Soldiers Three - Part 2

Lew reflected on the future as arranged by Jakin a short time previously, but Cris’s mouth was very near to his own.

“I promise, s’elp me Gawd!” said he.

Cris slid an arm round his neck.

“I won’t ‘old you back no more, Piggy. Go away an’ get your medal, an’ I’ll make you a new button-bag as nice as I know how,” she whispered.

“Put some o’ your ‘air into it, Cris, an’ I’ll keep it in my pocket so long’s I’m alive.”

Then Cris wept anew, and the interview ended. Public feeling among the drummer-boys rose to fever pitch, and the lives of Jakin and Lew became unenviable. Not only had they been permitted to enlist two years before the regulation boy’s age — fourteen — but, by virtue, it seemed, of their extreme youth, they were allowed to go to the Front — which thing had not happened to acting-drummers within the knowledge of boy. The Band which was to accompany the Regiment had been cut down to the regulation twenty men, the surplus returning to the ranks. Jakin and Lew were attached to the Band as supernumeraries, though they would much have preferred being company buglers.

“Don’t matter much,” said Jakin after the medical inspection. “Be thankful that we’re ‘lowed to go at all. The Doctor ‘e said that if we could stand what we took from the Bazar-Sergeant’s son we’d stand pretty nigh anything.”

“Which we will,” said Lew, looking tenderly at the ragged and ill-made housewife that Cris had given him, with a lock of her hair worked into a sprawling “L” upon the cover.

“It was the best I could,” she sobbed. “I wouldn’t let mother nor the Sergeant’s tailor ‘elp me. Keep it always, Piggy, an’ remember I love you true.”

They marched to the railway station, nine hundred and sixty strong, and every soul in cantonments turned out to see them go. The drummers gnashed their teeth at Jakin and Lew marching with the Band, the married women wept upon the platform, and the Regiment cheered its noble self black in the face.

“A nice level lot,” said the Colonel to the Second-in-Command as they watched the first four companies entraining.

“Fit to do anything,” said the Second-in-Command enthusiastically. “But it seems to me they’re a thought too young and tender for the work in hand. It’s bitter cold up at the Front now.”

“They’re sound enough,” said the Colonel. “We must take our chance of sick casualties.”

So they went northward, ever northward, past droves and droves of camels, armies of camp-followers, and legions of laden mules, the throng thickening day by day, till with a shriek the train pulled up at a hopelessly congested junction where six lines of temporary track accommodated six forty-waggon trains; where whistles blew, Babus sweated, and Commissariat officers swore from dawn till far into the night, amid the wind-driven chaff of the fodder-bales and the lowing of a thousand steers.

“Hurry up — you’re badly wanted at the Front,” was the message that greeted the Fore and Aft, and the occupants of the Red Cross carriages told the same tale.

“Tisn’t so much the bloomin’ fightin’,” gasped a headbound trooper of Hussars to a knot of admiring Fore and Afts. “Tisn’t so much the bloomin’ fightin’, though there’s enough o’ that. It’s the bloomin’ food an’ the bloomin’ climate. Frost all night ‘cept when it hails, and b’iling sun all day, and the water stinks fit to knock you down. I got my ‘ead chipped like a egg; I’ve got pneumonia too, an’ my guts is all out o’ order. ‘Tain’t no bloomin’ picnic in those parts, I can tell you.”

“Wot are the niggers like?” demanded a private.

“There’s some prisoners in that train yonder. Go an’ look at ‘em. They’re the aristocracy o’ the country. The common folk are a dashed sight uglier. If you want to know what they fight with, reach under my seat an’ pull out the long knife that’s there.”

They dragged out and beheld for the first time the grim, bone-handled, triangular Afghan knife. It was almost as long as Lew.

“That’s the thing to j’int ye,” said the trooper feebly. “It can take off a man’s arm at the shoulder as easy as slicing butter. I halved the beggar that used that un, but there’s more of his likes up above. They don’t understand thrustin’, but they’re devils to slice.”

The men strolled across the tracks to inspect the Afghan prisoners. They were unlike any “niggers” that the Fore and Aft had ever met — these huge, black-haired, scowling sons of the Beni-Israel. As the men stared the Afghans spat freely and muttered one to another with lowered eyes.

“My eyes! Wot awful swine!” said Jakin, who was in the rear of the procession. “Say, ole man, how you got puckrowed, eh? Kiswasti you wasn’t hanged for your ugly face, hey?”

The tallest of the company turned, his leg-irons clanking at the movement, and stared at the boy. “See!” he cried to his fellows in Pushto. “They send children against us. What a people, and what fools!”

“Hya.” said Jakin, nodding his head cheerily. “You go down-country. Khana get, peenikapanee get — live like a bloomin’ Raja ke marfik. That’s a better bandobust than baynit get it in your innards. Good-bye, ole man. Take care o’ your beautiful figure’ead, an’ try to look kushy.”

The men laughed and fell in for their first march, when they began to realise that a soldier’s life is not all beer and skittles. They were much impressed with the size and bestial ferocity of the niggers whom they had now learned to call “Paythans,” and more with the exceeding discomfort of their own surroundings. Twenty old soldiers in the corps would have taught them how to make themselves moderately snug at night, but they had no old soldiers, and, as the troops on the line of march said, “they lived like pigs.” They learned the heart-breaking cussedness of camp-kitchens and camels and the depravity of an E. P. tent and a wither-wrung mule. They studied animalculae in water, and developed a few cases of dysentery in their study.

At the end of their third march they were disagreeably surprised by the arrival in their camp of a hammered iron slug which, fired from a steady rest at seven hundred yards, flicked out the brains of a private seated by the fire. This robbed them of their peace for a night, and was the beginning of a long-range fire carefully calculated to that end. In the daytime they saw nothing except an unpleasant puff of smoke from a crag above the line of march. At night there were distant spurts of flame and occasional casualties, which set the whole camp blazing into the gloom and, occasionally, into opposite tents. Then they swore vehemently and vowed that this was magnificent but not war.

Indeed it was not. The Regiment could not halt for reprisals against the sharpshooters of the country-side. Its duty was to go forward and make connection with the Scotch and Goorkha troops with which it was brigaded. The Afghans knew this, and knew too, after their first tentative shots, that they were dealing with a raw regiment Thereafter they devoted themselves to the task of keeping the Fore and Aft on the strain. Not for anything would they have taken equal liberties with a seasoned corps — with the wicked little Goorkhas, whose delight it was to lie out in the open on a dark night and stalk their stalkers — with the terrible big men dressed in women’s clothes, who could be heard praying to their God in the night-watches, and whose peace of mind no amount of “sniping” could shake — or with those vile Sikhs, who marched so ostentatiously unprepared and who dealt out such grim reward to those who tried to profit by that unpreparedness. This white regiment was different — quite different. It slept like a hog, and, like a hog, charged in every direction when it was roused. Its sentries walked with a footfall that could be heard for a quarter of a mile; would fire at anything that moved — even a driven donkey — and when they had once fired, could be scientifically “rushed” and laid out a horror and an offence against the morning sun. Then there were camp-followers who straggled and could be cut up without fear. Their shrieks would disturb the white boys, and the loss of their services would inconvenience them sorely.

Thus, at every march, the hidden enemy became bolder and the Regiment writhed and twisted under attacks it could not avenge. The crowning triumph was a sudden night-rush ending in the cutting of many tent-ropes, the collapse of the sodden canvas, and a glorious knifing of the men who struggled and kicked below. It was a great deed, neatly carried out, and it shook the already shaken nerves of the Fore and Aft. All the courage that they had been required to exercise up to this point was the “two o’clock in the morning courage”; and, so far, they had only succeeded in shooting their comrades and losing their sleep.

Sullen, discontented, cold, savage, sick, with their uniforms dulled and unclean, the Fore and Aft joined their Brigade.

“I hear you had a tough time of it coming up,” said the Brigadier. But when he saw the hospital-sheets his face fell.

“This is bad,” said he to himself. “They’re as rotten as sheep.” And aloud to the Colonel — “I’m afraid we can’t spare you just yet. We want all we have, else I should have given you ten days to recover in.”

The Colonel winced. “On my honour, Sir,” he returned, “there is not the least necessity to think of sparing us. My men have been rather mauled and upset without a fair return. They only want to go in somewhere where they can see what’s before them.”

“Can’t say I think much of the Fore and Fit,” said the Brigadier in confidence to his Brigade-Major. “They’ve lost all their soldiering, and, by the trim of them, might have marched through the country from the other side. A more fagged-out set of men I never put eyes on.”

“Oh, they’ll improve as the work goes on. The parade gloss has been rubbed off a little, but they’ll put on field polish before long,” said the Brigade-Major. “They’ve been mauled, and they don’t quite understand it.”

They did not. All the hitting was on one side, and it was cruelly hard hitting with accessories that made them sick. There was also the real sickness that laid hold of a strong man and dragged him howling to the grave. Worst of all, their officers knew just as little of the country as the men themselves, and looked as if they did. The Fore and Aft were in a thoroughly unsatisfactory condition, but they believed that all would be well if they could once get a fair go-in at the enemy. Pot-shots up and down the valleys were unsatisfactory, and the bayonet never seemed to get a chance. Perhaps it was as well, for a long-limbed Afghan with a knife had a reach of eight feet, and could carry away lead that would disable three Englishmen.

The Fore and Aft would like some rifle-practice at the enemy — all seven hundred rifles blazing together. That wish showed the mood of the men.

The Goorkhas walked into their camp, and in broken, barrack-room English strove to fraternise with them: offered them pipes of tobacco and stood them treat at the canteen. But the Fore and Aft, not knowing much of the nature of the Goorkhas, treated them as they would treat any other “niggers,” and the little men in green trotted back to their firm friends the Highlanders, and with many grins confided to them: “That dam white regiment no dam use. Sulky — ugh! Dirty — ugh! Hya, any tot for Johnny?” Whereat the Highlanders smote the Goorkhas as to the head, and told them not to vilify a British Regiment, and the Goorkhas grinned cavernously, for the Highlanders were their elder brothers and entitled to the privileges of kinship. The common soldier who touches a Goorkha is more than likely to have his head sliced open.

Three days later the Brigadier arranged a battle according to the rules of war and the peculiarity of the Afghan temperament. The enemy were massing in inconvenient strength among the hills, and the moving of many green standards warned him that the tribes were “up” in aid of the Afghan regular troops. A squadron and a half of Bengal Lancers represented the available Cavalry, and two screw-guns, borrowed from a column thirty miles away, the Artillery at the General’s disposal.

“If they stand, as I’ve a very strong notion that they will, I fancy we shall see an infantry fight that will be worth watching,” said the Brigadier. “We’ll do it in style. Each regiment shall be played into action by its Band, and we’ll hold the Cavalry in reserve.”

“For all the reserve?” somebody asked.

“For all the reserve; because we’re going to crumple them up,” said the Brigadier, who was an extraordinary Brigadier, and did not believe in the value of a reserve when dealing with Asiatics. Indeed, when you come to think of it, had the British Army consistently waited for reserves in all its little affairs, the boundaries of Our Empire would have stopped at Brighton beach.

The battle was to be a glorious battle.

The three regiments debouching from three separate gorges, after duly crowning the heights above, were to converge from the centre, left, and right upon what we will call the Afghan army, then stationed towards the lower extremity of a flat-bottomed valley. Thus it will be seen that three sides of the valley practically belonged to the English, while the fourth was strictly Afghan property. In the event of defeat the Afghans had the rocky hills to fly to, where the fire from the guerrilla tribes in aid would cover their retreat. In the event of victory these same tribes would rush down and lend their weight to the rout of the British.

The screw-guns were to shell the head of each Afghan rush that was made in close formation, and the Cavalry, held in reserve in the right valley, were to gently stimulate the break-up which would follow on the combined attack. The Brigadier, sitting upon a rock overlooking the valley, would watch the battle unrolled at his feet. The Fore and Aft would debouch from the central gorge, the Goorkhas from the left, and the Highlanders from the right, for the reason that the left flank of the enemy seemed as though it required the most hammering. It was not every day that an Afghan force would take ground in the open, and the Brigadier was resolved to make the most of it.

“If we only had a few more men,” he said plaintively, “we could surround the creatures and crumple ‘em up thoroughly. As it is, I’m afraid we can only cut them up as they run. It’s a great pity.”

The Fore and Aft had enjoyed unbroken peace for five days, and were beginning, in spite of dysentery, to recover their nerve. But they were not happy, for they did not know the work in hand, and had they known, would not have known how to do it. Throughout those five days in which old soldiers might have taught them the craft of the game, they discussed together their misadventures in the past — how such an one was alive at dawn and dead ere the dusk, and with what shrieks and struggles such another had given up his soul under the Afghan knife. Death was a new and horrible thing to the sons of mechanics who were used to die decently of zymotic disease; and their careful conservation in barracks had done nothing to make them look upon it with less dread.

Very early in the dawn the bugles began to blow, and the Fore and Aft, filled with a misguided enthusiasm, turned out without waiting for a cup of coffee and a biscuit; and were rewarded by being kept under arms in the cold while the other regiments leisurely prepared for the fray. All the world knows that it is ill taking the breeks off a Highlander. It is much iller to try to make him stir unless he is convinced of the necessity for haste. 507 The Fore and Aft waited, leaning upon their rifles and listening to the protests of their empty stomachs. The Colonel did his best to remedy the default of lining as soon as it was borne in upon him that the affair would not begin at once, and so well did he succeed that the coffee was just ready when — the men moved off, their Band leading. Even then there had been a mistake in time, and the Fore and Aft came out into the valley ten minutes before the proper hour. Their Band wheeled to the right after reaching the open, and retired behind a little rocky knoll still playing while the Regiment went past.

It was not a pleasant sight that opened on the uninstructed view, for the lower end of the valley appeared to be filled by an army in position — real and actual regiments attired in red coats, and — of this there was no doubt — firing Martini-Henry bullets which cut up the ground a hundred yards in front of the leading company. Over that pock-marked ground the Regiment had to pass, and it opened the ball with a general and profound courtesy to the piping pickets; ducking in perfect time, as though it had been brazed on a rod. Being half capable of thinking for itself, it fired a volley by the simple process of pitching its rifle into its shoulder and pulling the trigger. The bullets may have accounted for some of the watchers on the hill side, but they certainly did not affect the mass of enemy in front, while the noise of the rifles drowned any orders that might have been given.

“Good God!” said the Brigadier, sitting on the rock high above all. “That Regiment has spoilt the whole show. Hurry up the others, and let the screw-guns get off.”

But the screw-guns, in working round the heights, had stumbled upon a wasp’s nest of a small mud fort which they incontinently shelled at eight hundred yards, to the huge discomfort of the occupants, who were unaccustomed to weapons of such devilish precision.