scraggly holly oaks broke through the snow. Here the Afghans had blocked the way with a barrier of prickly ilex, six feet high. The soldiers fell upon it with their bare hands, while a fury of fire was poured at them from the ridges on either side, and Ghilzai horsemen galloped mercilessly among them—scrabbling frantically away with their frost-bitten fingers, dying in their hundreds, until at last a gap was made in the barricade and there was a mad rush of horsemen and foot-soldiers through it, the horses rearing, the shots flying, crazed soldiers sometimes shooting at theirfriends, and into the confusion the Afghans falling with their knives and long swords to leave the snow stained with blood, mashed about with footfalls, and littered with red-coat bodies.
By the eighth day the army had no commander. Summoned to a conference at Akhbar’s camp, Elphinstone had been held there as a hostage, and his soldiers never saw him again. But by now there was virtually no army either: only some twenty officers and forty-five British soldiers had survived the slaughter in the Jugdulluk. At a hamlet called Gandamack they found themselves surrounded by Afghans and called to a parley—a handful of emaciated, exhausted and mostly unarmed Britons, with Captain Souter of the 44th wearing the regimental colours wound about his waist. It was a trick. The soldiers were slaughtered, only half a dozen being taken prisoner. The only survivors of the army now, apart from a few wandering sepoys, were fourteen horsemen, who, by-passing Gandamack, had galloped desperately towards Jalalabad—twenty miles away.
By the ninth day only six survived—three captains, a lieutenant and two army doctors, one of whom, Dr Brydon, had already lost his horse, and had been given a pony by a wounded subahdar of the native infantry—‘take my horse’, the Indian had said, ‘and God send you may get to Jalalabad in safety’. At Futtehabad, sixteen miles from Jalalabad, the officers found themselves kindly welcomed by the villagers, who offered them food, and urged them to rest for a while: two of them were murdered there and then, three more were killed as they fled the place.
13
So there remained, on January 13, 1842, only one survivor of the Kabul army—Surgeon Brydon, Army Medical Corps, galloping desperately over the last few miles to Jalalabad, Afghans all around him like flies, throwing stones at him, swinging sabres, reducing him in the end to the hilt of his broken sword, which he threw in a horseman’s face. And quite suddenly, in the early afternoon, Brydon found himself all alone. The Afghans had faded away. There was nobody to be seen. Not a sound broke the cold air. He plodded on through the snow exhausted, leaning on the pony’s neck, andpresently he saw in the distance the high mud walls of Jalalabad, with the Union Jack flying above. He took his forage cap from his head and feebly waved. The fortress gates opened; a group of officers ran out to greet him; and so the retreat from Kabul, and the first of Queen Victoria’s imperial wars, came to its grand and terrible end.
‘Did I not say so?’ said Colonel Dennie, who was watching from the walls. ‘Here comes the messenger’. 1
1 Though the British never liked using elephants in war—they suffered from footsores, and their ear-drums were vulnerable to the crack of rifle-fire.
1 When the British acquired Hong Kong in 1841, indeed, in the course of a trade war against the Chinese, one commentator likened the new colony to ‘a notch cut in China as a woodsman notches a tree, to mark it for felling at a convenient opportunity’.
1 Intelligence was limited, since no Briton in India understood their language.
1 Notably Colonel Robert Warburton, who married a niece of the Dost, and whose son Sir Robert Warburton, half British, half Afghan, was to be the most celebrated frontier administrator of British India—‘uncrowned King of the Khyber’.
1 A sensation that lingers even now.
By the eighth day the army had no commander. Summoned to a conference at Akhbar’s camp, Elphinstone had been held there as a hostage, and his soldiers never saw him again. But by now there was virtually no army either: only some twenty officers and forty-five British soldiers had survived the slaughter in the Jugdulluk. At a hamlet called Gandamack they found themselves surrounded by Afghans and called to a parley—a handful of emaciated, exhausted and mostly unarmed Britons, with Captain Souter of the 44th wearing the regimental colours wound about his waist. It was a trick. The soldiers were slaughtered, only half a dozen being taken prisoner. The only survivors of the army now, apart from a few wandering sepoys, were fourteen horsemen, who, by-passing Gandamack, had galloped desperately towards Jalalabad—twenty miles away.
By the ninth day only six survived—three captains, a lieutenant and two army doctors, one of whom, Dr Brydon, had already lost his horse, and had been given a pony by a wounded subahdar of the native infantry—‘take my horse’, the Indian had said, ‘and God send you may get to Jalalabad in safety’. At Futtehabad, sixteen miles from Jalalabad, the officers found themselves kindly welcomed by the villagers, who offered them food, and urged them to rest for a while: two of them were murdered there and then, three more were killed as they fled the place.
13
So there remained, on January 13, 1842, only one survivor of the Kabul army—Surgeon Brydon, Army Medical Corps, galloping desperately over the last few miles to Jalalabad, Afghans all around him like flies, throwing stones at him, swinging sabres, reducing him in the end to the hilt of his broken sword, which he threw in a horseman’s face. And quite suddenly, in the early afternoon, Brydon found himself all alone. The Afghans had faded away. There was nobody to be seen. Not a sound broke the cold air. He plodded on through the snow exhausted, leaning on the pony’s neck, andpresently he saw in the distance the high mud walls of Jalalabad, with the Union Jack flying above. He took his forage cap from his head and feebly waved. The fortress gates opened; a group of officers ran out to greet him; and so the retreat from Kabul, and the first of Queen Victoria’s imperial wars, came to its grand and terrible end.
‘Did I not say so?’ said Colonel Dennie, who was watching from the walls. ‘Here comes the messenger’. 1
1 Though the British never liked using elephants in war—they suffered from footsores, and their ear-drums were vulnerable to the crack of rifle-fire.
1 When the British acquired Hong Kong in 1841, indeed, in the course of a trade war against the Chinese, one commentator likened the new colony to ‘a notch cut in China as a woodsman notches a tree, to mark it for felling at a convenient opportunity’.
1 Intelligence was limited, since no Briton in India understood their language.
1 Notably Colonel Robert Warburton, who married a niece of the Dost, and whose son Sir Robert Warburton, half British, half Afghan, was to be the most celebrated frontier administrator of British India—‘uncrowned King of the Khyber’.
1 A sensation that lingers even now.
Similar Books
