by John Wilcox
Simon realised that Jenkins was by his side. ‘I would ’ave volunteered to lead ’em up there,’ said the Welshman, ‘but I thought I’d better not. I would ’ave climbed a bit too quickly for ’em, see, an’ it would be a bit embarrassin’ for ’em, like.’ He had the grace to give a rueful grin.
The stalemate continued for at least another hour and Fonthill realised that the only hope Brander had of breaking it was if either of the handful of climbers could manage, somehow, to haul themselves up above the sangars so that they could direct fire down on to their defenders and onto the Tibetans on the wall itself. But the cliffs on either side seemed unclimbable.
Unclimbable, that is, until a small cheer from the sheltering Pioneers made Fonthill look up, to his left. He raised his glasses and the tiny figure of one of the Gurkhas came into view, carrying a miniature rifle. Then a second appeared and together the two began firing down onto the sangers, followed shortly by the rest of the small party who had made the climb. The effect on the Tibetans behind the sangars was immediate. Men began leaping over the stone walls of these defences and scrambling down the mountainside, now in plain view of the attackers. Immediately, the two Maxims reopened fire and sent the retreating Tibetans tumbling away down the precipitous slope.
Anxious eyes were now directed up to the top of the other side of the valley. Within minutes they were rewarded by the appearance of tiny figures surmounted by the distinctive turbans of the Sikhs and the sound of rifle fire from on high. The cheer this time from the Pioneers was even louder. Perhaps it was this that began the rout, for it soon became apparent that the defenders of the wall were now leaving in droves.
Fonthill did not wait for orders. He sprang to his feet. ‘Handlers,’ he shouted, ‘bring up the horses. Now is our chance. Mount up! Mount up! We must pursue. Mount up!’
Brander’s bugle had also sounded the advance, but Simon’s Mounted Infantry swept past the Pioneers at full tilt, galloping along the bed of the frozen stream until the wall brought them to a halt. There remained no defenders to pour fire down on them and the dismounted men frantically pulled at the loose stones until a gap had been made, allowing horses and riders to pass through singly at first and then two abreast.
Re-forming his men on the far side of the wall, Fonthill looked along the bottom of the valley, which led to a ridge where the defile opened out. There was no sign of the enemy. It was as though the defenders of the wall had disappeared into thin air.
‘Could be a trap, Simon,’ shouted Ottley.
‘Could be, but I doubt it. We will gallop to that ridge and see what we can see.’
‘Very good, sir.’ The young man, his red hair sticking out from under his makeshift turban, so that he looked like some medieval bandit, waved the way forward and led the men in a fast canter, until they breasted the ridge a short way ahead. Here, Fonthill and Jenkins, breathing just a little more heavily after the exertions of clearing a way through the wall, joined them.
The sight that met their eyes would stay with them for the rest of their lives. Far away – perhaps a little over a mile – was the Tibetan army in full and undisciplined retreat, spreading across the road and choking the way as it met the cliff sides. As they watched, they saw another band of men, coming up the road to reinforce the first, being swept along by the force of the retreat.
‘We will gallop until we are about 100 yards from them,’ shouted Fonthill, turning in his saddle. ‘Then we will rein in, dismount and give them several volleys. This time, we must teach them a lesson. Now,’ he rised his arm, ‘Charge!’
There were no more than forty of the Mounted Infantry but no one – not Simon, Ottley, Jenkins nor any of the riders – gave a thought to the fact that they were outnumbered by some fifty to one and that, if the Tibetans, rallied, took cover – as they had time to do – and directed a steady fire at the approaching horsemen, they would almost certainly emerge as the victors. The excitement of the chase, after the frustrations of waiting for the stalemate to end, overtook every one of them.
The Tibetans, seeing and hearing the pursuit, had now all attempted to break into a shambling run as Fonthill and his men reined in, dismounted and knelt. There was no time to call up the handlers so each man tucked his reins over his right arm and fired. It was like shooting fish in a barrel for it was impossible to miss. The rearmost ranks of the mob threw up their arms and collapsed as the volleys from the Lee Metfords ravaged them.
Five times the rifles fired and the lines of the Tibetans crumbled and thinned out, fleeing for their lives from the volleys, leaving behind a mass of bodies among the stones and rocks, until most of the enemy had disappeared around a bend in the road.
Fonthill remained standing in the road, looking at the human wreckage in disgust. Listlessly, he slipped his revolver into its holster.
‘You all right, bach sir?’ enquired Jenkins.
Silent for a moment, Simon then nodded. ‘I suppose so,’ he whispered. ‘I think I’ve had enough of this slaughter, though.’
Ottley ran to him. ‘We should pursue, Simon,’ he said anxiously. ‘We can’t let them get away to fight another day. Permission to follow, sir?’
Fonthill nodded. ‘Yes, carry on. Pursue but don’t exhaust the horses nor your ammunition. Take prisoners, though, William, if you can. Don’t just mow down the poor bastards.’
‘What?’ Ottley looked puzzled. ‘Oh yes. I see. Very well, sir.’ He ran to the bugler who was standing by, looking equally perplexed. ‘Sound the pursuit.’ Then, ‘Follow me.’
The forty men of the Mounted Infantry rode behind Ottley, past Simon and Jenkins, out of sight round the bend in the road. As they sped by him, Fonthill attempted a quick count. It looked as though none of his men had been hit in the charge and he breathed a sigh of relief.
‘Now what do we do, then, bach?’ asked Jenkins. ‘Shouldn’t we ’ave gone with ’em? Isn’t that what cavalry is supposed to do when the enemy buggers off in a panic, like that?’
Fonthill nodded. ‘Yes, old chap, it is. But there is nothing in my non-existent commission which orders me to kill defenceless men. I’ll have to leave that to Ottley. And I think he can look after himself. Let’s get back and report to the Colonel.’
The two mounted and let their ponies pick their way delicately over and through the bodies that now were strewn across the frozen stream and trail, until they met the first detachment of the Pioneers, with Colonel Brander at its head.
Simon dismounted. ‘Congratulations, Colonel,’ he said. ‘You’ve won the day, thanks, if I may say so, to a magnificent bit of mountaineering.’
‘Thank you. Quite so. What’s happened to the enemy, then?’ He looked over Fonthill’s shoulder at the distant bodies lying, mostly still, for at short range the Lee Metford volleys were deadly. ‘Looks as though you had quite an encounter.’
‘We pursued them for about a mile. Dismounted and gave them five volleys and sent them all packing. Ottley is still pursuing. One way or another, I think we’ve taught them a sharp lesson.’
Brander looked concerned. ‘Are you all right, Fonthill?’
‘Oh yes. Bit winded though and … er … we’ve both run out of ammunition. Ottley can pursue well enough. I’ve told him not to go too far, though. We are down to our last few cartridges. So I have told him to round up rather than kill.’
‘Yes, indeed. Well done, Simon, although I’m afraid we will not be able to keep many prisoners. I want to get back to Chang Lo as soon as I can. We’ve found the enemy’s camp, by the way. Cooking pots still on fires, tents still standing and so on. They pushed off in a terrible hurry.’
Brander frowned. ‘We’re looking at the weapons they used now. Considering the way they kept us down for three hours or so, I felt sure they had modern rifles this time. But so far up in the sangars and along the wall, we’ve only found old Martinis, made in Lhasa by the look of them. Nothing from Russia.’
Fonthill nodded wearily. ‘Yes, so Alice is right. She always is.’
‘Oh, nothing. I think we’ll have a cup of tea, or something, if you don’t want us immediately.’
‘Yes, of course. You and your chaps did very well again, Fonthill, and I shall report as much. Congratulations.’
‘Thank you. Come on, 352, let’s find a kettle and a pinch of tea.’
Ottley, in fact, pursued the broken Tibetan army for more than ten miles, he and his men firing from the saddle and inflicting more casualties, before the remnants of the Tibetan horde melted away into the snows of the hills or the side valleys. On their way they dismantled several Tibetan camps and captured valuable ponies. This was done, however, at some cost, for the riders of the Mounted Infantry had indeed expended most of their ammunition and, by the time the British camp was regained at 9.30, their horses, which had been on half rations since they left Gyantse, were exhausted.
Brander was in a hurry to return to what sounded now like a beleaguered Chang Lo, and he deemed that there was no time to bury the Tibetan dead or even to treat their wounded, nor to dismantle the wall. The Tibetans were later to put their total casualties that day at more than six hundred but the British casualties were light: four killed and thirteen wounded, among them three of Fonthill’s Mounted Infantry. The bodies of Captain Bethune and his two Sikhs, who had disappeared in a lone and desperate attempt to slip round the wall, were retrieved from where they lay. The captain’s Sikhs made stretchers and bore the bodies back with them to Chang Lo.
It was an arduous march back, for a blinding blizzard sprung up, reducing visibility virtually down to nil and exhausting the troops, particularly Fonthill’s men, who had ridden forty-seven miles in eight hours. They had to lead their horses, two of whom died, for the last twelve miles and they were the last to arrive at the camp, slipping in under cover of darkness.
So began a difficult time for the beleaguered defenders of Chang Lo. Despite their three defeats, the Tibetan ‘tame sheep’, as Younghusband once described them, seemed now to have turned into wolves. Intelligence reports said that strong forces were now converging on Gyantse. Scattered buildings surrounding Chang Lo were now occupied by the enemy and a constant, if ineffective fire, was being directed at the mission, both from these buildings and from the fort, 1,300 yards away, where jingals and snipers were particularly active.
The tables had been turned on the invaders. The garrison of Chang Lo was outnumbered by, it was later estimated, ten to one; they were about 150 miles away from their nearest supply base; and reinforcements were equally distant. Yet Fonthill found Younghusband quite sanguine.
He later explained to Alice the reason. ‘It’s the British in India thing,’ he said. ‘For years, the Raj has been used to having its outposts surrounded and under attack. But, with well-trained soldiers handling modern weapons manning the defences, it has usually been possible to hold out and then defeat the attacking natives.
‘You will remember that we were with Roberts in 1879 when his little force in Kabul was under huge pressure, surrounded by hordes of Afghans. He retreated behind the walls of Sherpur, quite confident that he could hold out and later counter-attack. He was proved right.’
Alice gave a sour smile. ‘Yes, but then Roberts had the wonderful pair of Fonthill and Jenkins with him when they were much younger. They were supreme then. Mind you …’ she pulled the ear of her husband, ‘they are still pretty magnificent – for pensioners, that is.’
Simon made to smack her bottom but she danced out of the way.
The amazing thing about the investment of Chang Lo by the Tibetans was that the telegraph line, that now had been extended to Gyantse, remained uncut. A rumour spread that it had been allowed to remain because, while engineers were working on the line, they had met two lamas who had asked the purpose of the wire. The engineers had carefully explained that the British were far from home and did not want to stay in Tibet, so they had built a line to guide them home.
The telegraph had been used, of course, by Macdonald to issue an order demanding that Brander turn back from his expedition to attack the Tibetans at Karo La. The order had arrived too late to restrain the Colonel, but now Younghusband was being reprimanded for allowing the attack to go ahead. Further oblique criticisms came his way and, as he wearily confided to Fonthill, it was clear that the governments both in India and back home were beginning to regard him as a hothead, determined to force his way to Lhasa despite the British government’s anxiety not to upset the government of the Tsar.
The mission at Chang Lo was now being subjected to an incessant bombardment from the fort and its surroundings, a regular and sustained attack from the guns which, while they killed only a handful of sepoys, began to become more dangerous as the days went by and wore down the nerves of the defenders. They worked out that there were now more than twenty pieces of artillery on the jong capable of inflicting damage, particularly two large pieces of ordnance whose arrival had been greeted by cheers from the fort. The first of the defenders called ‘William’ and the other, ‘William the Second’. They both had a range in excess of 2,400 yards and were capable of causing serious damage. Suddenly, the expedition had, indeed, turned into a war.
Part of the problem was that there was little effective response that could be made. Fonthill and his Mounted Infantry consistently broke out from the perimeter wall and patrolled the surrounding countryside, bringing in livestock and fodder and, once, fighting a successful but fierce engagement with a party of Tibetan horsemen. But the shrapnel of Bubble and Squeak could not reach the fort and ammunition both for them, the Maxims and the rifles of the troops was now running very low.
Since Macdonald had left a month before, the mission’s escort had sustained fifty-six men killed or wounded, while a further fifty had gone down with sickness. It was, then, a huge relief when, on 24th May, reinforcements arrived: two ten-pounders of the 7th Mountain Battery, eight men of the 1st Sappers and Miners, a detachment of Mounted Infantry to swell the ranks of Fonthill’s horsemen and the remaining men of the 32nd Pioneers. In all, then, the garrison now had an effective strength of 800 men.
The defenders of Chang Lo could now become more proactive and the fighting became more intense. A sortie was launched before dawn one day against Palla, a village some 1,000 yards to the south-east of the fort, on the road to Lhasa. If the British were expecting a walkover, they were quickly surprised, for the Tibetans resisted with a tenacity and savagery that had not been seen before. The fighting lasted for six hours and became a hand-to-hand battle from street to street and house to house, with walls being blown down and every brick contested. It was as if a new enemy had been created.
Fonthill and his Mounted Infantry took no part in the action, but Simon lay on a roof within the mission perimeter and watched part of the action through his field glasses. At one stage, he could see Tibetan warriors deliberately exposing themselves to British fire at the open windows of the houses and waving the sepoys on towards them. Others were dancing on the roofs of the building and hurling stones at the attackers. This was most unusual bravery from Tibetan troops and Simon was told that they were Khampa warriors, hard-bitten professional soldiers from the north-west of Tibet and the core of what was left of the Tibetan standing army. Before the hamlet was finally cleared, the British had lost an officer and three sepoys, and two officers were wounded, a total far outnumbered by the number of Tibetan casualties.
Alice glumly but carefully recorded all these dead and wounded in her reports to The Morning Post, to which she now had daily access, thanks to the extended telegraph line. Her attitude towards the expedition had hardened even further, as though to match the Tibetans own resistance to it.
‘It’s as though nobody back home cares,’ she complained to Simon. ‘All this killing of these people – and of our own men – all for nothing. Why doesn’t anyone in Whitehall oppose it?’
Fonthill sighed. ‘Well, it’s not as though it’s a full-scale war, my love. The British public have been accustomed for years
to these battles and skirmishes on the outposts of Empire. They like to have an empire, they are used to it and they have been fed for decades on the glories of it all – including the constant price we have to pay in terms of men’s lives to police it.’
‘Bah.’ Alice’s snort could surely have been heard in the fort. ‘This is not a police action. This is an invasion, as I keep saying, but no one will listen.’
The attack on and the besieging of Chang Lo, however, could not be ignored, either in Calcutta or London. Younghusband was instructed to issue an ultimatum to the amban in the fort that unless it was surrendered by 25th June there could be no question of conducting negotiations at Gyantse. However, he was also further reprimanded for his tart suggestions to his superiors that the attack on the mission should be regarded as an act of war, to end all attempts at negotiations and head for Lhasa instead. He was warned that he was showing ‘undue eagerness’ and causing the British Cabinet ‘undue apprehension’. The exchange ended with an instruction for him to leave Chang Lo immediately, with a suitable escort, and journey to New Chumbi for consultations with General Macdonald, still sitting there, if not quite comfortably, because he was suffering from gastritis.
Fonthill immediately offered to form the escort for the Commissioner and to ride with him, but Younghusband declined, asking only for forty men of the Mounted Infantry to accompany him on the 150 mile journey back.
‘It’s madness,’ confided Simon to Alice. ‘He’s brave to the point of sanguinity. I hope the government will be suitably shamed if the man is killed on the journey.’