Treachery in Tibet

by John Wilcox

  After a climb that left the mild air of the plain well behind them, they eventually reached the pass – to find yet another rock wall stretching across the defile and effectively blocking the road forward.

  Jenkins pulled on his moustache. ‘This lot is a nation of bricklayers, it seems to me, bach sir,’ he observed, ‘except that they’ve never discovered mortar. Do they just go about the place, look you, stickin’ stones across the bloody road all the time?’

  ‘Probably. What else is there to do up here?’ He studied the wall through his binoculars. ‘Seems unmanned.’ He focussed up the steep mountain slopes on either side. ‘Can’t see any one there.’ He lowered the glasses. ‘Come on. Let’s take a walk and have a look. William, stay here with the men.’

  They dismounted and began walking warily towards the wall. At about 200 yards from it, however, a fusillade of fire sprang from along the wall and from the surrounding rocks, matched by stones hurled down on them from the side of the mountains.

  Without a word, the two spun on their heels and ran back out of range, where they stood, panting.

  ‘Another little surprise, look you,’ gasped Jenkins.

  Fonthill drew out his field glasses again from their case and examined the wall and the hillside. ‘I can see hundreds of them now,’ he murmured, focusing the lenses. ‘Thank God they can’t shoot straight. There must be well over 1,000.’ He lowered the glasses. ‘Let’s get back. I’ve seen enough. We’ve found the Tibetan army, old chap.’

  Back at Chang Lo, he reported to Colonel Herbert Brander, a short, bright-eyed officer, younger than Fonthill, of course, who had already distinguished himself on the march from the border.

  ‘How many d’yer say, old man?’

  ‘Could be as many as 1,500. And they seem well armed – though they still can’t shoot straight.’

  ‘Then I shall go and clear them out.’

  ‘What, and leave the camp virtually undefended? You will need as many troops as you can muster to get them out from behind that wall.’

  Brander grinned. ‘Oh, I think we are pretty well housed here and I shall leave as many as I can spare. We can’t afford, Fonthill, to have that many of the enemy hanging about as near to us as this. I want to hit ’em while they are not expecting us.’

  Simon grimaced. ‘Well, it’s your decision, Brander. But I suppose you must get Y’s agreement. And what about Macdonald?’

  The Colonel’s grin widened. ‘I think Y will agree. He’s all for getting on with things. And I shall get a telegram off to the General, although, alas, I am afraid he won’t receive it until after I have set out. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to wait for his reply. I would like you and your chaps to come with me, if you will?’

  For a moment, Fonthill hesitated. Alice would be left in a camp which, if things went wrong, would have had its garrison severely reduced, whatever Brander said. But the Colonel would need scouts patrolling ahead of him to protect his force. There was no choice.

  ‘Of course we will come. We and the horses will need a good night’s rest, though. We had to ride pretty hard coming back here.’

  ‘Very well. We leave at dawn.’

  Alice rose at 4 a.m. to see off her husband for, as always, the Mounted Infantry had to leave before the main column to range ahead of the marching men. Brander had taken the decision to ban the correspondents from riding with him because, he explained, he needed to move fast and wished to have no additional responsibility for civilians in what could prove to be a stiff fight. Grudgingly, therefore, Alice returned to the small room she shared with Simon within the compound, turned up the wick of her lantern and began writing a report, detailing the despatch of Brander and his force.

  Communications with London were now more tenuous, because the telegraph line had not been extended to Gyantse, running only to Kala Tso, some sixty miles away. She would need, then, to find a despatch rider quickly to take her story back to the telegraph station.

  It was this delay in communicating, of course, that Brander had relied on in riding out immediately to fight the Tibetans. He had a pretty sure feeling that Macdonald would forbid him to leave the camp, but, of course, he would be well on his way before such an order could reach him. And so it proved.

  Alice, of course, was unaware of this manoeuvring and, once she had despatched her story, she decided that, rather than sit and mope, worrying about Simon, she would offer her services to the mission’s medical officer, Captain Walton, who had set up a small hospital just outside the perimeter walls and who had already built up a thriving practice, with peasants from the town as his patients.

  In fact, she spent a busy and rewarding day, helping the Captain and his orderlies, applying dressings and administering doses of colic and other basic medicines. Her attendance was welcomed by Walton and Alice decided to return the following day.

  That morning, however, she noticed a sudden and surprising slackening in the number of patients attending. In fact, as the day progressed, the inmates of the sickroom all picked themselves up and hobbled away, or were picked up by their relatives.

  ‘Was it something that I said?’ she joked to Walton.

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Strange, isn’t it? I have had to turn people away almost every day over the last week. Now, they’ve all suddenly become extremely healthy overnight. They are, indeed, an unpredictable lot.’

  The reason soon became apparent.

  Alice was asleep in her hut when, at about four-thirty the next morning, she was awakened by a shrill howling, like that of a pack of hyenas fighting over a carcase that she recalled from her days in Africa. She realised, with a sinking stomach, that they were war cries. They were followed immediately by the sound of firing.

  She threw on her clothes, picked up the Webley service revolver that Simon had left with her and ran out into the compound. All around, the perimeter wall was aflame with fire and gunshot smoke and she realised that muskets were poking through the loopholes and firing indiscriminately inwards from outside the wall!

  Inside the compound all was confusion, with sepoys running towards the wall and officers, some of them in their nightshirts, shouting orders.

  Alice caught the arm of one of them. ‘What’s happening?’ she shouted.

  ‘We’re under attack, madam. The compound is surrounded. There are hundreds of them. Get back into your house and take cover.’

  Alice ran back into her hut, but only to grab a carton of cartridges for her revolver, thrusting the bullets into the pockets of her jodhpurs as she ran back, following three Sikhs towards the wall. As she ran, she was aware that Sunil was at her side, carrying his Lee Metford and keeping pace with her. She realised that the muskets firing through the loopholes were discharging their balls mainly over the heads of the defenders. The holes, of course, were set at shoulder level for the Sikh Pioneers, who were all much taller than the Tibetans, with the result that the muskets were harmlessly pointing up to the rapidly lightening sky.

  Pushing the revolver into the waistband of her riding breeches, Alice followed a Sikh who was climbing up the side of one of the outhouses near to the perimeter. He reached down a hand and pulled her up onto the roof, Sunil scrambling up behind her, where they all three lay and looked over the wall. Below them stretched a thick line of Tibetans, all shrieking, some of them firing through the loopholes, others waving long swords aimlessly. Alice turned her head and realised that the enemy were pressing up against the wall on all sides of the compound. There must be nearly 1,000 of them. How long before the gates collapsed?

  The Sikh levelled his Lee Metford and fired. Immediately, his action was taken up by Sunil and by other sepoys and officers who had similarly gained vantage points looking over the wall. Alice, too, instinctively levelled her pistol and fired into the mass below.

  It was impossible to miss, so tightly packed were the Tibetans, and the crack of the rifles now began to outnumber the dull sound of the attackers’ muskets. Within minutes, it seemed to Alice, the throng
began to thin and then the Tibetans turned and ran, leaving behind them piles of bodies, hunched against the bottom of the wall.

  From behind her somewhere, Alice heard an authoritarian voice shout, ‘Open the gates. After the bastards!’

  As she watched, scores of sepoys doubled out of the opened gates, knelt and delivered a series of volleys after the fleeing Tibetans. Then, the soldiers reloaded and began running after the enemy, pursuing them into a grove of poplars and then towards the river, where some had taken refuge behind the bank.

  ‘Can I go with them, memsahib?’ Sunil was looking at her with anxious eyes, a thin smear of cordite across his cheek.

  Alice rested her head on her forearm and sighed. More killing! She inspected the chambers of her revolver. Two were empty. Did this mean that she had killed two Tibetans? She had no idea, for, caught up in the heat and fear of the moment, she had fired blindly into the mob.

  ‘I think not, Sunil,’ she said. ‘I think we’ve had enough killing for one day, don’t you?’

  ‘No, miss. They try to kill us. We should see they don’t do it again.’

  Alice frowned. ‘But aren’t these your fellow countrymen? Do you want to kill your own people?’

  For a moment the boy looked slightly puzzled. Then he shook his head. ‘They not my people now, memsahib. Not anymore.’

  ‘I see. Well, I think Colonel Fonthill would want you stay here and help look after me. Which, I must say, you have done splendidly.’

  She lay for a moment more along the top of the hut, not noticing that the Sikh had left his post, presumably to join in the pursuit.

  Then she heard a familiar sound and looked up. Dawn had broken, touching the mountains to the east with a delicate pink, and skylarks were singing, their warbling replacing the harsh cracks of the Lee Metfords.

  ‘Come on,’ she said to Sunil. ‘Let’s see if we can find some breakfast.’

  The two scrambled down the side of the hut, Alice cursing as she barked her shin, causing the blood to flow. She told Sunil to repair to the cookhouse and find food but she returned to her bed, put on her poshteen and replaced her revolver with her notebook, before walking outside to assess the number of Tibetan dead and to see what she could do to help the wounded. As far as she could detect, there were no casualties amongst the soldiers, who were now returning from their pursuit, grinning and laughing. But she lost count of the number of Tibetan dead, giving up at 200.

  It was amazing. She knew that the number of riflemen defending the cantonment were less than 150 and there must have been nearly 1,000 of the Tibetans. If they had scaled the wall and used their swords instead of poking their muskets through the loopholes and blazing away indiscriminately, then that would have been the end of Younghusband’s Mission.

  Alice returned to her room and sat on a corner of the bed. If there were 1,000 attacking here at Gyantse, how many might there be waiting out there for Simon? She sat for a while, thinking. This stupid, one-sided killing had to stop. She was tired of reporting on it and finding reasons to diminish the tragic slaughter of the people of Tibet. Somehow, she had to do something positive to stop it …

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It took nearly three days of hard marching before Brander’s column reached the pass at Karo La, the last spent climbing hard. He had taken with him about two-thirds of the force left behind at Chang Lo by Macdonald: both of his guns and machine guns, three companies of his own 32nd Sikh Pioneers, one company of the 8th Gurkhas and virtually all of Fonthill’s Mounted Infantry. Their route, which had often forced them to march in single file, had taken them to the highest source of the Nyang river, just underneath a glacier that rose above it, peaking in a vast wall of snow 24,000 feet high.

  Just twenty-four hours after the attack on the mission, he and his 300 men halted at the wall, which had been built across the defile, about a mile and a half beyond the pass itself. Here, in the bitterly cold air, a little more than 16,000 feet above sea level, they paused.

  Fonthill and Jenkins rode back to meet Brander and take him and his senior officers to the wall, leaving Ottley with the horsemen. The Colonel scanned it and whistled. ‘Lord,’ he mused. ‘Worse than I thought. Toughest we’ve faced yet.’

  It was, in fact, a little over six feet high, four feet thick and eight hundred yards long, cleverly loopholed and protected by sangars that climbed a little way up the sides of the semi-sheer walls on either side and projected forward. The situation was similar to the Red Idol Gorge, only worse, for the British force was outnumbered now by more than ten to one and the high altitude was making everyone gasp for breath.

  The Tibetans had chosen their fortifications with care and skill, for this was the narrowest part of the defile, with precipitous and quite unpassable cliffs on the left and only a slightly less steep mountainside on the right.

  ‘I can’t see how you can outflank the wall this time,’ said Fonthill, ‘for the mountainsides look unclimbable to me.’

  ‘And to me,’ offered Jenkins quickly.

  ‘Well, I can’t hang about,’ said Brander. ‘I haven’t got all that much ammunition and I can’t afford to be away from the mission for very long. Let’s see what Bubble and Squeak and the Maxims can do.’

  He shouted an order and the two antiquated cannon were wheeled forward, together with the Maxims of the Norfolks, and positioned just out of the range of the Tibetans manning the wall. An order rang clear in the cold air and firing began.

  It soon became clear that the Maxims could do little against the rocks of the wall, for, although they were aimed at the puffs of smoke emerging from it, the loopholes could not be clearly defined and the bullets either sailed harmlessly over the top or pinged abortively into the stones themselves. The two small artillery pieces proved to be equally useless. Although they were serviced smartly by the Gurkha crews, under the direction of a British NCO, they were only loaded with shrapnel, which was quite ineffective against fortifications. The sergeant resourcefully switched to using the guns as mortars, aiming high to lob the shells over the wall, but it was impossible to see where they were exploding at a range of 600 yards – and they were not always falling with the explosive end foremost. It emerged later that only one of seventy rounds fired had hit its mark and exploded.

  ‘The noise is bloody marvellous,’ shouted Ottley to Fonthill, ‘but it’s doing no good.’

  Brander rode up. ‘There’s nothing for it but to attack them frontally,’ he said. Fonthill noted with approval that amidst the noise, frustration and danger – for if the Tibetans suddenly decided to leave their wall and swarm forward quickly, the sepoys could easily have been swamped and overwhelmed – the man remained completely cool and self-possessed.

  ‘I am sending in my Pioneers to attack along the floor of the defile,’ he said, pointing. ‘I would be much obliged, Fonthill, if you would take, say, forty of your chaps and support them on foot. Sorry, might be a bit hot.’

  Simon frowned. ‘Very good, Colonel.’

  He ordered a company and a half of his cavalry to fall in with their carbines and, led by himself, Ottley and Jenkins, they all followed the Sikhs whose forward company was led by a Captain Bethune, whom Fonthill had come to respect as one of the most capable of the junior officers on the expedition. Immediately the fire of the Tibetans on the wall was concentrated on this company as it walked stolidly within range. It was impossible for the Sikhs to advance into that wall of flame and Bethune gestured to Fonthill to turn back and ordered his own men to follow them. He, however, with two sepoys, disappeared up the glacis to the right of the wall, attempting, it seemed, to outflank it.

  The firepower of the Tibetans was clearly much greater than had been encountered before and both the Sikhs and Fonthill’s men became pinned down on the floor of the defile, crouching behind whatever cover they could find. The Maxims now began to come under fire from the sangars above and either side of them and had to be withdrawn, not least because their ammunition was running low.

  Th
is was true also of the troops and it was difficult, if not impossible, to take fresh supplies up to the Sikhs pinned down on the floor of the defile. Brander had previously sent a company of Gurkhas in a desperate attempt to climb the cliffs on the left and a small party of Sikhs to try and scramble up the scree and shale on the right. The Gurkhas had disappeared from sight but the Sikhs had been forced to give up their attempt. A kind of stalemate had descended on the defile.

  Fonthill was forced to watch the proceedings without taking action. He did, however, notice that a rider had materialised and given a message to Colonel Brander. For a moment, Simon felt his heart lurch. Was it bad news from Chang Lo? He scrambled to the Colonel’s side.

  Not wanting to intrude on the officer commanding, he merely asked: ‘Anything I can do, Herbert?’

  Brander’s expression did not change. ‘No, thank you. Your chaps have done all they can so far.’ He waved the note. ‘This says that there has been an attack on the mission. Don’t worry, it has been fought off and there are no serious casualties, so I am sure that your wife is all right.’

  Fonthill blew out his cheeks. ‘Thank God for that. Are you going to retreat back to there?’

  ‘Certainly not. This makes it even more imperative that we knock these chaps over here. If we turned tail, they would come after us just like the Afghans did when we retreated from Kabul back in ’42.’ He smiled grimly. ‘They would harass us every step of the three-day march until they had picked us off down to the last man. No. I’ve got to find a way to get round this bloody wall. Hang on here, old man. We shall need you yet.’

  Fonthill looked up to his left and saw that the Gurkhas had fallen back down the steep side of the cliff to, it seemed, regroup. Then half a dozen of them tried a new route, climbing straight up the cliff face, until they disappeared from view. Down below, Simon saw that Brander had wormed his way forward to where his pioneers were pinned down and was talking to a native subadar. As he watched, he saw the subadar gesticulate to about a dozen men, who, with him at their head, then wriggled to where a vertical cleft or chimney in the virtually sheer cliff wall offered not only cover from the Tibetan fire but, conceivably, a way upwards. Slowly, the Sikhs began to haul their way up the cleft until they, too, disappeared from sight.