White Mountain

by Robert Twigger

  It was a masterstroke that eased the situation with the generals, though the lamas continued to clamour for a date. Then one of the generals suggested a messenger come with Younghusband to Tuna, then and there, to receive the answer from the Viceroy.

  Despite what civilians might think, generals only get to be generals by a marked lack of enthusiasm for unnecessary conflict (which is very different to a reluctance to fight when the fight has started); they know that any conflict has a way of throwing you off your game, confusing the issue and creating a new set of priorities. Better to let Younghusband go with the possibility of a solution, rather than keep him and risk certain bloodshed. The monks muttered but the generals were all smiles again, conducting the British officers to the door with the same geniality and politeness they had shown when the party arrived. As for Younghusband and his companions:

  We preserved our equanimity of demeanor and the smiles on our faces till we had mounted our ponies and we were well outside the camp, and then we galloped off as hard as we could, lest the monks should get the upper hand again and send men after us. It had been a close shave but it was worth it.

  * Hybrid of a cow and a yak.

  † A 7th Mountain Battery subaltern quoted in Peter Fleming’s Bayonets to Lhasa.

  ‡ Peter Fleming, News from Tartary

  4

  The Incident at Guru

  Credulity breeds credulity and ends in hypocrisy.

  Tibetan proverb

  Of course, the Viceroy said no to a retreat. All winter the Tibetans watched the British and wondered what would happen next. At Guru they built a 1.5-metre wall and waited for the enemy to arrive. The road to Gyantse and Lhasa beyond was now effectively blocked. Either the Tibetans backed off or there would be a fight. Younghusband and Macdonald (now back), one fine day in April 1904, moved off with their troops behind them. They were greeted by the same Lhasa general who had been so cordial before. He was no longer smiling. The Tibetans had been told the British had no wish to fight. Now they would be tested. After twenty minutes of wrangling with the general, Younghusband told the Tibetans that they would be dislodged by force from the road and the wall they hid behind. There were, at a guess, over a thousand of them – armed with antique broadswords and strange forked guns embossed with turquoise and coral.

  Fifteen minutes passed with no sign of movement by the Tibetans. Macdonald, ever lacking in boldness, suggested they simply open fire and then attack with all force. Younghusband, revealing again his gambler’s instinct, or perhaps a much greater ability to read Himalayans – he had, after all, been dealing with them for fifteen years by now – prevailed upon Macdonald instead to order an advance in which the troops would hold their fire unless fired upon.

  It was a cold grey day. The mounted infantry were somewhat breathless with the effects of altitude. But they marched forward. Macdonald had wanted to use the artillery they had with them. It would have given them a decisive advantage. Instead, they were advancing on a serious barrier, a wall, with loopholes for the Tibetans to fire securely. And behind the wall massed the Tibetan troops, ready to fan out and overwhelm the British.

  No shot was fired. Inch by inch the troops grew closer and closer. Right and left flanking movements by the British-positioned Maxim guns and infantry bearing down on the Tibetans from each side. In front of the wall, the impasse continued. On the escarpments either side of the wall, grey-clad Tibetan musketeers hiding in hastily built sangars were hustled out by the 8th Gurkhas and the 23rd Sikh Pioneers. This was all conducted in silence, as if the native soldiers knew that any sound might wake the Tibetans from their stunned reverie. They were disarmed ‘with the good humoured severity that London policemen display on Boat Race night’.*

  The men from the sangar ambled downhill – not exactly driven, but moving away from the Gurkhas. They joined the milling throng of Tibetans behind the wall. Appearing from behind it, the Lhasa general slumped down on the ground while Sikh soldiers gathered round. It was impossible to say what was going through his mind.

  Already the tension seemed to have died down. Reminiscent of modern-day soldiers taking phone selfies, the British officers were busy with their folding cameras, taking snapshots. Candler, a reporter from the Daily Mail, penned a quick sketch about an absurd, bloodless victory. Younghusband composed a short dispatch and sent an orderly rushing to the telegraph head to send it to Calcutta.

  But the Tibetans were quite unlike any other soldiers the British had battled. There is a certain etiquette to any violent encounter, and so far this seemed to be observed. But war is never over until the weapons are all on one side, and at this point the Tibetans still had theirs. What’s more, they greatly outnumbered the British force and were still behind the wall. It would have marked the short path from audacity to folly to expect that they could pass the Tibetans and walk away from them, exposed from the rear, passing the obstruction as if it were inconvenient roadworks. Macdonald agreed with Younghusband that they would have to disarm the Tibetans before moving on.

  Again, the finer points of violence and potential violence. It is one thing to not fire your musket; it is quite another to give it up. In the mind of the Tibetans, the fact of not firing had earned them the right to keep their guns. They had proved they could be trusted . . .

  Disarming men without some kind of prior agreement is always going to be difficult. The actions speak for themselves, but they generate questions too: am I going to be shot now I have given up my gun? Will I now become a prisoner?

  It was a risky move. The British knew, however, that the Tibetans had no alternative. Maxims and Lee Metford rifles drove a hard bargain. The Maxim – which no Tibetan had ever seen in action – could fire 600 rounds per minute and was accurate to 550 metres. It bears repetition that the whole con trick of the British colonial presence in Africa rested largely on the Maxim machine gun and its vast superiority to native firearms. And then there was the Lee Metford rifle, forerunner of the Lee Enfield, with a 10-round magazine and a rapid-firing bolt set back and within easy reach, requiring only a 60-degree turn, unlike the slower 90-degree locking turn for a Mauser. Despite being powered by black powder and not cordite, the Lee Metford was a deadly rifle to have pointing at your face – and one group of Gurkhas were a mere twenty metres from the Tibetan mass.

  Who were becoming restive. They simply did not recognise what was obvious to their antagonists: the Tibetans, relying still on charms and paper spells in tiny seashells, muttered prayers and declared their firm belief in the overwhelming power of the supernatural; they were quite unaware that resistance was not an option. And here Younghusband, for all his experience, missed a vital trick: the weapons each man carried were not army-issue, general purpose, stamped with a broad arrow courtesy of the Woolwich armoury; these were individually owned broadswords that had been in the same family for generations. They were personal possessions that had meaning beyond their destructive capabilities. The decorated and elaborate matchlock rifles were also personally owned, and would have been essential for hunting and feeding troops and family – probably not in that order. So, the wrestling started. Many hands gripped the same weapon; the holiday-picture-taking atmosphere evaporated in an instant. Everything just boiled over.

  At this point, the Lhasa general, no doubt feeling the iniquity of staying on the floor, had mounted his small pony. The cacophony bothered the horse but had some enlivening effect on the general’s brain. Shouting hysterically, he rammed his mount forward into the melee of sepoys and Tibetans refusing to hand over their swords and rifles. A stout Sikh barred his progress and wrenched at the bridle. The general reached inside his voluminous belted overcoat, pulled out a revolver and shot the soldier through the jaw.

  In an instant, firing broke out everywhere. Candler, who had only just put his pen and notebook away, was in that brief distraction cut down by a beefy Tibetan swordsman; he was slashed seventeen times and lost his hand. But the cold air had driven him to wear a thick poshteen that day – it
saved him from an otherwise certain death. An officer standing with him was also wounded.

  These loci of violent attack would not turn the tide in the Tibetan favour; already the Maxims were cocked and lazily emptying into the crowd. Closer, the rapid-firing Lee Metfords cut down rank after rank of Tibetans with the utmost accuracy, leaving the Sikhs and Gurkhas unharmed. The artillery lobbed shells over the wall and let them burst in the Tibetan rear, barring their escape from the tormenting rifle fire. It was a massacre.

  But the Tibetans did not flee. They did not panic and run. They simply turned and weathered a hailstorm of bullets as they walked from the wall towards a spur offering cover half a mile away. Candler wrote, ‘They walked, with bowed heads, as if they had been disillusioned in their gods.’ ‘I hope I shall never have to shoot down men walking away again,’ a young officer wrote home. ‘It was an awful sight, the slowness of their escape was horrible and loathsome to us.’

  Of the Tibetan army – around 1,500 men – 700 lay dead on the field. The Lhasa general lay among them. There were 168 Tibetan wounded. All expected to be killed. They were butchered in a different way – operated on by army surgeons. Their cheerful demeanour without anaesthetic was remarked on and much admired. They were tough and healthy and only twenty died.

  The British had no fatalities; six casualties in total.

  Each of the Maxims had fired for a mere ninety seconds. Enough time, though, to deliver seven hundred deadly rounds. Each rifleman had only had time to loose off twelve rounds – a couple of minutes was all they fired for.

  The officers were not used to such action. They were sickened by the slaughter and debated endlessly how it could have been different. If Younghusband had advanced and fired earlier, as Macdonald had wanted, the battle would have been ‘fairer’ – but bar an increase in British casualties, the outcome may well have been similar. It might even have resulted in a serious reverse. No, Younghusband’s gamble had been correct. The Lhasa general had been a fool, but the final analysis was that men in a hurry do not always act in the wisest way.

  Candler, writing later with his one good hand, was bitter: ‘To send two dozen sepoys into that sullen mob to take away their arms was to invite disaster.’

  The road into Tibet was now clear. The expedition hoped that the unfortunate massacre might have one salvageable aspect: it would send a message to the Tibetans in Lhasa to capitulate. But in this they would be greatly disappointed.

  * Peter Fleming, Bayonets to Lhasa

  5

  Gyantse

  Cure the illness that is not yet an illness.

  Tibetan proverb

  Gyantse – Madame Blavatsky had claimed to have journeyed there, an imaginary journey that lent support to her claims to be enlightened. Now Younghusband would really go there, using all the force that such journeys require.

  Younghusband called a durbar – a parley – and the Tibetans arrived an hour and a half late. They were made to wait a further two and a half hours and then faced an unspeaking Younghusband until their leader, the Te Lama, apologised. Younghusband was not a tall man but he knew how to exert the high-status authority of an unmoving head, unblinking penetrating eye. But for all this, they could not agree. Again an ultimatum: clear the fort at Gyantse by noon of 5 July or prepare to be stormed.

  The British were outnumbered ten to one and the fort, ever since the amnesty which occasioned the durbar, had been steadily in the process of being rebuilt. The Bhutanese king – nicknamed Alphonse on account of his French-looking goatee beard and grey Homberg hat – was a great aid in trying to smooth negotiations with the Tibetans, but even he could not broker a peace agreement. On 5 July, Younghusband sent various last-minute warnings about women and children being removed from the firing line. A burst of Maxim fire signalled hostilities had begun.

  But where was Macdonald? Dilatory and hesitant as always, he sent several heliographed messages back to Younghusband from his position, with the guns a thousand metres away suggesting, ‘A little more patience and I think you have the game in your hands. . .’

  It was surely an odd message to receive in the very middle of an attack. Younghusband was furious, though he allowed that ‘poor old’ Macdonald was not in good shape. Though only forty-one, he was universally regarded as aged. A fellow officer wrote, ‘He smokes cigarettes till he is sick.’ Along with the smoking-induced illness, he suffered ‘the trots’ almost continuously, not helped by a poor diet ‘mostly of slops’.

  Finally, Macdonald could prevaricate no more. At 4 a.m. three columns of infantry crawled through the dark and under sporadic fire operated as a demolition party on the hastily erected stonework that defended the base of the fort. ‘Bubble’, an elderly seven-pounder gun, aided them in blasting a way through. But then, as Tibetan fire died away, it dawned on all that an impasse had been reached. The fort still stood massive and inviolate on top of its unscaleable rock and Macdonald was beginning to flounder.

  Had he been an influential and popular leader this might have been disastrous for the attack, but such was his reputation as a pusillanimous ditherer that a kind of reactive groundswell of initiative and desperate courage had mushroomed around him. Colonel Campbell of the 40th Pathans argued strongly for attacking the eastern corner of the fort; below it he reckoned was just nine metres of scrambling, no more than a ‘moderate’ or perhaps a ‘diff’. Macdonald reluctantly agreed after the usual prevarication. At 3 p.m., ten-pounders armed with shells newly brought up from Darjeeling – shells that shrieked and whined as they shot with deadly precision into the stonework above the lower rockface, exploding with clouds of dust and much rockfall.

  The explosive shells did their work and broke through the wall, revealing a tiny black hole into the interior of the fort. This pinprick in the skin of the beast served as a pupil point on which to focus more fire. Slowly the black hole enlarged.

  From within the fort came a reverberating boom – a powder magazine had blown up deep in the bowels of the building. The almost continuous Tibetan fire fell away. It was judged propitious to attack the hole at the top of the rock slope.

  Two companies of men charged across. Gurkhas led the scramble up the rocky slope. The guns were still pounding the hole to make it larger and to distract the inhabitants waiting behind it. Rocks dislodged from above fell on the attackers and took them down the slope in a heap. Men shot at them from flanking turrets and more stones were hurled from high above.

  As the Gurkhas got higher and closer to the breach in the wall it became possible for only one man to climb at a time. When they were right below the hole, the ceasefire bugle sounded on the plain below them. It was time to try the final assault. A Gurkha commander, Lieutenant Grant, was first at the hole, closely followed by his havildar. Both were hit by bullets and fell and skidded nine metres back down the slope. Despite their wounds, they climbed straight back up and this time made it through the hole, followed by a stream of riflemen.

  The game was up. The ancient Tibetan guns known as jingals stopped their incessant booming. Ropes unfurled from the fort as men sort to escape it. Resistance ended. Grant was awarded a VC for his efforts though years later modestly claimed that the havildar (awarded the lesser Indian Order of Merit) had really led the whole group on by the example of his fighting spirit.

  Gyantse was the key to Lhasa; now it had fallen, the road was open to the heart of Tibet. There was, however, one last obstacle.

  6

  The Major is Drowned and to be Auctioned off Today

  Goodness whispers, evil shouts.

  Nepali proverb

  The Tsangpo is not a slow river. North of Sikkim, south of Lhasa, it hurries past the Himalayas at 7 knots, 12 kmh. It is not nearly as wide as it will become as the Brahmaputra, but it is still a wide, deep river by any standards. And across this obstacle 3,500 men, 3,500 animals and 350 tons of equipment needed to be transported in haste.

  Four huge chains, cast and hammered by hand, dipping into the torrent and out the othe
r side, were all that remained of a fifteenth-century suspension bridge (the principles of suspended bridgework were well known in the Himalayas long before Brunei began building them). On the far side, two 45-foot lighters with high and highly carved horse-head prows lay bobbing at anchor. The fleeing Tibetans had left them – a bad error.

  Major Bretherton, Royal Engineers, was in charge of supply and transport and had made a splendid job of both since leaving Sikkim. The Engineers carried with them two collapsible Berthon boats, a two-skinned canvas lifeboat said to be unsinkable (the airspace between the skins provided buoyancy). These were lashed together and Major Bretherton (unlike Macdonald, he was happy to lead from the front) set off across the wicked current with two Gurkhas at the oars. Gurkhas are not horsemen, though they can learn. Assuredly, neither are they boatmen, and there was no time to learn. Heading for the moored ferries on the other side, the unwieldy raft was picked up by the fast current. Bretherton shouted orders but the men could not control the raft’s movement. What happened next was not clear but the raft upturned, or came apart, and the men were in the water. It was a wide, fast, exceedingly cold river and all the men drowned.

  Even small rivers can be hard to cross

  The mounted infantry, forever prowling about, found two square leather coracles and their owners cowering in the reeds. With a threat and the promise of a bribe if they returned with the ferries, the coracle men were dispatched. As good as their word, they returned with the ferries.