A JUNGLE FORT
I decide on Fort Bower--Felling trees--A big
python--Clearing the jungle--Laying out the
post--Stockades and _Sungars_--The bastions--_Panjis_
and _abattis_--The huts--Jungle materials--Ingenious
craftsmen--The
furniture--Sentry-posts--Alarm-signals--The
_machicoulis_ gallery--Booby-traps--The
water-lifter--The hospital--Chloroforming a
monkey--Jungle dogs--An extraordinary shot--An unlucky
deer--A meeting with a panther--The alarm--Sohanpal
Singh and the tiger--Turning out to the rescue--The
General's arrival--Closed gates--The inspection--The
"Bower" and the "'Ump"--Flares and bombs--The General's
praise--Night firing--A Christmas camp.
The month of November in Buxa brought the end of the Rains and the
beginning of the cold weather. Once more we could descend into the
jungles below, for work or sport, without risking the deadly Terai
fever. Our open-air military training, which had to be laid aside during
the long, weary months of the Monsoon, was resumed.
The warfare which the Assam Brigade would be called upon to wage would
generally be against the savage jungle dwellers along the north-east
borders. Consequently the training of the troops composing it demanded
much practice in forest country; for, in the jungle, wide extensions and
thin lines suitable to troops attacking in the open would be replaced by
close formations, and the bayonet more often used than the bullet.
Timber barriers would be substituted for earthworks, and the axe for the
spade. In a jungle campaign, as the fighting column moved forward,
stockaded posts would be established on the line of communication, in
which convoys of supplies going to the front or of wounded or prisoners
sent back to the rear could halt for the night under the protection of
the permanent garrisons.
When General Bower announced his intention of coming to hold his annual
inspection of our detachment at the end of November, I determined to
build such a stockaded post in the forest below Buxa Duar for him to
see, and as useful instruction for my men. Consequently, three weeks
before his arrival, I moved the double company down into the jungle.
While Captain Balderston and I took up our abode in Forest Lodge, the
sepoys bivouacked a few hundred yards away on a high bluff over a broad
river-bed now almost dry. Here I proposed building our forest fort.
Our first task consisted in clearing away the undergrowth, now denser
than ever after the fires and Rains. With curved _kukris_ and straight
_dahs_ the sepoys fell to work on the thick scrub and tangle of thorny
bushes. Then came the harder labour of felling the trees for the
stockades--and the tools that contractors supply the Government with are
not of the best quality. The forest rang to the stroke of axes and the
shouts of the sepoys who, delighted at the change from their ordinary
routine, vied with each other in bringing the trees crashing to the
ground. As I watched them one day I saw a sudden commotion among a
group. The men scattered, then closed in again; and vicious blows at
the ground, mingled with cries of "_samp!_", told me that they had
disturbed a snake. Then on poles bending under its weight they brought
me the body of a beautifully marked python nearly ten and a half feet
long. Though not poisonous, such a beast would be a formidable
antagonist. With the driving-power of its weight and muscle, its head
could strike with the force of a battering ram; and a man's body,
crushed in its folds, would soon be a shapeless pulp. I kept its skin as
a companion to the king-cobra we had killed in Buxa.
The plan I had decided on for the fort was a square, each side fifty
yards long. For instructional purposes I varied the design of the faces.
That on the river-bank was to be a _sungar_--a loopholed wall, seven
feet high and three feet thick, of large boulders from the _nullah_
below. The east side opposite it was to be a loopholed stockade of
single timbers two feet thick and fourteen feet above the ground. Each
of the other two faces was to be a "double stockade" of shorter trees,
that is, each two timber walls four feet apart, the space between them
being filled with earth. At opposite corners were bastions, or towers,
eighteen feet high, projecting out, and thus each giving a flanking fire
along two faces of the fort. They were arranged for three tiers of fire,
one row of loopholes three feet from the ground for men kneeling, one
four and a half feet for others standing, the third above a gallery
running round inside the top. Below the galleries the bastions were
roofed in and formed barrack-rooms for the guards.
[Illustration: THE WALLED FACE OF FORT BOWER OVER THE RIVER.]
[Illustration: THE STOCKADE AND DITCH AT FORT BOWER.]
In front of the three stockaded sides of the fort a broad, V-shaped
ditch was dug, five feet deep. On the fourth face the bank fell sheer
thirty or forty feet to the river; and built out over the _nullah_ on
tree-trunks laid horizontally, their butts buried in the ground, was a
gallery projecting from the stone wall. It was loopholed for men to
fire, not only on three sides, but also directly beneath them down into
the river-bed. Entrance to it was gained from a small door in the wall.
Close to it, and similarly projecting over the _nullah_, was a device
copied from the savage tribes of the frontier. This was a booby-trap, a
bamboo platform hinged and held up by thick, hawser-like creepers
fastened inside the wall. On it were piled rocks. A couple of blows with
an axe would cut through the supporting creepers; and the platform,
falling, would shower down an avalanche of huge stones on the heads of
enemies gathered close under the sheer bank, and safe from the rifles of
the defenders above. These traps are largely used by the Nagas, Mishmis,
and other wild races along the borders of Assam and Burma. They are
placed over steep and narrow mountain paths and discharged with
disastrous effect on foes toiling up to the assault. During the Abor War
they were frequently tried on General Bower who was too wary to be
caught by them. He always took the precaution of sending parties of
Gurkhas to scale the heights to search for and cut the booby-traps away
before his column passed under them.
As the shallow stream ran close to the bank we erected, behind the wall,
a dipping-pole and bucket to bring up water without danger from hostile
fire to the men fetching it.
Our stockades would have proved very unpleasant obstacles to surmount.
They had a forward rake to increase by the overhang the difficulty of
escalading them. And along their tops was fastened a tangle of cut and
sharp-pointed branches projecting well outwards, so that it was almost
impossible to climb over.
In attacking a stockade the assailants try to get close up to it, fire
in through the loopholes and hack it down with axes. To prevent this,
six-foot _panjis_--sharpened bamboo stakes, their pointed ends hardened
by fire--stuck thickly out from the face of our stockades. On the near
slope of the ditches lines of _panjis_ projected with their points at a
downward angle; while on the far side fences of sharpened bamboos were
planted. At the bottom of the ditches _chevaux de frise_ of long
_panjis_ were fixed.
These _panjis_ inflict ghastly injuries, and are more dangerous than
bayonets. An officer of my acquaintance, when leading an assault on a
stockade held by dacoits in Burma, ran against a _panji_ which
transfixed his thigh. He was eleven months in hospital before the wound
healed; and for many years afterwards he was lame.
For twenty yards beyond the ditches the ground was covered with a
five-feet-high entanglement of felled trees. Their butts were lashed to
stout pegs driven deep into the earth. Their thinner branches were
lopped off, the thicker ones cut and trimmed with sharp points towards
the front. In military parlance this is called an _abattis_.
Anyone endeavouring to rush the defences of our fort would have found it
a difficult feat, even if no bullets were showered on him from the
loopholes. He would first have to force his way through twenty yards of
entanglement, then climb a sharp-pointed fence, pass the _chevaux de
frise_ in the ditch, get by the downward-pointing _panjis_, evade the
six-foot stakes projecting from the face of the stockade, and climb over
the stockade itself through the overhead tangle of branches. And to do
it under a hot fire would be almost impossible. To attack such a post
successfully guns would be necessary--and a well-built double stockade
would withstand light artillery.
For our own use winding paths led through the _abattis_ to drawbridges
before the two gates. These latter were of bamboo, hinged at the top and
opening outwards and upwards, supported when open by high, forked poles.
In each was a small wicket constructed on the same principle and only
wide enough to admit one man at a time. Wickets and gates were stuck
thick with projecting _panjis_.
Trees in the interior of the post were left standing to give shade, as
were others growing in the line of the defences. And in the latter,
forty feet from the ground, were platforms reached by ladders and hidden
by the leafy branches. On them the sentries were stationed; and from
them, during a night attack, men could fire and hurl bombs down on the
assailants who would find it difficult to locate their position. From
these sentry posts stout cords of twisted _udal_ fibre led to kerosene
oil tins hung up in the quarters occupied by officers and section
commanders. In the tins stones were put, so that a pull on the cords
would rattle the tins throughout the post and arouse the defenders
without an approaching enemy being aware that the alarm had been given.
So much for the defences. As such a post would be constructed with a
view to long occupation the question of housing the garrison comfortably
remained. In the interior along each face two huts, each to hold a
section of twenty or twenty-five men, with huts for the native officers,
were built. The roofs were thickly thatched. The back and side walls
were made of two rows of bamboo a foot apart, with rammed earth between
them. The front walls were lightly made of bamboo and hinged at the top
to open outwards and upwards in an emergency, so that the whole section
could come out in line. For ordinary use a small door sufficed. Along
the back wall ran a sloping guard-bed, with a broad shelf underneath, on
which the sepoys' clothing could be laid. Overhead were pegs for their
rifles and accoutrements.
Along the cross-roads through the fort were built the storerooms,
hospital, and native followers' quarters. And on them were also the Mess
and huts for the British officers. These were quite comfortable little
cottages, the walls of split bamboo with the latticed windows and the
doors screened by blinds of cane strips. The floors and walls were
covered with two-inch mats of jungle grass.
The sepoys proved themselves wonderfully ingenious craftsmen and made
excellent furniture for our quarters. Out of the ever-useful bamboo they
constructed beds, chairs, tables, and writing-desks with drawers and
pigeon-holes. And like the fort and everything else in it, the jungle
provided the materials for all this furniture, in which not a nail was
used; for it was held together by lashings of bamboo bark or _udal_
fibre.
All this was not quickly done. The building of the defences and the
huts and the construction of a military bridge across the river took
every day of the three weeks before the General's arrival. Our working
hours were from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. with an hour's interval at noon for
food. But the sepoys revelled in their novel labours and looked on them
as a welcome change from the monotony of drill. So interested were they
that I often found them at work long after the bugle had sounded the
"dismiss" in the evening; and when I told them to knock off, they would
reply: "Oh, Sahib, we would like to finish this to-day."
[Illustration: THE GATE CLOSED, WITH WICKET OPEN AND DRAWBRIDGE LOWERED.]
[Illustration: CAPTAIN BALDERSTON INSIDE THE STOCKADE.]
Our comfortable and airy little hospital was rarely tenanted. Almost the
only patient our medical officer had was a pet monkey which required a
surgical operation. The native sub-assistant surgeon, who took the
proceedings very seriously, was called on to administer the anaesthetic.
Chloroform was poured on a wad of wool in a paper cone which, much to
the patient's annoyance, was pressed firmly against its muzzle. It
scratched and bit for quite a long time before sinking into
unconsciousness. And when, after the surgeon's knife had been swiftly
and dexterously plied, it came back to life again it looked a very sick
monkey indeed. Wrapped up in a towel with only its tiny puckered face
showing, it presented such a woebegone and comical appearance that the
onlookers were moved to unseemly mirth. But the little beast was too ill
to care, though usually it fiercely resented being laughed at.
We were too busy during these weeks to do any shooting. But a curious
bit of _shikar_ fell to my lot one day. While I was superintending the
building of the fort a sepoy who had been gathering stones for the wall
ran up to tell me that he had seen some curious little animals in the
_nullah_. Borrowing an ancient Martini rifle from a native officer, I
ran down to the river-bed and found several wild dogs playing on the
sand a few hundred yards away in front of a small island covered with
thick undergrowth. On seeing me they bolted. I took a hurried shot at
one and missed it, the bullet glancing off a rock behind which the dog
had disappeared. To my horror a low wailing cry issued from the bushes
on the island behind. Alarmed at the thought that I might have wounded
one of my sepoys, I ran to the spot. There to my astonishment I found a
barking deer standing up with half its face blown away. The unlucky
beast had been struck by my chance bullet. Its shrieks were piteous and
almost human, until we put it out of its pain.
Another day a sepoy cutting bamboos was disturbed by a herd of wild
elephants. He had the sense to remain motionless; and the animals passed
without seeing him.
One evening another man met a more dangerous beast. He had gone down at
dusk to bathe in the river just below the fort and came face to face
with a panther drinking. The man was unarmed; but fortunately for him
the brute only growled and trotted away.
One Sunday afternoon we had a serious alarm. No work being done on that
day two of the native officers, taking a few sepoys with them, had gone
out with shot-guns to look for jungle fowl. Splitting up into two
parties they separated and beat through the undergrowth a few hundred
yards away from the fort. Suddenly one of them came upon a tiger which
snarled viciously at them and retreated in a direction which would bring
him upon the other party. With this was Subhedar Sohanpal Singh, the
sturdy old Rajput who had been my companion in the long chase after the
rogue elephant.
A sepoy came running back to the fort with the news. Seizing a rifle, I
turned out a number of men with their arms and ammunition and hurried
off to the rescue. Reaching the spot where the tiger had been seen, we
searched the jungle for it and for Sohanpal Singh's party until dusk,
without result. We shouted the _subhedar's_ name loudly but got no
answer. When night fell we returned to the fort. I was in hopes that the
missing party had passed us in the jungle and got in safely. When I
found that it had not come back I began to be seriously alarmed. But I
reflected that it contained four men and that the tiger could hardly
have killed them all and not left one to bring back the news. The
missing men returned at ten o'clock. They had not actually seen the
tiger but had heard it growling close to them in the thick undergrowth.
As one of the sepoys had his rifle with him, Sohanpal Singh took it and
tried to get a shot at the animal. The beast retreated slowly before
him, growling all the time, but keeping in dense jungle where he could
not see it. In vain the _subhedar_ tried to get ahead and cut it off. He
and his party followed the tiger until night put an end to the
tantalising pursuit. Then, when they tried to retrace their steps, they
lost their way in the darkness and wandered blindly through the jungle
for hours until they struck the river.
On the day of General Bower's arrival I sent two elephants to bring him
and his staff officer with their baggage from Buxa Road Station.
Balderston and I awaited him in the fire line about four hundred yards
from our fort. When our visitors reached us they dismounted and shook
hands with us. After our greetings were over I said to the General:
"You told me last year, sir, to teach my men the art of making
themselves and their officers comfortable in the jungle. You have got to
test the result of my instruction practically now. You must live in a
jungle hut, sleep on a jungle bed, sit at jungle-made tables on
jungle-made chairs."
General Bower laughed. "Is the jungle supplying my food too?" he asked.
"Yes, sir; jungle fowl and venison. Captain Balderston wanted to give
you wild vegetables from the jungle as well. But I tried them myself
once; and as I don't want a bad report of my detachment, I dare not
offer them to you."
I led the way along a road which we had cut through the forest. Where it
emerged on the clearing around our post I stopped and said:
"There is the fort."
Our visitors looked about them in astonishment. For, at a distance of
two hundred yards, the stockades with the living trees in them behind
the tangle of _abattis_ could not be distinguished from the surrounding
jungle. In warfare this would be a great advantage, because it would
come as a surprise on an advancing enemy.
[Illustration: BRINGING HOME THE GENERAL'S DINNER.]
When we reached the _abattis_, we passed down the winding path through
it and stopped at the edge of the ditch. For, in order to give the
General a good idea of the strength of our defences, I had ordered
that the gates should be closed and the drawbridges raised. On a board
above the gateway were painted the words "Fort Bower," the name given by
the sepoys to the post in honour of our inspecting officer. Having
allowed our visitors time to be suitably impressed by the formidable
stockade and the grim-looking _panjis_ in the ditch, I called to the
sentry hidden forty feet above us in a tree:
"Open the gate!"
The invisible doorkeeper pulled a string to inform the guard in the
bastion. Then the heavy drawbridge fell across the ditch, the gate was
raised and held up in position by the supporting forked poles.
"That is very ingenious," said the General as he entered the fort.
The men's huts were first inspected; and then we proceeded to the
officer's quarters on the main street. We showed the General the cosy
little two-roomed cottage he was to occupy, and pointed out the name
painted on it, "The Bower."
"Captain Humphreys' quarters are next door," we told him. "They gave us
more trouble to find a title for. When we thought that the brigade
major, Major Hutchinson, was to accompany you, the name suggested
itself--we'd have called it 'The Hutch.' But when we heard that
Humphreys was coming instead we were puzzled--until the idea occurred to
us to name it 'The 'Ump.'"
The General seemed to appreciate the mild joke more than his staff
officer did. I pulled up the cane blind on the door of "The Bower" and
invited the General to enter and see his jungle abode.
"Here, sir, is your hat-rack," I said, showing a bamboo pole stuck in
the flooring, its top split open into several points held apart by a
cone of wood, thus providing a number of pegs. I drew his attention to
an ingeniously-made writing-table with pigeon-holes and drawers. Then we
passed into the inner room. Here a comfortable bed had been formed by
driving the ends of six forked sticks, arranged in a parallelogram, into
the earth. In the forks four light poles had been laid and fastened,
making the head, foot and sides of the bedstead. Then across from side
to side were tied split bamboos, which formed a bottom as elastic as
steel springs. On it was laid a grass mat, three inches thick, as a
mattress. The best bed ever turned out by Maple's could not have been
more comfortable. Against the walls stood a bamboo dressing-table and a
washstand. On the latter was an enamelled iron basin, the only article I
could not replace from the jungle. But above it hung a length of hollow
bamboo filled with water and pierced near the bottom by a hole now
plugged. I withdrew the plug; and the water poured down into the basin.
The General gazed around admiringly.
"These contrivances are very clever," he said; "and there is no doubt
that now your sepoys know how to make themselves and their officers very
comfortable with the help only of jungle materials. All this is very
ingenious and practical."
After lunch the General inspected the defences and asked to see the
sepoys man them. I led him up the ladder into the _machan_ or platform
occupied by the sentry in a tree over the river-bank. The men were all
shut up in their huts.
"Give the alarm," I said to the sentry.
He gathered in his hand the strings leading from the _machan_ to the
officers' and section-leaders' quarters and pulled them. Throughout the
fort we could faintly hear the stones rattling in the suspended tins.
Instantly the fronts of the huts were raised; and the men of each
section came silently out in line and went straight to the loopholes
they had been posted to.
"That is the best device I have seen yet," said General Bower. "The
whole camp can be simultaneously aroused at once without any noise being
heard by an approaching enemy, who would remain in ignorance of the fact
that the defenders were on the alert. Consequently they would come on
confidently in fancied security until they exposed themselves to a
sudden fire at close range."
Climbing down from the _machan_ he inspected the booby trap. At a
signal, men inside the wall cut the creepers supporting the outer end of
the bamboo platform which fell on its hinges and sent an avalanche of
rocks into the _nullah_ below.
As soon as it was dark we went out on to the gallery projecting over the
river-bed. From it cords led to bombs buried in the sand and piled
around with stones. They were made of bamboos filled with powder and
fitted with a rifle cartridge so arranged that, on pulling the cord, a
rock fell on a nail which struck the cartridge-cap and exploded the
bomb.
We fired these off one after another. The explosions hurled the stones
in all directions with terrific force. Captain Balderston had devised an
arrangement similar to the old Roman catapults for throwing
hand-grenades over a hundred yards. He gave us an exhibition of this. On
the sand of the river-bed bonfires had been piled to be set on fire by
flares ignited by men tripping against cords laid along the ground.
These were now worked; and the flames rose high and lit up the _nullah_
clearly, so that anyone in it was plainly visible from the fort.
Our dinner that night in the thatched bamboo hut dignified by the title
of "Officers' Mess" was quite a festive affair. Our forest fare was much
appreciated by our visitors; for it comprised _sambhur_ soup, roast
jungle fowls and the delicate venison of a barking deer. But the river
was not called upon to supply the liquor for our feast. General Bower
was as full of good stories as ever; and long after the sepoys had
turned in for the night their slumbers must have been disturbed by the
hearty laughter of their Sahibs in the Mess.
The next two days were occupied in doing manoeuvres through the jungle.
At the conclusion of the inspection General Bower ordered me to form up
the detachment and made a little speech to the men. He praised all ranks
for their keenness and efficiency and complimented them on the ingenuity
displayed in the construction of the fort.
"You have made its defences so strong," he said, "that without artillery
it would be almost impossible for an assault on it to be successful. I
am very pleased with what you have done and at hearing from your Major
Sahib how well and how willingly you have worked. I shall give this
detachment a very good report."
The Indians, like other races, love their meed of praise; and at the
General's words the sepoys' faces beamed. Contrary to strict ideas of
discipline Subhedar Sohanpal Singh, standing in front of his company,
turned to his men and cried:
"Three cheers for the General Sahib!"
And as General Bower, having said good-bye to us and mounted his
elephant, disappeared in the jungle on his way to the railway station,
the hearty cheers of the sepoys followed him.
For the remainder of our stay in Buxa Duar Fort Bower served to
accommodate officers and men whenever we went down into the forest for
military training. On one occasion we had some useful practice in
night-firing from it. In the cleared space around it and in the
river-bed targets were placed to represent an attacking army. A hundred
yards from the defences bonfires, to be lit by flares ignited by cords
leading into the fort, were arranged. When darkness fell these were set
alight. The leaping flames showed up the targets, at which the sepoys
fired through the loopholes of stockade and wall with very good results.
At the time I had an American Cavalry officer on a visit to me. This was
his first experience of the Indian Army at work; and he was very much
impressed by it.
At Christmas, Balderston and I invited friends to come to us for a
shooting camp. Fort Bower served us as a residence; and from it we
sallied out every morning into the forest on our elephants. On Christmas
Day we added to our usual fare of jungle fowl and venison a plum pudding
and mince-pies sent out from England, brewed punch, and in the heart of
the jungle, thousands of miles from home, kept the feast in the good old
fashion.