Red Runs the Helmand

‘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.’