Читать книгу Red Runs the Helmand - Patrick Mercer - Страница 8
ОглавлениеChapter One - Kandahar
‘No, Havildar, turn out the bloody guard, won’t you? I don’t want these two men standing there like goddamn sacks of straw. Just turn out the guard!’
I never could get my tongue round Hindi. It was all very well cussing native troops, but if they really couldn’t understand anything beyond the fact that you were infuriated with them, what was the point? In my experience, the angrier a sahib got them, the more inert and immobile they became. It was the middle of March 1860 and I’d only arrived in Kandahar after a long journey from India forty-eight hours before. And what a hole it was. The surrounding country was what I’d expected, all mountains, vertical passes and twisting, gritty roads; there was a rough beauty about it after the stifling lowlands of India. But the old city was not what I’d imagined at all. For a start, it was so much smaller than I’d thought. True, shacks, mud-built slums and thatched huts sprawled around outside the wall of the place, but the town itself wasn’t much bigger than Cork, yet it was packed twice as tight and smelt three times as bad.
Now, this little fracas at the gate came at the end of a long day when Heath, my brigade major, had proved to be even more useless than I’d thought. We’d been all round the units of my brigade, some of which were still dragging themselves into the town after the long march up from Quetta, although most of them had now arrived. I’d thought the Sappers and Miners’ horses slovenly – girths loose and fodder badly stowed. I’d found rust on more than one entrenching tool of the 19th Bombay and now, as I approached the Shikapur, or south, Gate of the city, Jacob’s Rifles – who had been the first to arrive and were meant to be finding the city guard – failed to recognise their own brigade commander. And what was that clown, Heath, doing about it? Was he chasing and biting the NCO in charge? No, I had to do it my-bloody-self.
Don’t misunderstand me, I was as keen as anyone else to get another campaign medal to stick on my chest, but from the very start of this punch-up, I’d had my doubts about being in Afghanistan. I’d never been convinced of how much the Russians really wanted to get a toehold on the Hindu Kush, but Disraeli had been persuaded by the political officers out here that there was more to it than the Tsar’s boys sending missions to Kabul and bending Amir Shere Ali’s mind against the British, so we had invaded in November ’78. All credit to Dizzy, Generals Roberts, Sam Browne and Stewart were backed to the hilt. Their three columns pushed hard into this miserable country, occupied Kabul after a bit of trouble, drove out Shere Ali and concluded peace with his son, Yakoob Khan, in May ’79. They’d bought the wily old lad off for the knock-down price of sixty thousand quid, after he’d promised to behave himself and accepted our Resident, Sir Louis Cavagnari. And there we’d all thought it had ended. If only that had been the case.
While others were grabbing all the glory (like that odious little sod Bob Roberts), I was still in Karachi, thinking that, as a forty-nine-year-old colonel, I’d reached the end of the career road, when news reached us of Cavagnari’s murder last September. Before that, there had been some pretty vicious fighting and we had all thought that his being allowed into the capital had marked the end of things – at least for a while. I reckoned we’d done quite a good job right across Afghanistan, but then, as usual, the windbag politicians had failed to open their history books and sent all the wrong signals to the Afghans. Instead of reinforcing success and giving the tribesmen the chance to sample the delights of imperial rule for a few months more, Whitehall listened too closely to the lily-livered press, the Treasury began to do its sums – and the tribesmen soon grasped that we had no plans to stay in their country beyond the next Budget Day. And who paid for that? Poor Cavagnari and his Corps of Guides bodyguard: butchered to a man in the Residency in Kabul. It was all a little too much like the last débâcle back in ’42 for my liking.
Then, of course, the papers really took hold. The blood of English boys was being shed for no reason, while innocent women and children were being caught by ill-aimed shells, the Army’s finest were being made to look like monkeys by a crowd of hillmen armed with swords and muskets. There were echoes of our last attempt to paint the map of Afghanistan a British red, of MacNaughton and Dr Brydon again. Then, to my amazement, three weeks ago, the Whigs won the general election: Gladstone found himself wringing his hands and ‘saving’ fallen women all the way into Downing Street. Now, with a card-carrying Liberal in charge, we all suspected we would quit Afghanistan faster than somewhat and certainly before the next tax rise, leaving the job half done and with every expectation of having to repeat the medicine once the amir or his masters in St Petersburg got uppity again.
‘What on earth’s taking them so long, Heath? We haven’t interrupted salaah, have we?’ I knew enough about Mussulman troops to understand that their ritual cleansing and prayers, when the military situation allowed, were vitally important. ‘Well, have we, Heath?’ But my brigade major didn’t seem to know – he just looked blankly back at me. ‘We need to make damn sure that when we’re in garrison all the native regiments pray at the same time. Otherwise there’ll be bloody chaos. See to it, if you please.’
I’d found out as much as I could about the general situation while I was on my way up here to take command of a thrown-together brigade. In it I had some British guns, Her Majesty’s 66th Foot and two battalions of Bombay infantry, while the 3rd Scinde Horse was in the cavalry brigade next door. By some strange twist of fate, I had one son in the 66th under my direct command while my other boy was in the Scindis, just a stone’s throw away.
Mark you, I was bloody delighted and a bit surprised to find myself promoted to brigadier general – but I was an old enough campaigner to know that a scratch command of any size would need plenty of grip by me and bags of knocking into shape on the maidan before I’d dream of allowing it to trade lead with the enemy – particularly lads like the Afghans: they’d given our boys a thorough pasting last year. And what I was seeing of the units that I was to have under my command left me less than impressed. Anyway, it was as clear as gin that if hard knocks needed to be dished out, my divisional commander, General James Primrose, would choose either his cavalry brigadier – Nuttall – or my old friend Harry Brooke, the other infantry brigade commander, to do it, wouldn’t he? After all, while they were both junior to me, they’d been up-country much longer.
Talking of being less than impressed, this little mob was stoking up all my worst fears. ‘Come on, man, turn out the guard!’ I might as well have been talking Gaelic. The havildar just stood there at the salute, all beard and turban, trembling slightly as I roasted him, while his two sentries remained either side of the gate, rifles and bayonets rigidly at the ‘present’. Of the whole guard, a sergeant and twelve – who should have been kicking up the dust quick as lightning at the approach of a brigadier general – there was no sign at all. And Heath just continued to sit on his horse beside me, gawping.
‘Well, tell him, Heath – I don’t keep a dog to bark myself, you know!’ I wondered, sometimes, at these fellows they sent out to officer the native regiments. I’d picked out Heath from one of the battalions under my command, the Bombay Grenadiers – where he’d been adjutant – because he’d had more experience than most and because he was said to be fluent. But of initiative and a sense of urgency, there was bugger-all.
‘Sir . . . yes, of course . . .’ and the man at last let out a stream of bat that finally had the havildar trotting away inside the gate to get the rest of his people. It was quite a thing to guard, though. The walls of Kandahar were packed, dried mud, thirty foot high at the north end, faced with undressed stone to at least half that height and topped with a fire step and loop holes for sentries. The Shikapur Gate was a little lower than the surrounding walls. It was made up of a solid stone arch set with two massive wooden gates, through which traipsed a never-ending procession of camels, oxen and carts, carrying all the wonders of the Orient. Now, the dozen men came tumbling out of the hut inside the walls that passed for a guardroom, squeezing past mokes and hay-laden mules while pulling at belts, straps and pouches, their light grass-country shoes stamping together as the havildar and his naik got them into one straight line looking something like soldiers.
If I’d been in the boots of the subaltern who’d just turned up, though, I’d have steered well clear. I’d dismounted and was about to inspect the jawans when up skittered a pink-faced kid, who looked so young that I doubted the ink was yet dry on his commission. He halted in the grit and threw me a real drill sergeant’s salute – as if that might deflect my irritation.
‘Sir, orderly officer, Thirtieth Bombay Native Infantry, Jacob’s Rifles, sir!’ The boy was trembling almost as much as the NCO had done – God, I remembered how bloody terrifying brigadier generals were when I was a subaltern.
‘I can see you’re the orderly officer. What’s your name, boy?’ I knew how easy it was to petrify young officers; I knew how fierce I must have seemed to this griff and he was an easy target for the day’s frustrations – I wasn’t proud of myself.
‘Sir, Ensign Moore, sir.’ The boy could hardly speak.
‘No, lad, in proper regiments you give a senior officer your first name too – you’re not a transport wallah with dirty fingernails . . .’ I knew how stupidly pompous I was being ‘. . . so spit it out.’
‘Sir, Arthur Moore. Just joined from England, sir.’
But there was something about the youngster’s sheer desire to please that pricked my bubble of frustration. If I’d been him, I would have come nowhere near an angry brigadier general – I’d have found pressing duties elsewhere and let the havildar take the full bite of the great man’s anger. But no: young Arthur Moore straight out from England had known where his duty lay and come on like a good ’un.
‘You’re rare-plucked, ain’t you, Arthur Moore?’ I found myself smiling at his damp face, all the tension draining from my shoulders, all the pent-up irritation of a day with that scrub Heath gone. ‘Let’s have a look at these men’s weapons, shall we?’
Well, the sentries may have been a bit dozy and not warned the NCOs of my approach, and the havildar’s English may have been as bad as my Hindi, but Jacob’s rifles were bloody spotless. Pouches were full, water-bottles topped up and the whole lot of them in remarkably good order. It quite set me up.
‘Right, young Moore, a slow start but a good finish. Well done.’ I tried to continue sounding gruff and impossible to please, but after all the other nonsense of the day, this sub altern and his boys had won me over.
‘Shabash, Havildar sahib . . .’ It was the best I could manage as I settled myself back into the saddle.
‘Shabash, General sahib.’ The havildar’s creased, leathery face split into a grin as the guard crashed to attention and Moore shivered a salute. Perhaps, after all, there was some good in the benighted brigade I’d been given.
No sooner had I had my sport with the lads on the gate and arrived at the mess rooms that had been arranged for me than I was summoned to the Citadel to report to my divisional commander in his headquarters, which the great man had set up in the old building. Now, Kandahar had been occupied by General Donald Stewart’s Lahore Division during the initial invasion, so when our division had been ordered to tramp up from India to replace Stewart’s lot, I’d expected to find the town in good order and all ready to be defended – after all, the Lahore Division had arrived in the place more than a year ago. However, apart from skittering about the Helmand valley, they appeared to have done absolutely nothing to prepare the place for trouble. They’d just loafed about before being ordered to clear the route back to Kabul, leaving us of Primrose’s division to put the place in some sort of order.
At the north end of the town, just within the walls, there was a great, louring stone-built keep of strange Oriental design. There may have been some fancy local name for it, but we knew it simply as the Citadel. I’d never seen anything quite like it: its curtain walls were a series of semi-circular towers, all linked to one another, with a higher keep that dominated them in turn. I don’t know when it was built, probably more than a century before, but it was solid enough and could have been made pretty formidable. But Stewart’s people hadn’t thought to mount a single gun on it, while almost two miles of old defensive walls, which stretched in an uneven rectangle south of the fort, had been neither improved nor loop-holed. Meanwhile, the garrison’s lines were sited nice and regimentally, but with no more thought for trouble than if they’d been in bloody Colchester! Had they learnt nothing after Cavagnari’s murder and the bloodbath in Kabul last September?
‘Here, General, look at those ugly customers.’ Heath, my brigade major, had failed to read my mood, as usual, and was being his normal irritating self. ‘Ghazis, you can bet on it.’
Heath, Lynch – the trumpeter who had been attached to me by the Horse Gunners – and I were hacking along from the cantonment to meet our lord and master General Primrose up in the Citadel. There, I was expected to report my brigade present and correct to Himself. I would also be briefed on the situation.
‘Ghazis? Why d’you think that, Heath?’ I looked across at a handful of young braves who were filing along past a scatter of native stalls on the edge of the bazaar. Lean, tall, well set-up men, their hook noses and tanned skin told me nothing exceptional; they carried swords, shields and jezails slung across their backs, like half of the rest of the men in this town, and looked me straight in the eye, rather than slinking away, like most of the other tribesmen do at the sight of Feringhee officers. ‘They look more like normal Pathans to me. I’ve a notion that Ghazis don’t carry firearms.’ Those who knew told me that the Ghazis, Islamic zealots from the most extreme sects who had sworn to die while trying to kill any infidel who trod upon their land, did their lethal duty with cold steel only, eschewing muskets and rifles as tools of the devil.
‘Possibly, General, but you never quite know how they’ll disguise themselves. Look at their arrogant expressions,’ Heath continued. When I’d picked him, I’d assumed that, with all his service in India and his fluent bat, a degree of common sense and knowledge of the workings of the native mind would come with it. Both appeared to have eluded him – he was even more ignorant of local matters than I was.
‘No, sir, they ain’t Ghazis.’ Trumpeter Lynch had been part of my personal staff for less than twenty-four hours, but he’d already seen through my brigade major. ‘If they was Ghazis they’d have buggered off at the sight of us, sir. My mate who was in Kabul last year reckons you’ll only see one of them bastards when he’s a-coming for you, knife aimed at yer gizzard. No, sir, them’s just ordinary Paythans, like the general said.’
Heath might have been wrong on that score, but he was right about their arrogance. They all continued to stare at us. The oldest of the group, a heavily bearded man without, apparently, a tooth in his head, spat on my mounted shadow as it passed them by, expressing his contempt most eloquently.
‘A trifle slow off the mark, Morgan?’ Major General James Maurice Primrose and I had never liked each other. ‘I asked for you to be here at half past the hour. It’s five and twenty to by my watch.’
The sergeant of the Citadel guard had been a smart but slow-witted man from the second battalion of the 7th Fusiliers who’d been incapable of directing my staff and me to the divisional commander’s offices; none of us had been there before and Heath hadn’t thought to check. So, to my fury, I was late and last, giving Primrose just the sort of opening I’d hoped to avoid. We’d first met in Karachi a couple of years ago and, both of us being Queen’s officers, we should have got along. But we didn’t. He was one of those supercilious types who’d never got over his early service in the stuck-up 43rd Light Infantry and, I was told, envied both my gong from the Crimea and my Mutiny record.
‘Still, no matter, we’ve time in hand. Now, while I need to know about your command, I’ve taken your arrival as an opportunity to bring all my brigade commanders up to date on developments. Forgive me if you know people already, but let me go round the room.’ Primrose was small, standing no more than five foot six, just sixty-one and with a full head of snowy hair. There had been rumours about his health, but he seemed to have survived. Now he pointed round the stuffy, low-ceilinged room with its two, narrow, Oriental-style windows. ‘Nuttall commands my cavalry brigade.’
I’d never met Tom Nuttall before but I’d heard his name bruited about during the Mutiny. A little older than I was, he was an infantryman by trade but now found himself in charge of the three regiments of cavalry – including my son Sam’s regiment, the 3rd Scinde Horse. He was as straight as a lance, clear-eyed, and had a friendly smile.
‘I know that you know Brooke.’ I thought there was a distinctly cool tone in Primrose’s voice as he waved a hand at Harry. Yes, I knew and liked him for he was a straight-line infantryman like me, a few years younger, but he’d seen more than his share of trouble in the Crimea and China before rising to be adjutant general of the Bombay Army.
‘And McGucken tells me you two stretch back a long way.’ Again, I thought I caught irritation in the general’s voice as Major Alan McGucken reached out a sinewy hand towards me, his honest Scotch face cracked in the warmest of smiles.
‘Yes, General, we’ve come across one another a couple of times in the past. It’s good to see you again, Jock.’ By God, it was too. Six foot and fifty-four years of Glasgow granite grinned at me, one of the most remarkable men I knew. He was wind-burnt, his whiskers now showing grey, and wore a run of ribbons that started with the Distinguished Conduct Medal on the breast of his plain blue frock coat. I’d first met him when he was a colour sergeant and I was an ensign in the 95th Foot. We’d soldiered through the Crimea and the Mutiny, never more than a few feet apart (we were even wounded within yards of each other), until his true worth had been recognised. After the fall of Gwalior in ’58, he’d been commissioned in the field and, with his natural flair for languages and his easy way with the natives, he had soon gravitated back to India. I’d watched his steady rise through merit with delight and pleasure but had been genuinely surprised to hear that he’d been seconded to the Political Department, some eighteen months ago, and then appointed to advise the divisional commander here in Kandahar.
‘An’ it’s good to see you, General. There’s a deal o’ catching up to do – perhaps a swally or two might be in order?’ He was older, for sure, but that rasping accent took me back to good times and bad, triumphs and disappointments we had shared, scares and laughter too many to remember.
But our familiarity clearly irritated General Primrose, who rose on the balls of his feet, peering up at McGucken while shooting me a sideways look. ‘Indeed, gentlemen. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of opportunity for such niceties once my political officer has briefed us all on the possible difficulties we face.’ Primrose cut across McGucken’s and my obvious delight in each other’s company, reasserting his authority and returning the atmosphere to all the conviviality of a Methodist prayer meeting. ‘Let’s have no more delays. Proceed, please, Major McGucken.’
And with that stricture, McGucken moved across to a map that was pinned to the wall, shooed a couple of somnolent flies off its lacquered surface, cleared his throat and began.
‘Before I arrived, back in November last year, while General Stewart was handling his own political affairs, a rumour gathered strength over in Herat.’ McGucken pointed to the city, more than three hundred miles to the north and west of Kandahar. ‘Ayoob Khan is the governor there and he has designs on Kandahar – he’s already declared himself the real wali – and for those of you who don’t know, gentlmen, a wali’s a regional governor who, so long as he’s got the local tribes with him, is extremely powerful. And I can understand why he’s interested in Kandahar. It’s the most prosperous of the regions and our people in India hadn’t made it clear that there was likely to be a permanent British presence here. Anyway, General Stewart took the intelligence seriously enough to report it to the viceroy—’
‘But not seriously enough to do anything about preparing Kandahar for any sort of a fight,’ Primrose interrupted, bristling away and looking every bit the petulant little scrub I’d always thought him.
‘Aye, General, quite so.’ McGucken continued: ‘But, as you know, things quietened down after the end of the fighting last year and the rumour came to nothing. Some of you gentlemen have already met the Wali of Kandahar, Sher Ali—’
‘You haven’t had a chance to clap eyes on him yet, Morgan.’ I could see how irritated McGucken was becoming by Primrose’s constant interjections. ‘I’ll get you an appointment as soon as possible. He must be in his mid-sixties now, not well liked and without much influence among either the Pathans or the Douranis, but the viceroy decided that he was the man to rule Kandahar as a state that is semi-independent of the Kabul government, so support him we shall. Trouble is, his own troops – who are meant to be keeping the tribes in order hereabouts – are unreliable and we’ve had a number of minor mutinies already. But don’t let me interrupt, McGucken, do go on.’
I knew that look of McGucken’s. He’d never suffered fools gladly, not even when he was an NCO, and his expression, a mixture of contempt and impatience, told me all I needed to know about the interfering nature of our divisional commander.
‘Sir, thank you.’ McGucken’s accent disguised his exasperation – unless you knew the man as well as I did. ‘The situation is extremely ticklish. You all know about General Stewart’s victory at Ahmed Khel on the nineteenth of April. He was halfway to Kabul when he met a right set of rogues and gave all fifteen thousand of them a damn good towelling. But, despite what you might think, that has only made the local tribesmen bolder. Word has come down from the Ghilzais that they nearly beat Stewart’s force, and whether that’s right or wrong is unimportant for that’s what they want to believe, and over the last couple of weeks the locals have become decidedly gallus.’
I smiled as the others knitted their brows at McGucken’s vocabulary. His speech had acquired a veneer of gentility to go with his rank and appointment, but his orphan Glasgow background was still obvious if you knew what to look for. And I knew what he meant: the badmashes Heath had pointed out were certainly ‘gallus’ – far too confident for their own good.
‘There’s been trouble among the wali’s forces while our own troops have been pestered, harassed, attacked, even, by tribesmen here in the city—’
But McGucken wasn’t allowed to continue, for Primrose butted in again: ‘Yes, that’s right. Some of your fellows had a very ugly incident the other day, didn’t they, Brooke? Tell Morgan about it.’
‘Well, yes, sir.’ I could see that Harry Brooke, decent sort of man that he was, didn’t want to break into McGucken’s briefing, but Primrose was insistent. ‘Willis, one of the Gunner subalterns of my brigade, had gone down into the Charsoo – that’s the odd domed building at the crossroads in the centre of the town, Morgan, if you ain’t seen it already – where the normal gathering of villains was going on around the bazaar stalls. He’d got a couple of soldiers with him and was armed according to my orders, but in the crowd he got separated from his escort – quite deliberately, I’m sure – and a Ghazi came at him with an ordinary shoemaker’s awl . . .’
My face must have betrayed my horror at what I knew Brooke was about to say.
‘Yes, I know it’s hard to believe, but I asked to see the murder weapon after the whole beastly business was over. It was just one of those sharp little iron awls, no more than two and a bit inches long, I’m telling you. The lads who witnessed the attack reckoned that it was an unusually crowded day in the markets, and a lunatic waited till his confederates had distracted them both and then just ran at him and buried it in the poor fellow’s neck. The two soldiers saw the assassin running at their officer but had no idea what he was about to do. All they saw was a look of crazy hatred on the man’s face and something small glittering in his hand. They’d had all the lectures about what the Ghazis can do and been told about their penchant for cold steel, but the whole thing was such a surprise that Willis didn’t stand a chance.
‘Anyway, then the mob closed in and the wretched fellow bled to death before anyone could do anything for him. I think even the locals were shocked by the brutality, for intelligence started to come in at once and we arrested the culprit a couple of days later – the cheeky sod was still running his cobbler’s business, as cool as you like. We hanged him just yards away from where the murder had occurred – that served as a lesson for the natives – but at least this bit of nastiness has shown exactly what the Ghazis can do. Everyone is on the qui vive when they’re in and about the town and—’
‘Go on, McGucken.’ Primrose had cut right across Brooke.
‘Sir, as I was saying, we’ve now received further intelligence that Ayoob Khan is preparing to move out of Herat. He’s trying to get his troops – as many as nine thousand we’re told – into some sort of fettle, but that’s all we really know. It’s possible that he’s going to bypass Kandahar and move on Kabul, but that seems less likely now that Stewart’s force have moved up to Kabul to reinforce General Roberts’s troops.’ McGucken paused.
‘How long would it take a native army of that size to reach us from Herat, and what sort of troops are they?’ I asked.
‘Well, General, it’s hard to know exactly, but I guess it would take Ayoob Khan more than a month, so – if my people are worth their salt – we should get plenty of warning. But they’re better organised than you might think, General. He’s got regulars, including some of the Kabuli regiments who turned on Louis Cavagnari last year, armed with Enfields and a few Sniders and some guns with, we’re told, overseers from the Russian artillery. How many pieces, and of what calibre, we’re not yet sure.’
I could see that McGucken had plenty more to tell me but Primrose hadn’t yet heard enough of his own voice: ‘So, Morgan, gentlemen, there we are.’ He was up and down on his toes like some wretched ballet dancer – I knew he would be an awkward man to work under. ‘We’ve got local problems with the troublesome, headstrong folk here in the town and the odd murderous loon in the shape of the Ghazis. The wali’s troops are an unknown quantity but will, I suspect, come to heel once the wali takes them properly in hand . . .’ McGucken raised his eyebrows ‘. . . and now the rumour of Ayoob Khan is back with us. I think it’s time, gentlemen, to take the soldier-like precautions that General Stewart so signally failed to do. We must not only be ready to take the field at a moment’s notice, we must also be ready to defend Kandahar.’
I could see Primrose scanning us all, challenging anyone to disagree with him, as the flies buzzed drowsily and the punkah creaked on its hinges above us. I have to say, it had all come as a bit of a surprise to me. I’d thought our division would be in Afghanistan just to see things quieten down, give a bit of bottom to the new wali and then be off back to India before the next winter. Now it seemed we might have a bit of a fight on our hands and – as Roberts, Browne and now Stewart had found out – these hillmen were not Zulus armed with spears whom we could mow down in their thousands. As well as regular troops and demented Ghazis, it now appeared that Ayoob Khan had guns directed by Russians. McGucken and I had had a bellyful of just such creatures a few years back.
‘Well, sir, may I suggest that there are three measures we could start with advantage right away?’ Harry Brooke spoke, clear and direct, taking Primrose’s challenge head on.
‘Please enlighten us, Brooke,’ Primrose replied, with a slight edge of sarcasm that caused McGucken to glance at me.
‘We must secure fresh and plentiful water supplies within the walls of the town before the weather gets really hot.’ Brooke paused to see how this would be received.
‘Yes, yes, of course – that’s just common sense,’ replied Primrose, so quickly that I suspected he’d never even con sidered such a thing. ‘Do go on.’
‘Well, sir, if we’re to face an enemy in the field, we’ll need every sabre and bayonet that we can find so we can’t be distracted by foes inside the town such as those you’ve just described. Should we not expel all Pathans of military age and pull down the shanties and lean-tos that have been built so close to the walls that they restrict any fields of fire? Can we not start to burn or dismantle them now, General?’
The punkah squaled again and I could see that the trouble with Harry Brooke, like all of us Anglo-Irish, was that he was too damn blunt. I’d had much the same thoughts about the clutter of plank and mud-built houses, shops and stalls as I’d ridden up from the cantonments towards the town walls and his comments about the tribesmen made a great deal of sense to me. But, judging by the way Primrose was hopping from foot to foot, Harry’s ideas hadn’t found much favour.
‘No, no, Brooke, that will never do. You must remember, all of you . . .’ Primrose treated us to another of his basilisk stares ‘. . . that we are not an army of occupation. We’re guests – pretty muscular guests, I grant you – of the wali under whose hand we lie. We can’t go knocking his people’s property about and chucking out those we haven’t taken a shine to. How on earth will we ever gain his or his subjects’ confidence if we behave like that? No, that will never do.’
What, I suspect, the little trimmer really meant was that sensible measures he wouldn’t have hesitated to use last year, while Disraeli’s crew held sway, simply wouldn’t answer now that Gladstone and his bunch of croakers were in charge. Primrose didn’t want to be seen by the new Whig regime as one of the same stamp of generals of whom the liberal press had been so critical for their heavy-handedness in Zululand and then for so-called ‘atrocities’ here in Afghanistan twelve months ago.
I could repeat, word perfect, Gladstone’s cant, which I’d read when I’d paused in Quetta three weeks ago, just before the election. It had caused near apoplexy at breakfast in the mess: ‘Remember that the sanctity of life in the hill villages of Afghanistan, amid the winter snows, is as inviolable in the eyes of Almighty God as your own,’ or some such rot. Disraeli had responded by calling his comments ‘rodomontade’ (which had us all stretching for the dictionaries) but there was no doubting the public mood that didn’t want to hear about British regulars being bested by natives and the murder of their envoys in far-away residences. They were heartily sick of highly coloured press accounts of shield-and-spear-armed Zulu impis being cut down by rifles and Gatling guns. If the new God-bothering government caught even a whiff of Primrose’s treating the tribesmen with anything other than kid gloves then his career was likely to be as successful as the Pope’s wedding night.
‘There it is, gentlemen. With a little good fortune, all this talk of Ayoob Khan descending on us like the wrath of God will prove to be just hot air and we can get on with an ordered life here, then make a measured move back to India later in the year.’
I looked round the room to judge people’s reaction to this last utterance from Primrose and there wasn’t a face – except, perhaps, Heath’s – that didn’t look horrified at such a pro spect. I, for one, had sat in Karachi whittling away over the last couple of campaign seasons while my friends and juniors gathered laurels innumerable, courtesy of the Afghans. And I’d had little expectation of any excitement when I’d been sent for a few weeks ago. But now our hopes had been raised. Perhaps we were to see deeds and glory. Maybe Nuttall, Brooke and I would not be bound for our pensions, Bath chairs and memories quite as soon as we had feared.
But not a bit of that from our divisional commander: he seemed to be longing for his villa in Cheltenham. ‘But if we are unlucky and all this trouble comes to pass, then we must be as ready as we can be. So, away to your commands, gentlemen. But not you, Morgan. May I detain you?’ All the others were gathering up their swords and sun-helmets, folding maps and despatches in a thoughtful silence, and I’d hoped that the general might have forgotten his summons to me – I wanted to spend some time with McGucken before events overtook us, but Primrose wasn’t having that. As I picked up my documents he said, ‘We need to discuss the state of your new brigade, don’t we, Morgan?’
‘What do we do, sir, when we meet a wali? I’ve never met one before,’ asked Heath, to whom I had been about to pose the same question.
‘How, in God’s name, should I know, Heath? I chose you to be my brigade major because you’re savvy with all this native stuff, ain’t you?’ All I got in reply from the great lummox was a sulky look. ‘We’ll just go in and salute, regimental-like, and let him do the talking. I hope his English is up to it.’
Primrose had been true to his word: the very next day I found myself bidden to Sher Ali Khan’s presence, the Wali of Kandahar. Now Heath and I were waiting in a stuffy little anteroom on the other side of the Citadel from where we’d met Primrose and all the others yesterday. At least the wali had tried to do the place up a little. I didn’t know where the furniture had come from – it looked French, with overstuffed satiny fabric and curly, carved legs – but there were some grand carpets on the floor and hanging on the walls. A couple of greasy-looking sentries had performed a poor imitation of presenting arms as we were escorted up to see His Nibs while a funny little chamberlain – or some such flunkey – had buzzed around us, talking such bad English that I saw little value in what was coming next beyond the call of protocol. But I was wrong.
‘My dear General!’ We’d been ushered into another, similar, room, performed our military rites and removed our helmets as the wali leapt off a low divan, a smile beaming through his beard and his hand outstretched. ‘How very good of you to make the time to see me.’
He looked much older than sixty-two. He was short, fat and yellow-toothed; he wore a sheepskin cap that, I guessed, hadn’t been removed since the winter; there was a distinct aroma of armpits about him and yet he was utterly, disarmingly, charming. He pumped our fins, sat us down, pressed thimble-sized cups of coffee on the pair of us and made me feel that his whole life had been a tedious interlude while he had waited to meet me.
‘No, really, it is very good of you.’ His English was accented, slightly sing-song, perhaps, but completely fluent. ‘I know what a trying journey you must have had up from India, but we do appreciate it. Now that General Stewart has gone, I’m so glad that you’ve brought another whole brigade to help General Primrose and me.’ The fellow made it sound as if I’d mustered my own personal vassals for this crusade as a favour to him. ‘Oh, we shall need them.’
I have to say, the next ten minutes were more useful than anything I’d heard from Primrose or would hear from him in the future. McGucken had, obviously, made a deep and favourable impression on the clever old boy, for he told me (and I don’t think it was just gammon) to seek him out if I hadn’t met him already. I forbore to mention how well I knew Jock, for I wanted to hear exactly what the wali himself had to tell me, especially about the threat from Ayoob Khan, which Primrose seemed to be playing down.
‘Well, yes, dear General, my prayers concentrate upon nothing at the moment but the intentions of that man. Your people don’t really understand what he wants and how determined he is to get it.’ Sher Ali trotted over the fact that he was a cousin of the amir and that he’d been installed as governor of the entire region in July last year in the clear expectation that he would be kept in post by force of British arms. ‘But then your government started to reduce the number of white and Indian soldiers here, and that was when the trouble started with my own men. You see, as far as most of them are concerned, I’m a British . . . a British . . . oh, what’s the word I want?’
‘Catspaw, sir?’ asked Heath, leaving all of us wondering what on earth he meant.
‘Eh? No, not an animal . . . puppet – that’s the word. Well, they hated that, but they had to put up with it, as long as there were enough British guns and bayonets to subdue them. My troops are not my tribesmen, General. They understand tribal authority more than any rank that is given or imposed – particularly by Feringhees. Oh, I do beg your forgiveness. I don’t wish to suggest that your presence is unwelcome!’ The old boy nearly poured his coffee down his beard when he thought he might have been unmannerly.
‘And this is where Ayoob Khan has the advantage.’ He told us again about Kandahar’s prosperity, how Ayoob Khan had been eyeing it up as his own for ages and how he’d managed to suborn the local forces with people from the Ghilzai tribes loyal to him but serving under the wali. ‘We’ve been hearing for months now that he and his people are likely to march out of Herat, and if that is the case, we must try to stop him before he gets anywhere near this city. But I worry about taking my troops into the field, General Morgan. As you will know, I’m sure, we have already had difficulties over pay – one of my cavalry regiments threw down their arms only last month when their officers tried to take them out of their lines for training. Now, if he were to come towards us, we should have to try and meet him somewhere here.’ The wali pointed to the Helmand river fords near Gereshk on a spanking new map that, I guessed, McGucken had given him.
‘Aye, sir, and that’s quite a way west over dry country.’ The map showed few water-courses and little but seventy or so miles of plains beset by steep heights.
‘Indeed so, but he and his elders know it well. And there are more complications.’ I heard him sigh when he said this, as if the very thought of what lay ahead sapped his energy and determination. ‘He will do his best to raise not just tribesmen along the way, but also the cursed Ghazis in the name of jihad. Have you been told about these creatures, General?’ I assured him that I had, and that Primrose and Brooke had given me a pretty fair idea of what they could do.
‘Ah, but, General, all you have seen of them is odd ones and twos. True, they make trouble in the town, they caused Stewart huzoor much pain, and they have started to gnaw at the ankles of General Primrose’s new division. But just imagine what such people could do if they were massed against you. That, no one has yet seen. If Ayoob Khan ever ventures out of the west, then be certain, my dear General, that those white-robed madmen will hover around him like wasps . . .’
Two days after my meeting with the wali, I had been up at dawn, ridden out of the town with Heath and Trumpeter Lynch to the lower slopes of the Baba Wali Kotal – the high ground some three miles to the north-west – and made an assessment of where the enemy’s best viewpoint would be. Then I’d come back to the mess for a swift breakfast of steak and fruit, before heading to my headquarters. I was just settling down behind my folding desk, preparing to indulge Heath with the things he loved best – detailed accounts, returns and all manner of mind-numbing administration – when news began to filter in of an ugly incident involving the 66th Foot.
The only British infantry that I had, the regiment had so far impressed me both times that I had seen them. But now there were reports that one of their patrols had killed a child right in the middle of Kandahar, then dispersed with great violence the angry crowd that gathered. Predictably, the first reports were vague and vastly unreliable, so once the dust had settled – literally – and the facts were clear, I had got back into the saddle and come to see the commanding officer, James Galbraith.
It had been an uncomfortable couple of hours’ waiting for me, for Primrose had caught wind of it, as had some British journalists who were out and about in Kandahar, and he was pressing me for a full account before the editors in London learnt of it. But I had commanded a battalion – albeit nowhere more demanding than Pembroke Dock – and I knew how irritating pressure from above would be for the commanding officer. Once the matter was fully investigated, Lieutenant Colonel Galbraith had asked me to come into the cramped little hut that served as his office. He rose from behind a trestle table in his rumpled khaki and stood stiffly to attention, expecting the worst.
‘Sit down, sit down, please, Galbraith.’ Despite my attempts to put him at ease, Galbraith continued to stand. I threw myself into one of the collapsible leather-seated campaign chairs that were so popular at the time.
‘A cheroot?’ I flicked one of the little brown tubes towards him, but Galbraith shook his head without a word. ‘Tell me what happened.’
The 66th had been in India for almost ten years now, stationed at Ahmednagar and Karachi, and I’d been pleased to see how many long-service men they still included. While the new regulations allowed men to enlist for shorter periods – which was reckoned by some to be good for recruiting – I always thought it took some time for a lad from the slums of England to acquire any sort of resistance to the heat and pestilence of India. It can’t have been a coincidence that the Second Battalion of the 8th Foot – almost all young, short-service lads – had been gutted by disease last year outside Kabul.
‘Well, General, we had a routine patrol in the central bazaar earlier this morning, an officer, sergeant and six men. They all said that the atmosphere was tense, with a lot of people and beasts bringing goods to market. Suddenly the crowd opened and a child rushed at them with a knife in his hand.’ Galbraith had been in command of the 66th for four years now and had a reputation for being as devoted to them as his men were to him. Another English-Paddy from Omagh up north, my father knew his family, but the slim, handsome man, whose heavy moustache and whiskers made him look older than his forty years, had never thought to presume upon this link.
‘A child, Galbraith? How old was he?’ I found it hard to believe that a fully armed patrol of British soldiers might be attacked by a boy. A strapping youth, perhaps, for many of the Ghazis, while fully grown, were said by those who had had to face them to be too young to have proper beards. But a mere boy behaving like that I found difficult to credit.
‘Well, I’m not exactly sure, General, but young enough for there to be an almighty bloody fuss kicked up by the mullahs to whom the press are listening with all their normal evenhandedness,’ replied Galbraith.
‘Are you sure that one of the lads didn’t fire his rifle by mistake, hit the boy and now he’s trying to cover it up just like the Fifty-Ninth did?’ I knew soldiers: they’d lie most imaginatively if they thought it would save their necks. The story was still circulating about a drunken spree by the 59th last Christmas. Two of the men had been drinking and tinkering about with their rifles when one had shot the other. They had made up some cock-and-bull story about a Ghazi entering their barracks and, in an attempt to shoot him down, one man had accidentally wounded his comrade.
‘Well, no, sir. The youth was killed with a sword and a number of bayonet thrusts quite deliberately. The men didn’t fire for fear of hitting one of the crowd.’ Galbraith looked indignant.
‘Oh, good. That’s exactly what I wanted to hear. So now we don’t just have a child being killed, the poor little bugger was hacked to pieces by your ruffians while half of Kandahar looked on. I really don’t like the sound of this at all. Who was in charge of this fiasco? I hope you’re not going to tell me it was a lad straight out of Sandhurst with some lance sergeant at his side?’ When I’d paid my first visit to the 66th a few days ago, I’d been pleased with the appearance of the men but I’d noticed how junior some of the NCOs were. Galbraith had explained that he’d had to leave a large number of sergeants behind in India, either sick or time-expired, and he’d been forced to promote fairly inexperienced corporals to fill the gaps.
‘No, sir. Sar’nt Kelly is one of my best substantive sergeants with almost sixteen years’ service. He’s due to get his colours at the next promotion board. That’s why I’ve put him with one of my new officers.’ Galbraith came back at me hot and strong. ‘If you’d prefer to hear it straight from those who were there, sir, I’ve got Kelly and his officer waiting outside.’
‘Yes, I bloody well would. Ask them to march in, please, Heath.’ My tosspot of a brigade major had been sitting in on the meeting with Galbraith, his expression increasingly disapproving, not a shred of sympathy showing for the men who had been faced with what sounded to me like a thoroughly nasty business.
I saw the pair of them file in, smartly in step. Sergeant Kelly was five foot nine, heavily sunburnt, with a moustache trimmed to regulation length, and the ribbon of the rooti-gong above his left breast pocket. His puttees were wrapped just so, his khaki drill pressed as neatly as field conditions would allow, three red chevrons standing out starkly on his right sleeve and his brasswork polished for the occasion. He gave ‘Halt,’ then ‘Up,’ sotto voce to his subaltern, both men stamping in time before their hands quivered to the peaks of their khaki-covered helmets. After a silent count of ‘Two, three,’ they snapped them down to their sides. The officer was taller but slighter than his sergeant. His fair hair curled just a little too fashionably almost to his collar, his skin was red with the early summer sun and his moustache still not fully grown. Holding his sword firmly back against his left hip, pistol to his right, the single brass stars of an ensign on either side of his collar, he was my younger son, William.
‘Well, Sar’nt Kelly, Mr Morgan, if I’m to put up a good case on your behalf and keep your names from being spread over the gutter press, you’d better tell me exactly what happened this morning.’ Galbraith had deliberately not mentioned that my son was the officer involved – wise man that he was.
Now Billy cleared his throat and raised his chin before he spoke, just like his late mother might have done. ‘Sir, with your leave, I’ll explain everything . . .’
