Away to the right Ogilvie saw a tall, kilted figure run ahead into the moonlight, waving a broadsword. He recognized the Colonel and a moment later, as there came a lull in the barrage, he heard Dornoch’s voice, strong, defiant: “The 114th will advance, officers and pipers to the front. Men, it’s up to us to stop the rot now. God be with you all.”
Lord Dornoch turned about and dashed up the slope. As the British guns kept up their fire, the battalion’s pipers, led by Pipe-Major Ross, moved through the ranks of the Royal Strathspeys, blowing wind into their instruments. Even above the renewed firing the men heard the brave notes of Cock O’ The North playing them on. They came out from the shadows as one, line upon line of yelling, cheering Highlanders filled with the bloodlust, advancing at the double behind the bright, moon-silvered steel of bayonets, their rifles firing as they came on behind Lord Dornoch. They met the running Mahrattas and forced them back into the attack. The slaughter was wicked; men fell, screaming, all around Ogilvie, but the line held and the advance went on as the fighting-mad Scots charged blindly. Ogilvie himself felt the terrible urge of the blood-lust, the overwhelming urge to get to grips with the enemy and kill—kill—kill. He saw men go down ahead of him and he ran over them; he saw a corporal’s head vanish as though removed by magic as, presumably, an artillery shell smashed through it, saw the body run forward a few steps just as the tribesman’s body back along the Khyber had done that night after his father’s sword had sliced off the head. He saw Colour-Sergeant MacNaught stagger with half a shoulder gone, and then fall screaming to the ground. That, perhaps, shook him more than anything else could have done. He thought of Company Serjeant-Major Apps back at Sandhurst. Senior N.C.O.’s were not associated in his mind with screams. He ran on doggedly, so far completely untouched himself, leading a group of men. He scarcely knew where he was leading them, except that it was ahead, and upwards, towards the redoubts and, apparently, into the very muzzles of a thousand guns. He had lost sight of the Colonel, of all the other officers as well by this time. Somewhere the pipes still played, though the volume of sound had dropped as the pipers were picked off by the rifle-fire. A bullet snicked through Ogilvie’s right sleeve, grazing the flesh of his arm and giving him a burning, stinging sensation that in fact he scarcely noticed. All around was the stink of cordite. He ran past the open side of a redoubt unscathed, saw in passing that some men of the battalion had taken that redoubt, and plunged on. Soon he found that he had come upon a high, almost sheer rock face. Tribesmen looked down upon him, firing as he flattened his body against the rock, concealing himself beneath an overhang. He was out of breath and panting. Then, looking about his position wildly, he saw the track leading around the base of the rock face to the left, and he ran along this, continuing the upward climb. The men behind him followed blindly, trusting their officer. Then, as he climbed, he saw a heavy figure running from his right and as this man puffed up he recognized Bosom Cunningham. The R.S.M. shouted, “Careful, Mr. Ogilvie. The brigade as a whole has run into a trap, that’s obvious—the tribesmen knew we were coming. You’ll do no good where you’re going and—”
“I think this track may lead to the summit, Sarn’t-Major.”
“And that’s just what I mean, sir. It’ll be well guarded. If it doesn’t appear to be, then it’s another trap.”
“We’ll have to chance that, Sarn’t-Major.”
Cunningham didn’t answer. He looked behind once, then seemed to make up his mind, and advanced with Ogilvie and the men along the track. There was no sign of life here but they heard the firing as heavy as ever from their right, and below them now, while the defenders answered from above. The track wound and twisted upwards steeply; they stumbled and scrambled, with bleeding hands and knees, up over the rough, boulder-strewn ground. Ogilvie felt that if only he could reach the top and attack the high-mounted guns from the rear, he just might give the main body of the brigade their chance. After a while the track flattened out and when they came around a rock outcrop Ogilvie saw that they had indeed reached the summit. It was a big, flat hilltop and, as he had hoped, they seemed to have worked their way round behind the defensive artillery positions. A battery of big guns, ancient enough pieces, was pounding out its shells along the edge, sending them down into the still advancing Highlanders.
Ogilvie lifted his revolver. “Charge the guns!” he shouted. He ran forward as he spoke, then he saw a body fall from the lip of the rock wall that had been shielding them. The body came down square on Cunningham, carrying him to the ground, and fingers went round his throat. As Ogilvie turned with the intention of killing the native, more and more bodies came over the top, silently, accurately dropping down upon the British. Ogilvie himself was flattened beneath a huge robed body with a bandolier slung across the chest. As the fingers reached for his throat he fought back desperately, lashing out with his legs, scrabbling with his hands, trying to pull the death grip from his windpipe. It was a useless effort; he wondered, as he struggled, why the tribesmen hadn’t shot them down as they came along the track, and the answer came to him only as he felt his consciousness going: Cunningham had been right, this was another trap; and Ahmed Khan wanted hostages.
*
When he came round again he found that his hands were roughly but adequately tied behind his back and his body, which was as limp as a rag doll, was being carried along between two men so that every now and again his bottom was bumped and scraped along the ground. They were moving fast, moving down the hillside with the sure-footed swiftness of the hill tribes. His head ached abominably and he felt sick and weak, but he was able to look around him in the light of the moon. Several such burdens were being borne down the track; the sounds of battle were far off now. He had no idea what the outcome of that desperate advance might have been. Whatever it was, he supposed hazily, it would be unlikely to affect his own future much. He knew that the Pathans always killed their prisoners—in the end. They didn’t kill them cleanly or tidily, either. He shivered, felt all his courage draining out of him. He had faced action and he hadn’t been as afraid as he had feared he might be; but action was a different thing from certain and protracted death. Not a word was spoken during the first descent of the hillside, not a word when they reached the valley. The bound soldiers were carried into a wide hollow at the foot of the slope, a hollow that was surrounded on all sides by high rock with a narrow exit to the east. Here there were horses waiting, and more wild-looking Pathans, and more rifles. The prisoners were carried to the horses and laid across their backs in front of the riders, and the moment the last man was mounted the cavalcade moved through the narrow exit and out into the eastern extremity of the valley, directly along Ahmed Khan’s supply route. As each horse came through it was ridden ahead hard, and the men went like a rushing wind out of the valley, their heads low across the horses’ necks, pounding along towards Jalalabad as the fighting continued on the heights behind; and within a few minutes they had passed through an advanced line of the rebel infantry, and more guns, from the fort.
Not long after this they came into the area of the walled fortress-city of Jalalabad with its bastions and curtains constructed from sun-dried bricks and chopped stones. They passed first through derelict gardens and orchards and vineyards, past decayed old tombs of old-time noblemen, overgrown irrigation cuts and clumps of poplars and high, ever-shifting sand-hills; it was no wonder the town was said to be hard to defend, though Ahmed Khan didn’t seem to be doing too badly in spite of that fact. Inside the walls the stinking, narrow streets were lined with people; it seemed as though the whole population had turned out to watch the disgraced British soldiers brought in. There was laughter and jeering, and waved fists, and worse insults—Ogilvie, helpless across the horse, felt a stream of saliva, black and horrible with chewed betel-nut, smack into his neck and drool down his uniform—not once, but many times. Fists beat at him, curses were called down upon him. The insults came from women and children as well as from men. The riders made their way through the t
hronging mass haughtily enough, for they were warriors and thus contemptuous of the rest of the population, but they behaved indulgently and rode without hurrying so that all could join in the sport. It was another half hour before the cavalcade reached the gates of the fort itself to be admitted by the quarter-guard. They passed by the gate-house and into a long, wide courtyard filled with armed men and horses and stocks of weapons and ammunition. The prisoners were taken across this courtyard towards a part of the high surrounding wall. The horsemen halted outside a heavy, iron-studded door where to the left a long iron plate was set in the ground, for no reason that Ogilvie could fathom. The British were lifted from the horses and dumped on the ground, well covered now by the rebel’s guns. One of the Pathans brought out a long knife and cut the ropes.
“On your feet,” he said in good English.
The Scots obeyed; some more quickly than others. One private remained on the ground, sitting with his hands linked around his knees, smiling disdainfully up at the man who had spoken. He said, “I’ll get up when told to by my own officer. Not by a dirty nigger.”
Ogilvie saw the lifted gun and said urgently, “On your feet, Grant, for God’s sake!” but he was just too late. The bullet took Private Grant between the eyes and his forehead split. Brain-matter poured down into his uniform. Ogilvie felt horribly sick, and even Bosom Cunningham’s blood-red face turned a greenish white in the lanterns shining down from above the iron-studded door.
The Pathan said calmly, “A lesson. to you all in how to behave.” He turned away, said something in dialect, and a man opened up the heavy door. “Now go inside, all of you, at once.”
They filed through into total darkness.
Immediately inside was a steep flight of worn stone steps. The first two men plummeted to the bottom. Thus warned, the others went down with more circumspection and made it without falling. Cunningham and Ogilvie went down last, and then the door was shut and bolted behind them. They were in a dank, stinking cellar with no outlet to the fresh air. Someone made the inevitable comparison with the Black Hole of Calcutta. Just as Ogilvie reached the bottom of the steps and began feeling around with his outstretched hands, the door from the courtyard was opened again and there was a thumping, scraping sound and something took him hard on the back of his shoulders. He fell flat with this weight spreadeagled across him and as he struggled clear he felt the uniform and the brass badges and the buckle and he knew that the almost decapitated body of Private Grant had been thrown down the steps to join his comrades.
*
On the peak where the 114th, together with all that was left of the Mahrattas, had finally carried the assault and had by now consolidated their position with the aid of a hastily-summoned company of British infantry from the end of the defence perimeter, stock had been taken of the casualties. These had been heavy. Graham, D Company’s commander, was dead; so were eleven more officers including the Brigadier-General himself; and eighty-seven men. Three hundred and sixty-two of all ranks were in various degrees wounded. Colour-Sergeant MacNaught was dying of his injuries and so, in spite of all Surgeon Major Corton could do, were around one hundred and fifty others. The three Mahratta battalions that formed the rest of the brigade had lost some fifteen hundred dead and wounded. A full muster of the living, the wounded and the dead of the Royal Strathspeys had failed to produce any evidence as to what might have happened to Second-Lieutenant James Ogilvie, the Regimental Sergeant-Major, and twenty-three junior N.C.O.s and men. A second muster brought no more evidence, neither did an exhaustive combing of the gullies and the boulders of the slopes up which the battalion had charged.
Black, conferring with an anxious Colonel, now acting Brigadier, and the Brigade Major, was looking sardonic. He said, “It would appear they must have been taken prisoner. I cannot understand the R.S.M., Colonel...but maybe young Ogilvie hadn’t the stomach to be...shall I say, overly resistant. After all, he’s young and totally inexperienced.”
Dornoch drew in his breath sharply and stared at the adjutant until the man’s gaze fell away. “What are you suggesting, Andrew?”
“Why...nothing at all, really, Colonel.”
“Then if I were you, I’d restrain myself from any further speculation, I think! In any case, I’ve never myself subscribed to the view that to be taken prisoner is any disgrace.” He gave a sound like a snort. “In the meantime, I’ll want full casualty lists reported back to Division.”
“A runner, Colonel, of course?” The lists were large for the field telegraph to tap out.
“The detailed nominal lists can go by runner, certainly, but the numbers by rank and regiment must go via the field telegraph. And one other thing, too. Whatever your private opinion as to the motive for the General’s appointment, Andrew, the fact remains that he’s Ogilvie’s father. A runner would take too long, so you’ll use the field telegraph to report his name.”
“Very good, Colonel.” Black sounded highly disapproving. He coughed. “What, specifically, shall I report in the case of Ogilvie and the other missing men?”
“Simply that they’re missing,” Dornoch answered. “That’s all. It’s all we know for certain, isn’t it? If they’ve been taken prisoner, we shall undoubtedly be informed of the fact by Ahmed Khan, and we must wait for that.”
He turned away abruptly and stared into the sunrise at the distant town below the heights. It was an unpleasant position to be in, to be the Colonel who had lost the Divisional Commander’s only son to the enemy—especially bearing in mind that James Ogilvie could prove a far more dangerous hostage than most subalterns.
Six
The prisoners were left without food or water, and unvisited, in that total darkness, for what seemed to Ogilvie an age. He had been dazed and bewildered; horrified by the unseen proximity of Private Grant’s body. He was thankful for the sturdy, phlegmatic presence of the Regimental Sergeant-Major, whose first action, unbidden, after the door was finally shut, had been to carry out a muster of the men and to ascertain what injuries had been caused by the fall down the steps. These, along with Ogilvie’s flesh wound sustained in the assault, turned out to be not serious. The twenty-three junior N.C.O.’s and rank and file—reduced now to twenty-two—included a corporal named Brown; a lance-corporal; and Private Jock Burns. Burns was already making a blistering attack on generals, an attack that was nipped in the bud smartly by the thunder of Bosom Cunningham’s voice. Ogilvie was grateful both to Cunningham and Burns. Together they had brought a touch of the ordinary, a touch of the barrack-room and the square to this hell-hole; indeed the very matter-of-factness with which the R.S.M. carried out his count of heads—or rather voices—was a help.
When he had finished Cunningham called out briskly, “Mr. Ogilvie, will you please indicate your whereabouts again. Sir!”
It had sounded like an order and despite his worries Ogilvie grinned to himself. “Over here, Sarn’t-Major. I’ve not moved.”
“Very good, sir. Thank you.” The R.S.M. moved across, stumbling into the men as he went. A minute later Ogilvie said again, “Here, Sarn’t-Major,” and he was aware of Cunningham groping around and then lowering his body down on the bare earth beside him. Cunningham said in a low voice, “This is a pretty kettle of fish, Mr. Ogilvie.”
“I know. And I’m afraid it looks like my fault, Sarn’t-Major.”
“You’ve no reason to think that, sir, no reason at all. You did your duty, Mr. Ogilvie. You carried out your orders, which were, to reach the summit of the hill. That is all.”
Ogilvie said, “You warned me, Sarn’t-Major. You warned me about a trap and you were right.”
“I think we’ll say no more about that, Mr. Ogilvie. If I may say so, more experienced officers than you have been ambushed before now, and many times too. You have nothing to reproach yourself over.” The R.S.M.’s voice became brisker. “It is profitless to worry about what’s done, sir, begging your pardon. We need now to consider the future, and what our action should be. I’ve no doubt you’ve alre
ady given thought to that. I’d say it’s already in your mind to break out at the first opportunity.”
“Yes,” Ogilvie agreed untruthfully. He had been too shaken to give any constructive thought to the future at all, and frankly he doubted if any opportunity of escape would be given them. But he appreciated the tactful guidance of the R.S.M. nevertheless. He had been given a lead now; he must respond to it. The men had to have a leader, and that leader had to be him. He had been pitchforked into sole and total responsibility of command. This was what he had been commissioned for, was broadly what Sandhurst was supposed to have prepared him for, even though, in point of fact, he had never felt less prepared for anything in all his life. Bullet wounds, death even, he had conditioned himself to expect and face. Never had he considered the idea of being taken prisoner and thus, to some extent at any rate, disgraced. Whatever Cunningham had said, it was not expected of officers that they should lead their men into ambush and capture by a band of ruffianly brigands, mere irregulars. Soon his sense of pride began to feel the affront, and with his resurgence of pride came a return of spirit.
He said, “Yes, you’re right, Sarn’t-Major. It’s our duty to break out and rejoin the battalion.”
“Aye, sir.” Then came the old soldier’s word of caution. “But of course—not foolishly.”
“How d’you mean?”
“An attempt should be made only when there is a likelihood of success, Mr. Ogilvie. To do otherwise would lead to an unnecessary loss of life, and nothing gained in the end. If I might make a suggestion, it would be this: if we hold our hand a while and do not rush into too quick an attempt, it is possible that in the meantime we may learn something of Ahmed Khan’s plans for the future, and of the state of this fort. All such information will be of value to Division, Mr. Ogilvie.”
Drums Along the Khyber Page 12