go—but they had no knowledge of what war meant, and there was none to
tell them. They were an educated regiment, the percentage of
school-certificates in their ranks was high, and most of the men could
do more than read and write. They had been recruited in loyal observance
of the territorial idea; but they themselves had no notion of that idea.
They were made up of drafts from an over-populated manufacturing
district. The system had put flesh and muscle upon their small bones,
but it could not put heart into the sons of those who for generations
had done overmuch work for over-scanty pay, had sweated in drying-rooms,
stooped over looms, coughed among white-lead, and shivered on
lime-barges. The men had found food and rest in the Army, and now they
were going to fight ‘niggers’—people who ran away if you shook a stick
at them. Wherefore they cheered lustily when the rumour ran, and the
shrewd, clerkly non-commissioned officers speculated on the chances of
batta and of saving their pay. At Headquarters men said: ‘The Fore and
Fit have never been under fire within the last generation. Let us,
therefore, break them in easily by setting them to guard lines of
communication,’ And this would have been done but for the fact that
British Regiments were wanted—badly wanted—at the Front, and there were
doubtful Native Regiments that could fill the minor duties. ‘Brigade ’em
with two strong Regiments,’ said Headquarters. ‘They may be knocked
about a bit, but they’ll learn their business before they come through.
Nothing like a night-alarm and a little cutting-up of stragglers to make
a Regiment smart in the field. Wait till they’ve had half-a-dozen
sentries’ throats cut.’
The Colonel wrote with delight that the temper of his men was excellent,
that the Regiment was all that could be wished, and as sound as a bell.
The Majors smiled with a sober joy, and the subalterns waltzed in pairs
down the Mess-room after dinner, and nearly shot themselves at
revolver-practice. But there was consternation in the hearts of Jakin
and Lew. What was to be done with the Drums? Would the Band go to the
Front? How many of the Drums would accompany the Regiment?
They took counsel together, sitting in a tree and smoking.
‘It’s more than a bloomin’ toss-up they’ll leave us be’ind at the Depot
with the women. You’ll like that,’ said Jakin sarcastically.
‘’Cause o’ Cris, y’ mean? Wot’s a woman, or a ‘ole bloomin’ depot o’
women, ’longside o’ the chanst of field-service? You know I’m as keen on
goin’ as you,’ said Lew.
‘Wish I was a bloomin’ bugler,’ said Jakin sadly. ‘They’ll take Tom Kidd
along, that I can plaster a wall with, an’ like as not they won’t take
us.’
‘Then let’s go an’ make Tom Kidd so bloomin’ sick ’e can’t bugle no
more. You ’old ’is ’ands an’ I’ll kick him,’ said Lew, wriggling on the
branch.
‘That ain’t no good neither. We ain’t the sort o’ characters to presoom
on our rep’tations—they’re bad. If they leave the Band at the Depot we
don’t go, and no error _there_. If they take the Band we may get cast
for medical unfitness. Are you medical fit, Piggy?’ said Jakin, digging
Lew in the ribs with force.
‘Yus,’ said Lew with an oath. ‘The Doctor says your ’eart’s weak through
smokin’ on an empty stummick. Throw a chest an’ I’ll try yer.’
Jakin threw out his chest, which Lew smote with all his might. Jakin
turned very pale, gasped, crowed, screwed up his eyes, and said—‘That’s
all right.’
‘You’ll do,’ said Lew. ‘I’ve ’eard o’ men dying when you ’it ’em fair on
the breastbone.’
‘Don’t bring us no nearer goin’, though,’ said Jakin. ‘Do you know where
we’re ordered?’
‘Gawd knows, an’ ’E won’t split on a pal. Somewheres up to the Front to
kill Paythans—hairy big beggars that turn you inside out if they get
’old o’ you. They say their women are good-looking, too.’
‘Any loot?’ asked the abandoned Jakin.
‘Not a bloomin’ anna, they say, unless you dig up the ground an’ see
what the niggers ’ave ’id. They’re a poor lot.’ Jakin stood upright on
the branch and gazed across the plain.
‘Lew,’ said he, ‘there’s the Colonel coming. ’Colonel’s a good old
beggar. Let’s go an’ talk to ’im.’
Lew nearly fell out of the tree at the audacity of the suggestion. Like
Jakin he feared not God, neither regarded he Man, but there are limits
even to the audacity of drummer-boy, and to speak to a Colonel was——
But Jakin had slid down the trunk and doubled in the direction of the
Colonel. That officer was walking wrapped in thought and visions of a
C.B.—yes, even a K.C.B., for had he not at command one of the best
Regiments of the Line—the Fore and Fit? And he was aware of two small
boys charging down upon him. Once before it had been solemnly reported
to him that ‘the Drums were in a state of mutiny,’ Jakin and Lew being
the ringleaders. This looked like an organised conspiracy.
The boys halted at twenty yards, walked to the regulation four paces,
and saluted together, each as well-set-up as a ramrod and little taller.
The Colonel was in a genial mood; the boys appeared very forlorn and
unprotected on the desolate plain, and one of them was handsome.
‘Well!’ said the Colonel, recognising them. ‘Are you going to pull me
down in the open? I’m sure I never interfere with you, even though’—he
sniffed suspiciously—‘you have been smoking.’
It was time to strike while the iron was hot. Their hearts beat
tumultuously.
‘Beg y’ pardon, Sir,’ began Jakin. ‘The Reg’ment’s ordered on active
service, Sir?’
‘So I believe,’ said the Colonel courteously.
‘Is the Band goin’, Sir?’ said both together. Then, without pause,
‘We’re goin’, Sir, ain’t we?’
‘You!’ said the Colonel, stepping back the more fully to take in the two
small figures. ‘You! You’d die in the first march.’
‘No, we wouldn’t, Sir. We can march with the Reg’ment anywheres—p’rade
an’ anywhere else,’ said Jakin.
‘If Tom Kidd goes ’e’ll shut up like a clasp-knife,’ said Lew. ‘Tom ’as
very-close veins in both ’is legs, Sir.’
‘Very how much?’
‘Very-close veins, Sir. That’s why they swells after long p’rade, Sir.
If ’e can go, we can go, Sir.’
Again the Colonel looked at them long and intently.
‘Yes, the Band is going,’ he said as gravely as though he had been
addressing a brother officer. ‘Have you any parents, either of you two?’
‘No, Sir,’ rejoicingly from Lew and Jakin. ‘We’re both orphans, Sir.
There’s no one to be considered of on our account, Sir.’
‘You poor little sprats, and you want to go up to the Front with the
Regiment, do you? Why?’
‘I’ve worn the Queen’s Uniform for two years,’ said Jakin. ‘It’s very
’ard, Sir, that a man don’t get no recompense for doin’ of ’is dooty,
Sir.’
‘An’—an’ if I don’t go, Sir,’ interrupted Lew, ‘the Bandmaster ’e says
’e’ll catch an’ make a bloo—a blessed musician o’ me, Sir. Before I’ve
seen any service, Sir.’
The Colonel made no answer for a long time. Then he said quietly: ‘If
you’re passed by the Doctor I daresay you can go. I shouldn’t smoke if I
were you.’
The boys saluted and disappeared. The Colonel walked home and told the
story to his wife, who nearly cried over it. The Colonel was well
pleased. If that was the temper of the children, what would not the men
do?
Jakin and Lew entered the boys’ barrack-room with great stateliness, and
refused to hold any conversation with their comrades for at least ten
minutes. Then, bursting with pride, Jakin drawled: ‘I’ve bin intervooin’
the Colonel. Good old beggar is the Colonel. Says I to ’im, “Colonel,”
says I, “let me go to the Front, along o’ the Reg’ment”—“To the Front
you shall go,” says ’e, “an’ I only wish there was more like you among
the dirty little devils that bang the bloomin’ drums.” Kidd, if you
throw your ’courtrements at me for tellin’ you the truth to your own
advantage, your legs’ll swell.’
None the less there was a Battle-Royal in the barrack-room, for the boys
were consumed with envy and hate, and neither Jakin nor Lew behaved in
conciliatory wise.
‘I’m goin’ out to say adoo to my girl,’ said Lew, to cap the climax.
‘Don’t none o’ you touch my kit because it’s wanted for active service;
me bein’ specially invited to go by the Colonel.’
He strolled forth and whistled in the clump of trees at the back of the
Married Quarters till Cris came to him, and, the preliminary kisses
being given and taken, Lew began to explain the situation.
‘I’m goin’ to the Front with the Reg’ment,’ he said valiantly.
‘Piggy, you’re a little liar,’ said Cris, but her heart misgave her, for
Lew was not in the habit of lying.
‘Liar yourself, Cris,’ said Lew, slipping an arm round her. ‘I’m goin’.
When the Reg’ment marches out you’ll see me with ’em, all galliant and
gay. Give us another kiss, Cris, on the strength of it.’
‘If you’d on’y a-stayed at the Depot—where you _ought_ to ha’ bin—you
could get as many of ’em as—as you dam please,’ whimpered Cris, putting
up her mouth.
‘It’s ’ard, Cris. I grant you it’s ’ard. But what’s a man to do? If I’d
a-stayed at the Depot, you wouldn’t think anything of me.’
‘Like as not, but I’d ’ave you with me, Piggy. An’ all the thinkin’ in
the world isn’t like kissin’.’
‘An’ all the kissin’ in the world isn’t like ’avin’ a medal to wear on
the front o’ your coat.’
‘_You_ won’t get no medal.’
‘Oh yus, I shall though. Me an’ Jakin are the only acting-drummers
that’ll be took along. All the rest is full men, an’ we’ll get our
medals with them.’
‘They might ha’ taken anybody but you, Piggy. You’ll get killed—you’re
so venturesome. Stay with me, Piggy darlin’, down at the Depot, an’ I’ll
love you true, for ever.’
‘Ain’t you goin’ to do that _now_, Cris? You said you was.’
‘O’ course I am, but th’ other’s more comfortable. Wait till you’ve
growed a bit, Piggy. You aren’t no taller than me now.’
‘I’ve bin in the Army for two years an’ I’m not goin’ to get out of a
chanst o’ seein’ service, an’ don’t you try to make me do so. I’ll come
back, Cris, an’ when I take on as a man I’ll marry you—marry you when
I’m a Lance.’
‘Promise, Piggy?’
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
Sergeants’ 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
biling 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 jint 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, old 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-’ed, 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 was 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 animalculæ 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 countryside. Its duty was to go forward and make
connection with the Scotch and Gurkha 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 Gurkhas, 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 quite don’t 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 Fit would like some rifle-practice at the enemy—all seven
hundred rifles blazing together. That wish showed the mood of the men.
The Gurkhas 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 Gurkhas, 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 Gurkhas as to the head, and
told them not to vilify a British Regiment, and the Gurkhas grinned
cavernously, for the Highlanders were their elder brothers and entitled
to the privileges of kinship. The common soldier who touches a Gurkha 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.
That 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 guerilla 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 Gurkhas 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.