THE ADVANCE OF THE MISSION OPPOSED
The intention of the Tibetans at the Hot Springs has not been made
clear. They say that their orders were to oppose our advance, but to
avoid a battle, just as our orders were to take away their arms, if
possible, without firing a shot. The muddle that ensued lends itself to
several interpretations, and the Tibetans ascribe their loss to British
treachery. They say that we ordered them to destroy the fuses of their
matchlocks, and then fired on them. This story was taken to Lhasa, with
the result that the new levies from the capital were not deterred by the
terrible punishment inflicted on their comrades. Orders were given to
oppose us on the road to Gyantse, and an armed force, which included
many of the fugitives from Guru, gathered about Kangma.
The peace delegates always averred that we fired the first shot at Guru.
But even if we give the Tibetans the benefit of the doubt, and admit
that the action grew out of the natural excitement of two forces
struggling for arms, both of whom were originally anxious to avoid a
conflict, there is still no doubt that the responsibility of continuing
the hostilities lies with the Tibetans.
On the morning of April 7 ten scouts of the 2nd Mounted Infantry, under
Captain Peterson, found the Tibetans occupying the village of Samando,
seventeen miles beyond Kalatso. As our men had orders not to fire or
provoke an attack, they sent a messenger up to the walls to ask one of
the Tibetans to come out and parley. They said they would send for a
man, and invited us to come nearer. When we had ridden up to within a
hundred yards of the village, they opened a heavy fire on us with their
matchlocks. Our scouts spread out, rode back a few hundred yards, and
took cover behind stones. Not a man or pony was hit. Before retiring,
the mounted infantry fired a few volleys at the Tibetans who were lining
the roofs of two large houses and a wall that connected them, their
heads only appearing above the low turf parapets. Twice the Tibetans
sent off a mounted man for reinforcements, but our shooting was so good
that each time the horse returned riderless. The next morning we found
the village unoccupied, and discovered six dead left on the roofs, most
of whom were wounded about the chest. Our bullets had penetrated the two
feet of turf and killed the man behind. Putting aside the question of
Guru, the Samando affair was the first overt act of hostility directed
against the mission.
After Samando there was no longer any doubt that the Tibetans intended
to oppose our advance. On the 8th the mounted infantry discovered a wall
built across the valley and up the hills just this side of Kangma, which
they reported as occupied by about 1,000 men. As it was too late to
attack that night, we formed camp. The next morning we found the wall
evacuated, and the villagers reported that the Tibetans had retired to
the gorge below. This habit of building formidable barriers across a
valley, stretching from crest to crest of the flanking hills, is a
well-known trait of Tibetan warfare. The wall is often built in the
night and abandoned the next morning. One would imagine that, after
toiling all night to make a strong position, the Tibetans would hold
their wall if they intended to make a stand anywhere. But they do not
grudge the labour. Wall-building is an instinct with them. When a
Tibetan sees two stones by the roadside, he cannot resist placing one on
the top of the other. So wherever one goes the whole countryside is
studded with these monuments of wasted labour, erected to propitiate the
genii of the place, or from mere force of habit to while away an idle
hour. During the campaign of 1888 it was this practice of strengthening
and abandoning positions more than anything else which gained the
Tibetans the reputation of cowardice, which they have since shown to be
totally undeserved.
On April 8, owing to the delay in reconnoitring the wall, we made only
about eight miles, and camped. The next morning we had marched about
two miles, when we found the high ridge on the left flank occupied by
the enemy, and the mounted infantry reported them in the gorge beyond.
Two companies of the 8th Gurkhas under Major Row were sent up to the
hill on the left to turn the enemy's right flank, and the mountain
battery (No. 7) came into action on the right at over 3,000 yards. The
enemy kept up a continuous but ineffectual fire from the ridge, none of
their jingal bullets falling anywhere near us. The Gurkhas had a very
difficult climb. The hill was quite 2,000 feet above the valley; the
lower and a good deal of the other slopes were of coarse sand mixed with
shale, and the rest nothing but slippery rock. The summit of the hill
was approached by a number of step-like shale terraces covered with
snow. When only a short way up, a snowstorm came on and obscured the
Gurkhas from view. The cold was intense, and the troops in the valley
began to collect the sparse brushwood, and made fires to keep themselves
warm.
On account of the nature of the hillside and the high altitude, the
progress of the Gurkhas was very slow, and it took them nearly three
hours to reach the ridge held by the enemy. When about two-thirds of the
way up, they came under fire from the ridge, but all the shots went
high. The jingals carried well over them at about 1,200 yards. The enemy
also sent a detachment to meet them on the top, but these did not fire
long, and retired as the Gurkhas advanced. When the 8th reached the
summit, the Tibetans were in full flight down the opposite slope, which
was also snow-covered. Thirty were shot down in the rout, and fifty-four
who were hiding in the caves were made prisoners.
In the meanwhile the battery had been making very good practice at 3,000
yards. Seven men were found dead on the summit, and four wounded,
evidently by their fire.
But to return to the main action in the gorge. The Tibetans held a very
strong position among some loose boulders on the right, two miles beyond
the gully which the Gurkhas had ascended to make their flank attack. The
rocks extended from the bluff cliff to the path which skirted the
stream. No one could ask for better cover; it was most difficult to
distinguish the drab-coated Tibetans who lay concealed there. To attack
this strong position General Macdonald sent Captain Bethune with one
company of the 32nd Pioneers, placing Lieutenant Cook with his Maxim on
a mound at 500 yards to cover Bethune's advance. Bethune led a frontal
attack. The Tibetans fired wildly until the Sikhs were within eighty
yards, and then fled up the valley. Not a single man of the 32nd was hit
during the attack, though one sepoy was wounded in the pursuit by a
bullet in the hand from a man who lay concealed behind a rock within a
few yards of him. While the 32nd were dislodging the Tibetans from the
path and the rocks above it, the mounted infantry galloped through them
to reconnoitre ahead and cut off the fugitives in the valley. They also
came through the enemy's fire at very close quarters without a casualty.
On emerging from the gorge the mounted infantry discovered that the
ridge the Tibetans had held was shaped like the letter S, so that by
doubling back along an almost parallel valley they were able to
intercept the enemy whom the Gurkhas had driven down the cliffs. The
unfortunate Tibetans were now hemmed in between two fires, and hardly a
man of them escaped.
The Tibetan casualties, as returned at the time, were much exaggerated.
The killed amounted to 100, and, on the principle that the proportion of
wounded must be at least two to one, it was estimated that their losses
were 300. But, as a matter of fact, the wounded could not have numbered
more than two dozen.
The prisoners taken by the Gurkhas on the top of the ridge turned out to
be impressed peasants, who had been compelled to fight us by the Lamas.
They were not soldiers by inclination or instinct, and I believe their
greatest fear was that they might be released and driven on to fight us
again.
The action at the Red Idol Gorge may be regarded as the end of the first
phase of the Tibetan opposition. We reached Gyantse on April 11, and the
fort was surrendered without resistance. Nothing had occurred on the
march up to disturb our estimate of the enemy. Since the campaign of
1888 no one had given the Tibetans any credit for martial instincts, and
until the Karo la action and the attack on Gyantse they certainly
displayed none. It would be hard to exaggerate the strategical
difficulties of the country through which we had to pass. The progress
of the mission and its escort under similar conditions would have been
impossible on the North-West frontier or in any country inhabited by a
people with the rudiments of sense or spirit. The difficulties of
transport were so great that the escort had to be cut down to the finest
possible figure. There were barely enough men for pickets, and many of
the ordinary precautions of field manoeuvres were out of the question.
But the Tibetan failed to realize his opportunities. He avoided the
narrow forest-clad ravines of Sikkim and Chumbi, and made his first
stand on the open plateau at Guru. Fortunately for us, he never learnt
what transport means to a civilized army. A bag of barley-meal, some
weighty degchies, and a massive copper teapot slung over the saddle are
all he needs; evening may produce a sheep or a yak. His movements are
not hampered by supplies. If the importance of the transport question
had ever entered his head, he would have avoided the Tuna camp, with its
Maxims and mounted infantry, and made a dash upon the line of
communications. A band of hardy mountaineers in their own country might
very easily surprise and annihilate an ill-guarded convoy in a narrow
valley thickly forested and flanked by steep hills. To furtively cut an
artery in your enemy's arm and let out the blood is just as effective as
to knock him on the head from in front. But in this first phase of the
operations the Tibetans showed no strategy; they were badly led, badly
armed, and apparently devoid of all soldier-like qualities. Only on one
or two occasions they displayed a desperate and fatal courage, and this
new aspect of their character was the first indication that we might
have to revise the views we had formed sixteen years ago of an enemy who
has seemed to us since a unique exception to the rule that a hardy
mountain people are never deficient in courage and the instinct of
self-defence.
The most extraordinary aspect of the fighting up to our arrival at
Gyantse was that we had only one casualty from a gunshot wound--the Sikh
who was shot in the hand at the Dzama Tang affair by a Tibetan whose
jezail was almost touching him. Yet at the Hot Springs the Tibetans
fired off their matchlocks and rifles into the thick of us, and at Guru
an hour afterwards the Gurkhas walked right up to a house held by the
enemy, under heavy fire, and took it without a casualty. The mounted
infantry were exposed to a volley at Samando at 100 yards, and again in
the Red Idol Gorge they rode through the enemy's fire at an even
shorter range. In the same action the 32nd made a frontal attack on a
strong position which was held until they were within eighty yards, and
not a man was hit. No wonder we had a contempt for the Tibetan arms.
Their matchlocks, weapons of the rudest description, must have been as
dangerous to their own marksmen as to the enemy; their artillery fire,
to judge by our one experience of it at Dzama Tang, was harmless and
erratic; and their modern Lhasa-made rifles had not left a mark on our
men. The Tibetans' only chance seemed to be a rush at close quarters,
but they had not proved themselves competent swordsmen. My own
individual case was sufficient to show that they were bunglers. Besides
the twelve wounds I received at the Hot Springs, I found seven
sword-cuts on my poshteen, none of which were driven home. During the
whole campaign we had only one death from sword-wounds.
Arrived at Gyantse, we settled down with some sense of security. A
bazaar was held outside the camp. The people seemed friendly, and
brought in large quantities of supplies. Colonel Younghusband, in a
despatch to the Foreign Office, reported that with the surrender of
Gyantse Fort on April 12 resistance in that part of Tibet was ended. A
letter was received from the Amban stating that he would certainly reach
Gyantse within the next three weeks, and that competent and trustworthy
Tibetan representatives would accompany him. The Lhasa officials, it
was said, were in a state of panic, and had begged the Amban to visit
the British camp and effect a settlement.
On April 20 General Macdonald's staff, with the 10-pounder guns, three
companies of the 23rd Pioneers, and one and a half companies of the 8th
Gurkhas, returned to Chumbi to relieve the strain on the transport and
strengthen the line of communications. Gyantse Jong was evacuated, and
we occupied a position in a group of houses, as we thought, well out of
range of fire from the fort.
Everything was quiet until the end of April, when we heard that the
Tibetans were occupying a wall in some strength near the Karo la,
forty-two miles from Gyantse, on the road to Lhasa. Colonel Brander, of
the 32nd Pioneers, who was left in command at Gyantse, sent a small
party of mounted infantry and pioneers to reconnoitre the position. They
discovered 2,000 of the enemy behind a strong loopholed wall stretching
across the valley, a distance of nearly 600 yards. As the party explored
the ravine they had a narrow escape from a booby-trap, a formidable
device of Tibetan warfare, which was only employed against our troops on
this occasion. An artificial avalanche of rocks and stones is so
cunningly contrived that the removal of one stone sends the whole engine
of destruction thundering down the hillside. Luckily, the Tibetans did
not wait for our main body, but loosed the machine on an advance guard
of mounted infantry, who were in extended order and able to take shelter
behind rocks.
On the return of the reconnaissance Colonel Brander decided to attack,
as he considered the gathering threatened the safety of the mission. The
Karo Pass is an important strategical position, lying as it does at the
junction of the two roads to India, one of which leads to Kangma, the
other to Gyantse. A strong force holding the pass might at any moment
pour troops down the valley to Kangma, cut us off in the rear, and
destroy our line of communications. When Colonel Brander led his small
force to take the pass, it was not with the object of clearing the road
to Lhasa. The measure was purely defensive: the action was undertaken to
keep the road open for convoys and reinforcements, and to protect
isolated posts on the line. The force with the mission was still an
'escort,' and so far its operations had been confined to dispersing the
armed levies that blocked the road.
On May 3 Colonel Brander left Gyantse with his column of 400 rifles,
comprising three companies of the 32nd Pioneers, under Captains Bethune
and Cullen and Lieutenant Hodgson; one company of the 8th, under Major
Row and Lieutenant Coleridge, with two 7-pounder guns; the Maxim
detachment of the Norfolks, under Lieutenant Hadow; and forty-five of
the 1st Mounted Infantry, under Captain Ottley. On the first day the
column marched eighteen miles, and halted at Gobshi. On the second day
they reached Ralung, eleven miles further, and on the third marched up
the pass and encamped on an open spot about two miles from where the
Tibetans had built their wall. A reconnaissance that afternoon estimated
the enemy at 2,000, and they were holding the strongest position on the
road to Lhasa. They had built a wall the whole length of a narrow spur
and up the hill on the other side of the stream, and in addition held
detached sangars high up the steep hills, and well thrown forward. Their
flanks rested on very high and nearly precipitous rocks. It was only
possible to climb the ridge on our right from a mile behind, and on the
left from nearly three-quarters of a mile. Colonel Brander at first
considered the practicability of delaying the attack on the main wall
until the Gurkhas had completed their flanking movements, cleared the
Tibetans out of the sangars that enfiladed our advance in the valley,
and reached a position on the hills beyond the wall, whence they could
fire into the enemy's rear. But the cliffs were so sheer that the ascent
was deemed impracticable, and the next morning it was decided to make a
frontal attack without waiting for the Gurkhas to turn the flank. No one
for a moment thought it could be done.
The troops marched out of camp at ten o'clock. One company of the 32nd
Pioneers, under Captain Cullen, was detailed to attack on the right,
and a second company, under Captain Bethune, to follow the river-bed,
where they were under cover of the high bank until within 400 yards of
the wall, and then rush the centre of the position. The 1st Mounted
Infantry, under Captain Ottley, were to follow this company along the
valley. The guns, Maxims, and one company of the 32nd in reserve,
occupied a small plateau in the centre. Half a company of the 8th
Gurkhas were left behind to guard the camp. A second half-company, under
Major Row, were sent along the hillside on the left to attack the
enemy's extreme right sangar, but their progress over the shifting shale
slopes and jagged rocks was so slow that the front attack did not wait
for them.
The fire from the wall was very heavy, and the advance of Cullen's and
Bethune's companies was checked. Bethune sent half a company back, and
signalled to the mounted infantry to retire. Then, compelled by some
fatal impulse, he changed his mind, and with half a company left the
cover of the river-bed and rushed out into the open within forty yards
of the main wall, exposed to a withering fire from three sides. His
half-company held back, and Bethune fell shot through the head with only
four men by his side--a bugler, a store-office babu, and two devoted
Sikhs. What the clerk was doing there no one knows, but evidently the
soldier in the man had smouldered in suppression among the office files
and triumphed splendidly. It was a gallant reckless charge against
uncounted odds. Poor Bethune had learnt to despise the Tibetans' fire,
and his contempt was not unnatural. On the march to Gyantse the enemy
might have been firing blank cartridges for all the effect they had left
on our men. At Dzama Tang Bethune had made a frontal attack on a strong
position, and carried it without losing a man. Against a similar rabble
it might have been possible to rush the wall with his handful of Sikhs,
but these new Kham levies who held the Karo la were a very different
type of soldier.
The frontal attack was a terrible mistake, as was shown four hours
afterwards, when the enemy were driven from their position without
further loss to ourselves by a flanking movement on the right.
At twelve o'clock Major Row, after a laborious climb, reached a point on
a hillside level with the sangars, which were strongly held on a narrow
ledge 200 yards in front of him. Here he sent up a section of his men
under cover of projecting rocks to get above the sangars and fire down
into them. In the meanwhile some of the enemy scrambled on to the rocks
above, and began throwing down boulders at the Gurkhas, but these either
broke up or fell harmless on the shale slopes above. After waiting an
hour, Major Row went back himself and found his section checked half-way
by the stone-throwing and shots from above; they had tried another way,
but found it impracticable.
Keeping a few men back to fire on any stone-throwers who showed
themselves, Row dribbled his men across the difficult place, and in half
an hour reached the rocky ledge above the sangars and looked right down
on the enemy. At the first few shots from the Gurkhas they began to
bolt, and, coming into the fire of the men below, who now rushed
forward, nearly every man--forty in all--was killed. One or two who
escaped the fire found their flight cut off by a precipice, and in an
abandonment of terror hurled themselves down on the rocks below. After
clearing the sangar, the Gurkhas had only to surmount the natural
difficulties of the rocky and steep hill; for though the enemy fired on
them from the wall, their shooting was most erratic. When at last they
reached a small spur that overlooked the Tibetan main position, they
found, to their disgust, that each man was protected from their fire by
a high stone traverse, on the right-hand of which he lay secure, and
fired through loopholes barely a foot from the ground.
The Gurkhas had accomplished a most difficult mountaineering feat under
a heavy fire; they had turned the enemy out of their sangars, and after
four hours' climbing they had scaled the heights everyone thought
inaccessible. But their further progress was barred by a sheer cliff;
they had reached a cul-de-sac. Looking up from the valley, it appeared
that the spot where they stood commanded the enemy's position, but we
had not reckoned on the traverses. This amazing advance in the enemy's
defensive tactics had rendered their position unassailable from the
left, and made the Gurkhas' flanking movement a splendid failure.
It was now two o'clock, and, except for the capture of the enemy's right
sangars, we had done nothing to weaken their opposition. The frontal and
flanking attacks had failed. Bethune was killed, and seventeen men. Our
guns had made no impression on their wall. Looking down from the spur
which overlooked the Tibetan camp and the valley beyond, the Gurkhas
could see a large reinforcement of at least 500 men coming up to join
the enemy. The situation was critical. In four hours we had done
nothing, and we knew that if we could not take the place by dusk we
would have to abandon the attack or attempt to rush the camp at night.
That would have been a desperate undertaking--400 men against 3,000, a
rush at close quarters with the bayonet, in which the superiority of our
modern rifles would be greatly discounted.
Matters were at this crisis, when we saw the Tibetans running out of
their extreme left sangars. At twelve o'clock, when the front attack had
failed and the left attack was apparently making no progress, fifteen
men of the 32nd who were held in reserve were sent up the hill on the
right. They had reached a point above the enemy's left forward sangar,
and were firing into it with great effect. Twice the Tibetans rushed
out, and, coming under a heavy Maxim fire, bolted back again. The third
time they fled in a mass, and the Maxims mowed down about thirty. The
capture of the sangars was a signal for a general stampede. From the
position they had won the Sikhs could enfilade the main wall itself. The
Tibetans only waited a few shots; then they turned and fled in three
huge bodies down the valley. Thus the fifteen Sikhs on the right saved
the situation. The tension had been great. In no other action during the
campaign, if we except Palla, did the success of our arms stand so long
in doubt. Had we failed to take the wall by daylight, Colonel Brander's
column would have been in a most precarious position. We could not
afford to retire, and a night attack could only have been pushed home
with heavy loss.
Directly the flight began, the 1st Mounted Infantry--forty-two men,
under Captain Ottley--rode up to the wall. They were ten minutes making
a breach. Then they poured into the valley and harassed the flying
masses, riding on their flanks and pursuing them for ten miles to within
sight of the Yamdok Tso. It showed extraordinary courage on the part of
this little band of Masbis and Gurkhas that they did not hesitate to
hurl themselves on the flanks of this enormous body of men, like
terriers on the heels of a flock of cattle, though they had had
experience of their stubborn resistance the whole day long, and rode
through the bodies of their fallen comrades. Not a man drew rein. The
Tibetans were caught in a trap. The hills that sloped down to the valley
afforded them little cover. Their fate was only a question of time and
ammunition. The mounted infantry returned at night with only three
casualties, having killed over 300 men.
The sortie to the Karo la was one of the most brilliant episodes of the
campaign. We risked more then than on any other occasion. But the safety
of the mission and many isolated posts on the line was imperilled by
this large force at the cross-roads, which might have increased until it
had doubled or trebled if we had not gone out to disperse it. A weak
commander might have faltered and weighed the odds, but Colonel Brander
saw that it was a moment to strike, and struck home. His action was
criticised at the time as too adventurous. But the sortie is one of the
many instances that our interests are best cared for by men who are
beyond the telegraph-poles, and can act on their own initiative without
reference to Government offices in Simla.
As the column advanced to the Karo la, a message was received that the
mission camp at Gyantse had been attacked in the early morning of the
5th, and that Major Murray's men--150 odd rifles--had not only beaten
the enemy off, but had made three sorties from different points and
killed 200.
With the action at the Karo la and the attack on the mission at Gyantse
began the second phase of the operations, during which we were
practically besieged in our own camp, and for nine weeks compelled to
act on the defensive. The courage of the Tibetans was now proved beyond
a doubt. The new levies from Kham and Shigatze were composed of very
different men from those we herded like sheep at Guru. They were also
better armed than our previous assailants, and many of them knew how to
shoot. At the same time they were better led. The primitive ideas of
strategy hitherto displayed by the Tibetans gave place to more advanced
tactics. The usual story got wind that the Tibetans were being led by
trained Russian Buriats. But there was no truth in it. The altered
conditions of the campaign, as we may call it, after it became necessary
to begin active operations, were due to the force of circumstances--the
arrival of stouter levies from the east, the great numerical superiority
of the enemy, and their strongly fortified positions.
The operations at Gyantse are fully dealt with in another chapter, and I
will conclude this account of the opposition to our advance with a
description of the attack on the Kangma post, the only attempt on the
part of the enemy to cut off our line of communications. Its complete
failure seems to have deterred the Tibetans from subsequent ventures of
the kind.
From Ralung, ten miles this side of the Karo la, two roads branch off to
India. The road leading to Kangma is the shortest route; the other road
makes a détour of thirty miles to include Gyantse. Ralung lies at the
apex of the triangle, as shown in this rough diagram. Gyantse and Kangma
form the two base angles.
[Illustration]
If it had been possible, a strong post would have been left at the Karo
la after the action of May 6. But our small force was barely sufficient
to garrison Gyantse, and we had to leave the alternative approach to
Kangma unguarded. An attack was expected there; the post was strongly
fortified, and garrisoned by two companies of the 23rd Pioneers, under
Captain Pearson.
The attack, which was made on June 7, was unexpectedly dramatic. We have
learnt that the Tibetan has courage, but in other respects he is still
an unknown quantity. In motive and action he is as mysterious and
unaccountable as his paradoxical associations would lead us to imagine.
In dealing with the Tibetans one must expect the unexpected. They will
try to achieve the impossible, and shut their eyes to the obvious. They
have a genius for doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. Their élan,
their dogged courage, their undoubted heroism, their occasional
acuteness, their more general imbecile folly and vacillation and
inability to grasp a situation, make it impossible to say what they will
do in any given circumstances. A few dozen men will hurl themselves
against hopeless odds, and die to a man fighting desperately; a handful
of impressed peasants will devote themselves to death in the defence of
a village, like the old Roman patriots. At other times they will forsake
a strongly sangared position at the first shot, and thousands will prowl
round a camp at night, shouting grotesquely, but too timid to make a
determined attack on a vastly outnumbered enemy.
The uncertainty of the enemy may be accounted for to some extent by the
fact that we are not often opposed by the same levies, which would imply
that theirs is greatly the courage of ignorance. Yet in the face of the
fighting at Palla, Naini, and Gyantse Jong, this is evidently no fair
estimate of the Tibetan spirit. The men who stood in the breach at
Gyantse in that hell of shrapnel and Maxim and rifle fire, and dropped
down stones on our Gurkhas as they climbed the wall, met death
knowingly, and were unterrified by the resources of modern science in
war, the magic, the demons, the unseen, unimagined messengers of death.
But the men who attacked the Kangma post, what parallel in history have
we for these? They came by night many miles over steep mountain cliffs
and rocky ravines, perhaps silently, with determined purpose, weighing
the odds; or, as I like to think, boastfully, with song and jest,
saying, 'We will steal in upon these English at dawn before they wake,
and slay them in their beds. Then we will hold the fort, and kill all
who come near.'
They came in the gray before dawn, and hid in a gully beside our camp.
At five the reveillé sounded and the sentry left the bastions. Then they
sprang up and rushed, sword in hand, their rifles slung behind their
backs, to the wall. The whole attack was directed on the south-east
front, an unscalable wall of solid masonry, with bastions at each corner
four feet thick and ten feet high. They directed their attack on the
bastions, the only point on that side they could scramble over. They
knew nothing of the fort and its tracing. Perhaps they had expected to
find us encamped in tents on the open ground. But from the shallow
nullah where they lay concealed, not 200 yards distant, and watched our
sentry, they could survey the uncompromising front which they had set
themselves to attack with the naked sword. They had no artillery or
guncotton or materials for a siege, but they hoped to scale the wall and
annihilate the garrison that held it. They had come from Lhasa to take
Kangma, and they were not going to turn back. They came on undismayed,
like men flushed with victory. The sepoys said they must be drunk or
drugged. They rushed to the bottom of the wall, tore out stones, and
flung them up at our sepoys; they leapt up to seize the muzzles of our
rifles, and scrambled to gain a foothold and lift themselves on to the
parapet; they fell bullet-pierced, and some turned savagely on the wall
again. It was only a question of time, of minutes, and the cool
mechanical fire of the 23rd Pioneers would have dropped every man. One
hundred and six bodies were left under the wall, and sixty more were
killed in the pursuit. Never was there such a hopeless, helpless
struggle, such desperate and ineffectual gallantry.
Almost before it was light the yak corps with their small escort of
thirty rifles of the 2nd Gurkhas were starting on the road to Kalatso.
They had passed the hiding-place of the Tibetans without noticing the
500 men in rusty-coloured cloaks breathing quietly among the brown
stones. Then the Tibetans made their charge, just as the transport had
passed, and a party of them made for the yaks. Two Tibetan drivers in
our service stood directly in their path. 'Who are you?' cried one of
the enemy. 'Only yak-drivers,' was the frightened answer. 'Then, take
that,' the Tibetan said, slashing at his arm with no intent to kill. The
Gurkha escort took up a position behind a sangar and opened fire--all
save one man, who stood by his yak and refused to come under cover,
despite the shouts and warnings of his comrades. He killed several, but
fell himself, hacked to pieces with swords. The Tibetans were driven
off, and joined the rout from the fort. The whole affair lasted less
than ten minutes.
Our casualties were: the isolated Gurkha killed, two men in the fort
wounded by stones, and three of the 2nd Gurkhas severely wounded--two by
sword-cuts, one by a bullet in the neck.
But what was the flame that smouldered in these men and lighted them to
action? They might have been Paladins or Crusaders. But the Buddhists
are not fanatics. They do not stake eternity on a single existence. They
have no Mahdis or Juggernaut cars. The Tibetans, we are told, are not
patriots. Politicians say that they want us in their country, that they
are priest-ridden, and hate and fear their Lamas. What, then, drove them
on? It was certainly not fear. No people on earth have shown a greater
contempt for death. Their Lamas were with them until the final assault.
Twenty shaven polls were found hiding in the nullah down which the
Tibetans had crept in the dark, and were immediately despatched. What
promises and cajoleries and threats the holy men used no one will ever
know. But whatever the alternative, their simple followers preferred
death.
The second phase of the operations, in which we had to act on the
defensive in Gyantse, and the beginning of the third phase, which saw
the arrival of reinforcements and the collapse of the Tibetan
opposition, are described by an eye-witness in the next two chapters.
During the whole of these operations I was invalided in Darjeeling,
owing to a second operation which had to be performed on my amputation
wound.