Retreat from Kabul: The First Anglo-Afghan War, 1839-1842 (Conflicts of Empire)

by George Bruce

  More Afghan horsemen appeared in sinister groups on the plain between the cantonments and the bridge. They were not, unfortunately, the promised escort — but tribesmen, mad with hatred and hot for plunder.

  Firing a few shots to create terror among the camp-followers, they drew their swords and tore into them, hacking at men, women and children alike, carrying off whatever baggage they could seize, dumping it out of sight, charging in again to rob and kill. The snow was soon stained and splashed with blood, dotted with the bodies of the fallen.

  ‘From the opening in the ramparts to the bridge across the river,’ related Kaye, ‘streamed one great tide of soldiers and camp-followers, camels and ponies; and at the bridge there was an enormous mass of struggling life, from which arose shouts, and yells, and oaths — an indescribable uproar of discordant sounds; the bellowings of the camels, the curses of the camel-drivers, the lamentations of the Hindustanees, the shrieks of the women and the cries of the children; and the savage yells of the Ghazees rising in barbarous triumph above them all.’

  The Nawab Zemaun Khan, whom the Afghans had chosen as king in place of Shuja, now sent the General a warning that unless the British waited for the promised escort he could not guarantee their safety. General Elphinstone therefore ordered that the troops then leaving the cantonments should stop, but Colin Mackenzie, still leading a score of jezailchis, saw that the garrison, half in and half out of the cantonments, was in danger of being butchered by the Afghans who were swarming round and beginning to fire at them.

  Aware that the promised escort should have arrived three days ago and doubting now that it would come at all he informed the General he intended to tell Shelton the orders were to march on.

  ‘Mackenzie don’t — don’t do it!’ the bent old General in his sagging red uniform pleaded. Mackenzie galloped off in defiance of his pleas and conveyed the order to Shelton to resume his march. A bold, if mutinous act, it at least saved even more casualties at the time.

  Through the horrible bloodshed and confusion at the bridge, the march now continued. To Mackenzie one of the most humiliating sights of that dreadful day was a beautiful little Indian girl about two years old sitting naked in the snow ‘with its hair curling in waving locks round the soft little throat and its great black eyes dilated to twice their usual size, fixed on the armed men, the passing cavalry and all the strange sights that met its gaze’.

  He saw many other children as young and innocent lying slain, and women with their long dark hair wet with their own blood, such was the savagery of the tribesmen. ‘If an Afghan boy of twelve had passed he would have drawn back the infant’s head and amused himself with cutting its throat,’ he remarked.

  Late in the afternoon, the rearguard, prevented from leaving at its scheduled time of mid-day, still manned the cantonment walls. It consisted of the 54th Native Infantry, 630 bayonets; the Shah’s 6th Infantry, 600 strong; two squadrons of the 5th Light Cavalry, 250 sabres; and four 6-pounder Horse Artillery guns. The long train of laden camels still poured out of the gate, the Ghazees thronged the plain, attacking the baggage-train continuously, yelling themselves hoarse with their lust for loot and blood.

  When the rearguard at last marched out it was dusk. They had no sooner cleared the gate than the Afghans swept inside and attacked them from the ramparts with jezail fire. Lieutenant Hardymen and fifty men were shot dead. In a blind fury, the Afghans then set fire to every building in the cantonments and the flames rose hundreds of feet, bathing the scene of death and destruction in a grim pattern of flickering shadows.

  Heaps of baggage were abandoned by the rearguard carriers at once. Food supplies, ammunition and equipment were almost entirely lost.

  The rearguard fought continuously along the route to Bagramee — it was here on the open plain that Elphinstone, against the best advice, had established his first halt, only five miles from Kabul. They passed, says Lawrence ‘through a continuous lane of poor wretches, men, women and children, dead or dying from the cold and wounds, who, unable to move, entreated their comrades to kill them and put an end to their misery’.

  The men of the rearguard reached their camping ground at 2 a.m. having been under arms since early morning, and now, finding no food, fuel or shelter, they huddled together in the freezing snow. There was no system, nothing to alleviate hardship — not even any rum or brandy.

  Regiments camped anywhere, soldiers and camp-followers huddling together on the snow with horses, camels and ponies. During this first night hundreds of Indian soldiers and camp-followers, unused to such severe weather, froze to death or were crippled by frostbite. Over the whole dark scene there was total silence, not a voice was heard.

  ‘In the morning,’ says Lawrence, ‘I found lying close to my tent, stiff, cold, and quite dead, in full regimentals, with his sword drawn in his hand, an old grey-haired conductor (n.c.o.) named Macgregor, who, utterly exhausted, had lain down there silently to die.’

  Wrote Lady Sale: ‘Captain Johnson, in our great distress kindly pitched a small Pal (tent) over us: but… we had few pegs; the wind blew in under the sides and I felt myself gradually stiffening. I left the bedding, which was occupied by Mrs. Sturt and her husband, and doubled up my legs in a straw chair of Johnson’s, covering myself with my poshteen.’

  So ended the first march of the retreat. It had already proved correct Sir William Macnaghten’s contention that far from saving the army from disaster it would ensure its destruction.

  The force — though it was now hardly that, for order and discipline were fast ending — moved off at 7 a.m., on 7 January, soldiers, camp-followers, baggage camels all together in one huge mob. More than half the Indian troops were too weak from cold and hunger to handle their muskets. They threw them away and mingled themselves with the thousands of non-combatant camp-followers. ‘At starting,’ noted Vincent Eyre, ‘large clods of hardened show adhered so firmly to the hoofs of our horses, that a chisel and hammer would have been requisite to dislodge them. The very air we breathed froze in its passage out of the mouth and nostrils, forming a coating of small icicles on our moustaches and beards.’

  The Indian bearers of the palanquins and dhoolies carrying some of the women heroically floundered on through the snow for a mile or two, then, exhausted, dropped their burdens and cried out they could go no farther. The women were therefore found seats on horseback with the officers. Captain Lawrence took Lady Macnaghten up on his saddle for three or four miles, until, finding a camel with empty kawajahs (panniers) he lifted her into one side, balancing her with a bundle of clothes in the other.

  The enemy now furiously attacked the rearguard, though at first held in check by steady shrapnel fire from the guns. But they kept up a harassing fire on the troops, who soon found it almost impossible to put up a proper defence owing to the masses of panic-stricken camp-followers surging around them. Separated at one moment from the infantry, the three 3-pounder mountain guns drawn by mules were suddenly seized by a party of Afghans who sallied out of a small fort.

  Lieutenants Green, White and a few artillerymen heroically charged as they withdrew and spiked the guns ‘amid the gleaming sabres of the enemy’, Lieutenant White being badly wounded in the face in this action. Weary and frost-bitten the troops were now hardly a match for the fierce Afghan cavalry, swinging razor-sharp swords. Two more guns were spiked and abandoned when their horse teams became too weak from hunger to draw them. There were now but two 9-pounders left, and scarcely any shells.

  At Boot-Khak, on high open ground near the head of the Khoord-Kabul Pass, which he hoped to penetrate that day, 7 January, the second of the retreat, General Elphinstone called a halt at about 1 p.m. to allow the hard-pressed rearguard to close up. Major Pottinger then received an urgent letter from Nawab Zemaun Khan asking him to halt the army — promising if he did to send supplies of food and firewood and to drive off the attacking tribesmen.

  Was there really a chance of relief in this offer — or was it a trick? Pottinger took the lette
r to the General, who said they would halt there for the day to allow the promised supplies to come up and march that night whatever happened. But at this, Brigadier Shelton argued that another halt on the open snow without tents or food would destroy the troops. Shelton wrote later: ‘He was immovable, talked of the Sirdars’ promises, and sending a letter to Kabul to know why they had not sent us a safeguard. Here was another day entirely lost and the enemy collecting in numbers.’

  A body of several hundred Afghan horsemen now appeared about two furlongs away. Their leader was recognised as Akbar Khan. He sent a message to say he had been deputed by the chiefs to protect them from the attacks of the Ghazees and to escort them to Jellalabad — his instructions were especially to secure other hostages as security for the evacuation of that town by General Sale’s force and to delay General Elphinstone’s march until it was known that this had been done, supplying it meantime with all the food and fuel it needed.

  No decision was taken then, but General Elphinstone decided to remain where they were not only for the day but also the night as well. Meanwhile, it later became clear, hostile tribesmen from all over this region of Afghanistan were mustering along the peaks of the passes ahead.

  Night fell — the cold deepened — the icy wind — they were almost 8,000 feet above sea-level — howled across the exposed ground, cutting through thick uniforms as if they were thin cotton. But no food or fuel was sent in by Akbar Khan, and when anyone tried to fetch water from a nearby river the Afghans shot them. Men, women, children, horses, camels and ponies huddled indiscriminately together in the snow.

  ‘For myself,’ noted Lady Sale, ‘… I felt very grateful for a tumbler of sherry, which at any other time would have made me very unladylike, but now merely warmed me, and appeared to have no more strength in it than water. Cups full of sherry were given to young children three and four years old without in the least affecting their heads.’

  Some of the sepoys burnt caps and equipment to stop themselves freezing to death. Lieutenant Melville and several other officers crowded round the glowing embers of a wooden pistol case, drank their few remaining bottles of wine, then threw themselves down together on the snow for warmth and went to sleep. Captain Lawrence recorded that the temperature that third night fell to 10 degrees below zero.

  Colin Mackenzie spent the night in a little tent which his servant ‘dear Jacob, got put up for me, I know not how. Pollock, a soldier of the 44th (the one who volunteered to follow me at Behmaru, where he got a ball in the thigh, the wound of which was not yet healed), lay close to me on one side for warmth and Major Scott of the 44th coming in, I asked him to lie down on the other.

  ‘He said he could not, on account of the intolerable pain of his feet, which were frost-bitten. He sat in a chair… I had two bottles of port, and admonished him to take some, which he did, and I believe that was the last wine he ever drank, for his body was afterwards found stripped and the chest cut open.’

  Scott was only one of more than a thousand who died that night from the Afghan knives, or through freezing death.

  Sharpshooters fired into the camp at sunrise, the third day of the retreat, 8 January, ‘The confusion,’ Lady Sale noted, ‘was fearful. The force was perfectly disorganised, nearly every man paralysed with cold, so as to be scarcely able to hold his musket… Many frozen corpses lay on the ground… The ground was strewn with boxes of ammunition, plate and property of various kinds. A cask of spirits was broached by the artillerymen. Had the whole been distributed fairly it would have done them good; as it was they became much too excited.’

  Several hundred Afghans now assembled to the rear of the camp in apparent readiness to attack. The 44th Foot who had somehow kept together in all the confusion, formed up facing them. Major Thain put himself at their head, ordered fix bayonets and led them, marching steadily, forward. The entire force of Afghans turned tail and fled, in no mood to face the bayonets.

  This single event underlined a bitter truth — that given a bold and capable leader the British could even then have routed the Afghans. Instead, they were about to be led through a series of mountains passes and into ambushes whence few of them would come out alive.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  General Elphinstone had not long after dawn sent Captain Skinner to Akbar Khan’s camp to discuss the Sirdar’s message of yesterday. But Akbar at once insisted that Major Pottinger and Captains Lawrence and Mackenzie should be given as hostages for the British halting at Tezeen until Akbar knew of Sale’s having marched west out of Jellalabad for India, for Akbar was clearly determined to remove this additional threat if he could.

  Elphinstone agreed without argument and the three officers went under protest, escorted by two of Akbar’s men. They found him at breakfast on a nearby hillside and Akbar ordered his men to remove the hostages’ firearms. Lawrence had to give up his rifle, slung at his back, and a pair of pistols, but was allowed to keep his sword. They then breakfasted, while Mahommed Akbar sent messengers allegedly to order the tribesmen to stop firing on the British camp.

  Elphinstone, believing, with the delivery of these hostages, that a ceasefire had at last been achieved, had ordered the ragged force and its host of camp-followers to prepare to move. But the forty or fifty artillerymen had by now together drunk an entire barrel of brandy and truce or no truce, they wanted to fight. ‘They were now fully primed,’ relates Lady Sale. ‘They mounted their horses; and, with the best feeling in the world, declared that they were ashamed at our inactivity, and vowed they would charge the enemy.’

  One can imagine how aghast were General Elphinstone, Brigadier Shelton and the staff at this outburst of warlike feelings — it could have led to a pitched battle with the enemy in open terrain that favoured the British.

  Captain Nicholl, commanding the artillerymen, rode up and called them drunks, swore at them and promised severe punishment if they did not obey orders and go quietly. Probably open-mouthed with surprise at the rarity of being threatened for wanting to fight, the artillerymen put back their swords. ‘They turned to Sturt shortly after their own officer had left them,’ noted Lady Sale, ‘having showered curses and abuse on them, which had irritated them dreadfully.

  ‘Sturt told them they were fine fellows and had ever proved themselves such during the siege; but that their lives were too valuable to be risked at such a moment: but, if need were, and their services were required, he would himself go with them. This, in a certain degree, restrained their ardour; yet they still kept on talking valiantly.’

  One can imagine them, clad in ragged sheepskin coats over their threadbare blue artillery tunics, hiccoughing brandy fumes over each other, astride weary, half-starved horses, and though ordered not to fight, soldiers enough as they rode off towards the Koord-Kabul Pass with the ragged multitude to know that a great foolishness had been forced upon them, for they might now have in any case to die without being able to fight back.

  Only a few hundred serviceable fighting-men now remained on this third day as the ragged procession neared the mouth of the pass. Afghan bullets had killed or wounded hundreds, while two nights’ exposure had brought thousands down with frostbite in hands and feet. ‘Even cavalry, who suffered less than the rest, were obliged to be lifted on their horses,’ Vincent Eyre noted.

  General Elphinstone had decided to march through the pass and push on to Tezeen as quickly as possible — through the five-mile-long Khoord-Kabul defile shut in by steep cliffs and threaded from side to side by a swift mountain torrent edged with layers of ice. So often had the British let the Afghans deceive them that despite the ceasefire they must surely have entered it with terror.

  Lady Sale recalls that the march began about mid-day, with the 5th Native Infantry leading. ‘The troops were in the greatest state of disorganisation: the baggage was mixed up with the advanced guard; and the camp-followers all pushed ahead in their precipitate flight… We had not proceeded half a mile before we were heavily fire upon.’

  Yet it now seem
ed as if Mahommed Akbar had been true to his word; he had certainly sent several lesser chiefs to march with the head of the column to order the tribesmen not to shoot, but not even the chiefs could stop the Ghilzye tribesmen’s blood lust, their hunger for loot. From stone shelters at vantage points on the sides of the cliffs, they poured in a destructive fire. While alternatively floundering through the deep snow-drifts and splashing across the icy mountain torrent, camp-followers and troops alike were shot down in waves by the hundreds of hidden marksmen.

  Lady Sale rode with her daughter and Captain Sturt, and Lieutenant Mein. ‘The pony Mrs. Sturt rode was wounded in the ear and neck,’ she relates. ‘I had fortunately only one ball in my arm; three others passed through my poshteen near the shoulder without doing me any injury… After passing through some very sharp firing, we came upon Major Thain’s horse, which had been shot through the loins.’

  When they were out of the danger zone Sturt rode back to try to find Thain. His own horse was then shot from under him, and before he could rise from the ground an Afghan bullet hit him in the groin.

  Hearing later what had happened to his friend Sturt, Lieutenant Mein rode back, found him lying wounded in the snow and stood over him with the terrified horde stumbling and fighting their way to safety. Sergeant Deane of the Sappers arrived and helped Mein to drag Sturt through the pass on a quilt. Finally, they mounted him on a pony and managed to get him through to the camp on the far side of Khoord-Kabul. He was in much pain, had lost a lot of blood and seemed unlikely to live.

  Also through the carnage rode the English wives on ponies or in camel panniers with their children. In one camel pannier were Mrs. Boyd and her youngest son Hugh, and in the other pannier Mrs. Mainwaring, ‘a young merry girl’ with her three-month-old baby and Mrs. Anderson’s four-year-old girl, Mary. The camel with its two women and their children was shot and fell.