by John Wilcox
‘Bloody ’ell.’ Jenkins interrupted the reverie. ‘I’m puffed. Why didn’t we join the cavalry? Them pretty boys,’ he gestured to where lines of horsemen were standing by their mounts, reins in hand, ‘ ’aven’t fired a shot in anger since Waterloo. Not exactly fair, now, is it?’
Jenkins’s magnificent, typical indignation and the sight of his short legs stumping into the ground to keep pace, his turban askew, his cheeks blowing out and his moustache, as ever, bristling, brought a smile to Simon’s lips, despite his fear. How could anyone be afraid with a companion like this! The indomitable, the nonpareil Jenkins. Five feet four inches of matter-of-factness, courage and strength. Once again he had come to the rescue.
The Punjabis had now broken into a run. Taking a deep breath, Simon ran forward too, leading Jenkins and the Sikh towards the gun in the centre of the line. As they neared, they saw a tableau that would remain with Simon for the rest of his life. Around the gun lay the bodies of artillerymen and kilted infantrymen. In front of it, a huge major of the Highlanders stood on a sandbag, his tam-o’-shanter askew, his kilt blood-soaked and both stockings hanging over his boots, swinging a giant claymore and hurling Gaelic oaths at the line of Afghans who hesitated before him, some attempting to dodge beneath the terrible arc of the blade to stab him, others fumbling to reload their muskets.
Simon lost his fear immediately. The three men fired simultaneously into the line and saw three Pathans fall. W.G. stooped to pick up a discarded Martini-Henry to which a bayonet was fixed and jumped into line beside the major, thrusting and parrying, his great height almost matching that of the man beside him. Of the gun crew, only an exhausted corporal was left. He was attempting to swab the heated barrel. Simon grabbed his arm. ‘Tell me what to do to reload,’ he shouted.
The corporal looked up wide-eyed, but nodded. If he was surprised to hear a Pathan speak in the tones of an English officer, he showed no sign. ‘Shells, mate,’ he said, and pointed to an ammunition box behind the limber. ‘No, the others, the shrapnel.’ Simon lifted a shell while the corporal opened the breech. The six-pounder slipped in easily. ‘Stand away, Major - and you, W.G.,’ shouted Simon.
‘Watch the recoil,’ screamed the corporal, and pulled the lanyard. The noise was deafening and the gun sprang back, its right wheel nearly hitting Jenkins, who was kneeling, systematically firing into the mob before him. At such close range it was impossible to miss and the shell, bursting horizontally from the barrel, which had been depressed to its lowest point, carved a dreadful swathe through the massed ranks of the Afghans before exploding on a short fuse. It was as though a fireball had bounced through a crowded street. A lane some four feet wide was opened through the attackers, and the shock of this, plus the firepower of the newly arrived Punjabis, caused the Pathans to fall back - at first slowly, and then running for the protection of the outbuildings of Kurja Kila several hundreds yards away.
‘Well done.’ It was a familiar voice and, turning, Simon saw that General Roberts had ridden up, astride his familiar giant grey. Behind him rattled four field artillery pieces and a squadron of the 5th Punjab Cavalry, splendid in lances and high black boots. The little man stood in his stirrups. ‘Double forward and move the wire,’ he shouted. ‘Let the guns through. Quickly now, before they can re-form.’
‘ ’E must be mad,’ said Jenkins, looking up at the General. ‘ ’E’ll lose them guns if ’e sends them out there, look you.’E’s barmy.’
‘What on earth is he doing?’ murmured Simon. It would only take a moment for the Afghans to form up again and surge forward - he could see them behind the walls and in the street of the little hamlet, still in formidable numbers. If they attacked quickly before the guns could be deployed, they would engulf the gunners and their thin screen of cavalry. Then they would surge forward again, before the wire screen could be replaced, and they must surely break through the gap.
Their opinion was supported by the Highland major, now leaning on his sword, gasping for breath through a tobacco-stained beard. ‘The wee mon’s gone off his rocker,’ he panted. ‘ ’Tis against all the rules.’
Seemingly to defy them, Roberts coolly urged his mount forward and took up a position behind the leading gun as it swung about. Looking at the little man, sitting so erect on his large horse, Simon was reminded that, as a young subaltern twenty-four years before, Frederick Roberts had won the Victoria Cross for supreme bravery in the Indian Mutiny, in hand-to-hand combat. Whatever he lacked, it was not courage.
As though on parade in Hyde Park, the gun teams unlimbered their pieces with precision and at great speed. ‘Very well,’ called Roberts. ‘Direct your fire at those houses ahead. I want that village cleared immediately.’
The gunners then gave a demonstration of rapid fire at short range that Simon had never seen in all his years of training on manoeuvres in support of artillery. The fragile mud walls of Kurja Kila could not withstand a bombardment of this ferocity at such close range and they crumpled in dust and flame. Within minutes the whole village, save for a few houses, had been levelled. The mass of Afghan warriors who had taken refuge there seemed to have miraculously disappeared and only white-swathed bodies, lying amidst the rubble, showed that this had been a key strategic position in the Afghan plan of attack.
The General rode forward a few paces and then turned. ‘Cavalry,’ he called, his voice high-pitched against the background noise of the attack that continued along the front of Sherpur, ‘go forward and screen the movement forward of the guns. Now, Craster.’ He gestured with his riding crop to the officer in charge of the guns. ‘Limber up and set up position down there on the flank of the main attack on the walls. I want you to direct a steady fire into the Afghan army. Don’t worry about being exposed. The natives on this side are finished and the 5th Cavalry will protect you while you set up. Quickly now. We can turn this affair in the next ten minutes.’
As quickly as they had dismounted, the gunners limbered up and clattered forward to the turn of the wall, where they deployed once more and began to send their shells into the main body of the Afghan attackers, raking their ranks with a deadly fire.
‘Good Lord, I think he’s done it!’ exclaimed Simon. The blood-stained patch of ground between the wire and the shattered remains of the village was now empty, except for the bodies of the dead. Simon turned. Behind him, ranging deep within the compound, stood rank upon rank of cavalry, lances couched, ready for the order to advance, pennants fluttering in the cool midday breeze which had sprung up. ‘He’s planned it all, the clever bastard,’ said Simon to the Highlander.
‘Aye, I think yer right, mon,’ replied the giant, wiping the edge of his blade on his kilt. He looked at Simon through narrowed eyes. ‘I dinna ken who you are, dressed up like a savage. But I’m grateful for your intervention back then. It was a wee bit awkward for the minute. Nevertheless, if you are British, then you shouldna be calling a British lieutenant general a bastard, even if he is an Englishman.’
‘Sorry, Major,’ said Simon. He turned to Jenkins and W.G. ‘Come on, you two. We’ve got to see this.’
Simon felt as though a huge weight had been lifted from his mind. Whatever the cause of his exhilaration - relief that his fear had been banished, satisfaction that he had played his part in repelling the enemy, or just excitement that the battle was swinging their way at last - he knew that he was happy: happier than he had been since entering Afghanistan so long ago. He bounded up the broken wall of the fortress, the others behind him. On the ramparts they ran until they came to the south-facing wall, the longest part of the perimeter, where the attack had ebbed and flowed for five hours or more. Now, however, the Afghans could be seen in full retreat, streaming across the plain, back towards the slopes of the mountains, the four guns still sending crimson-tinged eruptions of earth and stones among them. The sepoys on the battlements cheered derisively and sent a scattering of parting shots after the retreating army. Then a bugle sounded, and around the corner of the fortress, in perfect orde
r, trotted the squadrons of cavalry. The trot became a canter, the canter a gallop and, lances now lowered, the horsemen fanned out across the plain. There were about a thousand yards to be covered before the retreating Afghans could reach the comparative sanctuary of the canals and the banks of the river, so it was ideal territory for pursuing cavalry. The tide of the battle had been turned completely and no broken army - particularly one without formal training - could stand against the lances of trained hussars. Under the eyes of the watchers on the wall, several bands of extremely brave men tried, but they were stuck on the lances like pigs or slashed down by the heavy sabres. The retreat of the Afghans had become a rout.
The three men on the rampart fell silent. W.G. was the first to speak.
‘That, lord,’ he said, ‘will surely be a revenge for the cowardly attack on the Residency. I am thinking that the match is over now.’
‘Yes, Gracey,’ agreed Jenkins, ‘I’d say that that’s a battle well and truly won.’
Slowly, Simon nodded. His eyes followed the horsemen disappearing towards the foothills, now mercifully too far away for the details of the slaughter to be apparent. ‘Aye,’ he said, ‘the General has had his wish. At last, without a doubt, he has beaten a full Afghan army in the field.’ He turned away. But all his exhilaration had ebbed away. He just felt tired, tired, and somehow sad.
Chapter 10
The relieving column under Brigadier Gough had fought its way towards Kabul through to the defended staging post at Lataband, but there, threatened with tribesmen on all sides, it had been forced to wait and to replenish its supplies, which had been sorely reduced on the journey from the Frontier. As the brigade sat and licked its wounds, it could hear, from the direction of Kabul, the sound of musketry and, later, the deeper boom of cannon. Hearing the far-off noise of battle and not being able to thrust through to help determine the result was frustrating for everyone in the column, but for none more so than Alice Griffith. She suspected that not all of the small band of journalists with the column shared her sense of frustration at not being able to press ahead to take part in the relief of Kabul and to file back to London the story this would make. Some of them, she believed, would far rather write at a safe distance of the horror and dangers of battle. But from this charge, of course, she excluded John Campbell.
She looked across at him now as she sat warming her hands at a pathetic fire of damp brushwood and dried animal dung set between their tents. His head was down as he scribbled in his notebook and she noted again, with approval, the way that the cold, wintry sun brought out the highlights in his sun-bleached hair and the grace with which he sprawled on his top-coat, one jack-booted leg curled under the other. Her gaze travelled to their other companion around the camp fire, the very different but no less elegant figure of Colonel Ralph Covington, the newly awarded insignia of a Commander of the Bath glowing on his breast as he lounged back on his campaign chair, eyes half closed, his head back, a thin spiral of cigarette smoke drifting into the cold air. This was their sixteenth day on the trail since leaving India, but Covington’s boots glistened as though he was on parade and his brown face, so carefully shaved around his long side-whiskers and full moustaches, glowed with health and self-confidence.
Alice’s gaze travelled back again to Campbell. Two ardent admirers: the boy-man and the mature man. Each caring and attentive in his own, very different way. Each had declared his love. Each detested the other. Each, she sighed, so damned attractive!
Covington caught her eye. ‘Well, whatever Gough decides,’ he said, flicking cigarette ash, ‘I’m damned if I’m going to wait around here much longer. If I had had my way, we would have fought through to Kabul by now and lent Roberts a hand. If we don’t move on this afternoon, I shall take a platoon and go through on my own.’ It had become clear for some days now that despite Covington’s delight at being thrown together with Alice on this march - as a relieving officer, he had few duties to perform with the column, and was free to ride with the journalists - he was becoming increasingly restive at having so little to do.
Campbell looked up and smiled. ‘If you have a platoon, you won’t be on your own, will you, Colonel?’
‘Don’t be a pedant, Campbell.’ Covington turned to Alice. ‘You know what I mean.’
‘Of course,’ said Alice. ‘But you forget, precision of language is important in our trade. Anyway, if Roberts and the garrison are still fighting, one platoon won’t help him much. If he is not, you will be killed and will have done no one any good. Besides which, if Gough and his brigade can’t get through, I don’t see how a platoon can.’
Covington snorted. ‘Go over the hills, off the track, go fast. I could do it.’
Alice regarded him silently. Yes, she thought, you probably could. He was a handsome man, this soldier who had, with her compliance, removed her virginity so deftly and satisfyingly a year ago in Zululand. She tingled again at the memory. Alice had decided years before that she would have no hesitation in losing her virginity when the occasion was right and the man was acceptable. She would not demand love. For her, maidenhood had been a matter of, well, irritation, a state which would have to be left behind sooner or later - so why not sooner? She had no patience with the conventional view that she should preserve herself, in some kind of physical and intellectual aspic, until she entered into marital servitude with ‘the right man’. Sexual intercourse was, obviously, interesting, to say the least. It should be experienced and got out of the way, and even indulged in again later, not flagrantly, but under appropriate circumstances.
Looking at Covington now, Alice thought he seemed even taller than his six foot two inches as he thrust in his heels and pushed back the chair, so that his head hung down over the canvas back rest. At forty, he was beginning to show a touch of corpulence, but his height and energy carried that well enough and he was always, always well dressed, even here in the dust and discomfort of Afghanistan. The air of command, of certainty, never left him, and Alice liked that. She admired men who took life by the scruff and fashioned it for themselves. There were plenty of officers of senior rank in the Indian Army who had never married, who had never, for one reason or another, stood a chance of selecting from the breathless girls of the ‘fishing fleet’ that came out annually on the P & O steamers. But Covington was British Army, home-based, and it was unusual, then, to find him still unmarried at his age and with his charm. She liked that, too. A man of discrimination. Covington had proposed to her in South Africa, and it was a tribute to his attraction that she had hesitated before declining, explaining that she wished to pursue her career and had no intention of marrying anyone - or at least not yet. ‘Then I shall wait,’ he had replied.
Campbell’s proposal, on the other hand, had been diffident and rather unexpected. They had travelled together from Bombay. Campbell had sailed by an earlier steamer, but had been forced to wait in the port while some confusion about his accreditation to the army was cleared up. He and Alice, therefore, had travelled north together to the frontier, sharing a railway compartment, talking all the way and delighting in the colour and contrasts of this new country. The honesty and directness which had first intrigued her in Edinburgh, his professionalism (he had filed fascinating feature pieces from various stages of the journey, where Alice could see little to write about) and his youthful enthusiasm about everything had impressed her. And he had that delightful crooked smile! Alice knew she was attracted to him and had idly toyed with the thought of how she would react if he propositioned her.
But no such approach came. Instead, while they were waiting in Kohat for the other four members of the press party to join them before moving into Afghanistan, he had seized her hand, in the middle of the bazaar, and said, ‘I love you very much. I know what the answer will be, but I must ask you: will you marry me?’ He had taken her gentle but quick refusal well - because, he said, he had expected it - but Alice had experienced an immediate wave of remorse as she looked into his earnest blue eyes. That evening, for the
first time, she doubted if she was right to dedicate herself so completely to her exacting profession. She knew she had an intellect the equal of if not better than most men, but did she have to sacrifice her womanly instincts, her awkwardly strong sensuality, for its sake? The answer came in the morning, when the others arrived and they joined Gough’s brigade and began the ride towards the Frontier. The dust, the jingle of harness and the smell of cavalry leather brought an excitement that could not be matched by the chintz of a nursery. Nevertheless, she astonished and delighted Campbell by kissing him warmly the next evening.
Covington had joined the column shortly after it had crossed the Frontier, and he had slightly disconcerted Alice by riding with her and Campbell every day, when his duties allowed it. Nothing was said, but the two men quickly sensed that they were rivals and there had been an air of competition between them ever since. Now, they all waited, as though in suspended time, while the battle some fifteen miles away was being waged.
Gough had had to fight his way through to Lataband because, as he was fond of telling everyone, ‘the whole country’s up’. But his force was too strong to be confronted directly and the enemy had contented itself with regular sniping and the occasional night raid on the baggage train and rearguard. Several times horses had been stolen and parties had to be detached to recover them. As a result, the brigade’s progress had been slow and it had run so low on provisions that, before the telegraph link had been severed, Gough had been forced to ask Roberts to send supplies forward to Lataband for him. Once in the post, while the quartermaster restocked and the column listened to the distant gunfire, the local sniping had died away, and the Brigadier sensed that the tribesmen harassing him might have withdrawn. Accordingly he had sent a patrol forward to probe the extent of the enemy’s presence on the last lap to Kabul. It was for the return of this patrol that they now all waited.