ONE OF THE LITTLE WARS
The campaign which Shere Ali directed on the borders of Chiltistan is now
matter of history, and may be read of, by whoso wills, in the Blue-books
and despatches of the time. Those documents, with their paragraphs and
diaries and bare records of facts, have a dry-as-dust look about them
which their contents very often belie. And the reader will not rise from
the story of this little war without carrying away an impression of wild
fury and reckless valour which will long retain its colours in his mind.
Moreover, there was more than fury to distinguish it. Shere Ali turned
against his enemies the lessons which they had taught him; and a military
skill was displayed which delayed the result and thereby endangered the
position of the British troops. For though at the first the neighbouring
tribes and states, the little village republics which abound in those
parts, waited upon the event as Phillips had foretold, nevertheless as
the days passed, and the event still hung in the balance, they took heart
of grace and gathered behind the troops to destroy their communications
and cut off their supplies.
Dick Linforth wrote three letters to his mother, who was living over
again the suspense and terror which had fallen to her lot a quarter of a
century ago. The first letter was brought to the house under the Sussex
Downs at twilight on an evening of late autumn, and as she recognized the
writing for her son's a sudden weakness overcame her, and her hand so
shook that she could hardly tear off the envelope.
"I am unhurt," he wrote at the beginning of the letter, and tears of
gratitude ran down her cheeks as she read the words. "Shere Ali," he
continued, "occupied a traditional position of defence in a narrow
valley. The Kohara river ran between steep cliffs through the bed of the
valley, and, as usual, above the cliffs on each side there were
cultivated maidans or plateaus. Over the right-hand maidan, the
road--_our_ road--ran to a fortified village. Behind the village, a deep
gorge, or nullah, as we call them in these parts, descending from a side
glacier high up at the back of the hills on our right, cut clean across
the valley, like a great gash. The sides of the nullah were
extraordinarily precipitous, and on the edge furthest from us stone
sangars were already built as a second line of defence. Shere Ali
occupied the village in front of the nullah, and we encamped six miles
down the valley, meaning to attack in the morning. But the Chiltis
abandoned their traditional method of fighting behind walls and standing
on the defence. A shot rang out on the outskirts of our camp at three
o'clock in the morning, and in a moment they were upon us. It was
reckoned that there were fifteen thousand of them engaged from first to
last in this battle, whereas we were under two thousand combatants. We
had seven hundred of the Imperial Service troops, four companies of
Gurkhas, three hundred men of the Punjab Infantry, three companies of the
Oxfordshires, besides cavalry, mountain batteries and Irregulars. The
attack was unexpected. We bestrode the road, but Shere Ali brought his
men in by an old disused Buddhist road, running over the hills on our
right hand, and in the darkness he forced his way through our lines into
a little village in the heart of our position. He seized the bazaar and
held it all that day, a few houses built of stone and with stones upon
the roof which made them proof against our shells. Meanwhile the slopes
on both sides of the valley were thronged with Chiltis. They were armed
with jezails and good rifles stolen from our troops, and they had some
old cannon--sher bachas as they are called. Altogether they caused us
great loss, and towards evening things began to look critical. They had
fortified and barricaded the bazaar, and kept up a constant fire from it.
At last a sapper named Manders, with half a dozen Gurkhas behind him, ran
across the open space, and while the Gurkhas shot through the loop holes
and kept the fire down, Manders fixed his gun cotton at the bottom of the
door and lighted the fuse. He was shot twice, once in the leg, once in
the shoulder, but he managed to crawl along the wall of the houses out of
reach of the explosion, and the door was blown in. We drove them out of
that house and finally cleared the bazaar after some desperate fighting.
Shere Ali was in the thick of it. He was dressed from head to foot in
green, and was a conspicuous mark. But he escaped unhurt. The enemy drew
off for the night, and we lay down as we were, dog-tired and with no
fires to cook any food. They came on again in the morning, clouds of
them, but we held them back with the gatlings and the maxims, and towards
evening they again retired. To-day nothing has happened except the
arrival of an envoy with an arrogant letter from Shere Ali, asking why we
are straying inside the borders of his country 'like camels without
nose-rings.' We shall show him why to-morrow. For to-morrow we attack the
fort on the maidan. Good-night, mother. I am very tired." And the last
sentence took away from Sybil Linforth all the comfort the letter had
brought her. Dick had begun very well. He could have chosen no better
words to meet her eyes at the commencement than those three, "I am
unhurt." But he could have chosen no worse with which to end it. For they
had ended the last letter which her husband had written to her, and her
mind flew back to that day, and was filled with fore-bodings.
But by the next mail came another letter in his hand, describing how the
fort had been carried at the point of the bayonet, and Shere Ali driven
back behind the nullah. This, however, was the strongest position of all,
and the most difficult to force. The road which wound down behind the
fort into the bed of the nullah and zigzagged up again on the far side
had been broken away, the cliffs were unscaleable, and the stone sangars
on the brow proof against shell and bullet. Shere Ali's force was
disposed behind these stone breastworks right across the valley on both
sides of the river. For three weeks the British force sat in front of
this position, now trying to force it by the river-bed, now under cover
of night trying to repair the broken road. But the Chiltis kept good
watch, and at the least sound of a pick in the gulf below avalanches of
rocks and stones would be hurled down the cliff-sides. Moreover, wherever
the cliffs seemed likely to afford a means of ascent Shere Ali had
directed the water-channels, and since the nights were frosty these
points were draped with ice as smooth as glass. Finally, however, Mrs.
Linforth received a third letter which set her heart beating with pride,
and for the moment turned all her fears to joy.
"The war is over," it began. "The position was turned this morning. The
Chiltis are in full flight towards Kohara with the cavalry upon their
heels. They are throwing away their arms as they run, so that they may
be thought not to have taken part in the fight. We follow to-morrow. It
is not yet known whether Shere Ali is alive or dead and, mother, it was
I--yes, I your son, who found out the road by which the position could
be turned. I had crept up the nullah time after time towards the glacier
at its head, thinking that if ever the position was to be taken it must
be turned at that end. At last I thought that I had made out a way up
the cliffs. There were some gullies and a ledge and then some rocks
which seemed practicable, and which would lead one out on the brow of
the cliff just between the two last sangars on the enemy's left. I
didn't write a word about it to you before. I was so afraid I might be
wrong. I got leave and used to creep up the nullah in the darkness to
the tongue of the glacier with a little telescope and lie hidden all day
behind a boulder working out the way, until darkness came again and
allowed me to get back to camp. At last I felt sure, and I suggested the
plan to Ralston the Political Officer, who carried it to the
General-in-Command. The General himself came out with me, and I pointed
out to him that the cliffs were so steep just beneath the sangars that
we might take the men who garrisoned them by surprise, and that in any
case they could not fire upon us, while sharpshooters from the cliffs on
our side of the nullah could hinder the enemy from leaving their sangars
and rolling down stones. I was given permission to try and a hundred
Gurkhas to try with. We left camp that night at half-past seven, and
crept up the nullah with our blankets to the foot of the climb, and
there we waited till the morning."
The years of training to which Linforth had bent himself with a definite
aim began, in a word, to produce their results. In the early morning he
led the way up the steep face of cliffs, and the Gurkhas followed. One of
the sharpshooters lying ready on the British side of the nullah said that
they looked for all the world like a black train of ants. There were
thirteen hundred feet of rock to be scaled, and for nine hundred of it
they climbed undetected. Then from a sangar lower down the line where the
cliffs of the nullah curved outwards they were seen and the alarm was
given. But for awhile the defenders of the threatened position did not
understand the danger, and when they did a hail of bullets kept them in
their shelters. Linforth followed by his Gurkhas was seen to reach the
top of the cliffs and charge the sangars from the rear. The defenders
were driven out and bayoneted, the sangars seized, and the Chilti force
enfolded while reinforcements clambered in support. "In three hours the
position, which for eighteen days had resisted every attack and held the
British force immobile, was in our hands. The way is clear in front of
us. Manders is recommended for the Victoria Cross. I believe that I am
for the D.S.O. And above all the Road goes on!"
Thus characteristically the letter was concluded. Linforth wrote it with
a flush of pride and a great joy. He had no doubt now that he would be
appointed to the Road. Congratulations were showered upon him. Down upon
the plains, Violet would hear of his achievement and perhaps claim
proudly and joyfully some share in it herself. His heart leaped at the
thought. The world was going very well for Dick Linforth that night. But
that is only one side of the picture. Linforth had no thoughts to spare
upon Shere Ali. If he had had a thought, it would not have been one of
pity. Yet that unhappy Prince, with despair and humiliation gnawing at
his heart, broken now beyond all hope, stricken in his fortune as sorely
as in his love, was fleeing with a few devoted followers through the
darkness. He passed through Kohara at daybreak of the second morning
after the battle had been lost, and stopping only to change horses,
galloped off to the north.
Two hours later Captain Phillips mounted on to the roof of his house and
saw that the guards were no longer at their posts.