hours in those hills without you.’
/>   The Sikh bowed his head. ‘It was a great privilege to be of service to you, sah … Can I call you sahib again now?’

  ‘No. We are friends now. You must call me Simon.’

  The tall man shook his head and gave a rueful smile. ‘Ah no, sahib, it is not the form. Even Mr Jenkins does not call you that. But thank you for taking me with you. I now know why my mother always said how much my father respected you and Jenkins bach, as he called him. She said that my father always had … what was it she said, now? Ah yes. She said that he had fun, that was it, fun. Fun always with you. I now know what she meant.’

  Simon returned the rueful grin. ‘Well, if it was fun, it was pretty dangerous fun. But we shall meet again, Inderjit. I shall write to your colonel saying how resourceful you were in every way and strongly recommend you for promotion.’

  ‘Thank you, sahib. Now I must go.’

  The two shook hands and when the Sikh had departed Simon shouted for Jenkins. The Welshman, a dense bush of black hair sprouting from above his cotton vest, shuffled in, looking bleary-eyed.

  Fonthill frowned and stepped forward, putting his head close to Jenkins’s. ‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘You’ve been drinking again, 352?’

  Jenkins nodded. ‘Abshlutely right, bach sir. But not ’eavily. Just a couple of bottles of this pale ale rubbish. Well, p’raps four or five. Doeshn’t affect me, though.’ And he hiccoughed.

  ‘Well, take another four or five if you must but don’t, whatever you do, don’t hit anyone. Get it out of your system today. How would you feel about going on active service with General Lockhart?’

  ‘Dosh it mean ’avin’ a go at this Ali feller?’

  ‘I would expect so.’

  ‘Then count me in. Anyway,’ a dreamy smile came over the Welshman’s unshaven face, ‘I go where you go. You know that. When do we report for duty? Ah …’ A frown descended upon his face. ‘It don’t mean joinin’ up again, doesh it? I wouldn’t fancy that much, would you?’

  ‘Not at all. Now go and sleep it off and then shave and generally smarten up, for God’s sake. You look like a Pathan second-hand horse dealer. And you smell like one. I am off to see the general.’