In the Army List they still stand as “The Fore and Fit Princess
Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen-Anspach's Merther-Tydfilshire Own Royal Loyal
Light Infantry, Regimental District 329A,” but the Army through all its
barracks and canteens knows them now as the “Fore and Aft.” They may
in time do something that shall make their new title honourable, but at
present they are bitterly ashamed, and the man who calls them “Fore and
Aft” does so at the risk of the head which is on his shoulders.
Two words breathed into the stables of a certain Cavalry Regiment will
bring the men out into the streets with belts and mops and bad language;
but a whisper of “Fore and Aft” will bring out this regiment with
rifles.
Their one excuse is that they came again and did their best to finish
the job in style. But for a time all their world knows that they were
openly beaten, whipped, dumb-cowed, shaking and afraid. The men know it;
their officers know it; the Horse Guards know it, and when the next war
comes the enemy will know it also. There are two or three regiments of
the Line that have a black mark against their names which they will then
wipe out; and it will be excessively inconvenient for the troops upon
whom they do their wiping.
The courage of the British soldier is officially supposed to be above
proof, and, as a general rule, it is so. The exceptions are decently
shovelled out of sight, only to be referred to in the freshest of
unguarded talk that occasionally swamps a Mess-table at midnight.
Then one hears strange and horrible stories of men not following their
officers, of orders being given by those who had no right to give them,
and of disgrace that, but for the standing luck of the British Army,
might have ended in brilliant disaster. These are unpleasant stories to
listen to, and the Messes tell them under their breath, sitting by
the big wood fires, and the young officer bows his head and thinks to
himself, please God, his men shall never behave unhandily.
The British soldier is not altogether to be blamed for occasional
lapses; but this verdict he should not know. A moderately intelligent
General will waste six months in mastering the craft of the particular
war that he may be waging; a Colonel may utterly misunderstand the
capacity of his regiment for three months after it has taken the field,
and even a Company Commander may err and be deceived as to the temper
and temperament of his own handful: wherefore the soldier, and the
soldier of to-day more particularly, should not be blamed for falling
back. He should be shot or hanged afterwards--to encourage the others;
but he should not be vilified in newspapers, for that is want of tact
and waste of space.
He has, let us say, been in the service of the Empress for, perhaps,
four years. He will leave in another two years. He has no inherited
morals, and four years are not sufficient to drive toughness into his
fibre, or to teach him how holy a thing is his Regiment. He wants to
drink, he wants to enjoy himself--in India he wants to save money--and
he does not in the least like getting hurt. He has received just
sufficient education to make him understand half the purport of the
orders he receives, and to speculate on the nature of clean, incised,
and shattering wounds. Thus, if he is told to deploy under fire
preparatory to an attack, he knows that he runs a very great risk of
being killed while he is deploying, and suspects that he is being thrown
away to gain ten minutes' time. He may either deploy with desperate
swiftness, or he may shuffle, or bunch, or break, according to the
discipline under which he has lain for four years.
Armed with imperfect knowledge, cursed with the rudiments of an
imagination, hampered by the intense selfishness of the lower classes,
and unsupported by any regimental associations, this young man is
suddenly introduced to an enemy who in eastern lands is always ugly,
generally tall and hairy, and frequently noisy. If he looks to the right
and the left and sees old soldiers--men of twelve years' service,
who, he knows, know what they are about--taking a charge, rush, or
demonstration without embarrassment, he is consoled and applies his
shoulder to the butt of his rifle with a stout heart. His peace is the
greater if he hears a senior, who has taught him his soldiering and
broken his head on occasion, whispering: “They'll shout and carry on
like this for five minutes. Then they'll rush in, and then we've got 'em
by the short hairs!”
But, on the other hand, if he sees only men of his own term of service,
turning white and playing with their triggers and saying: “What the
Hell's up now?” while the Company Commanders are sweating into
their sword-hilts and shouting: “Front rank, fix bayonets. Steady
there--steady! Sight for three hundred--no, for five! Lie down, all!
Steady! Front rank kneel!” and so forth, he becomes unhappy, and grows
acutely miserable when he hears a comrade turn over with the rattle of
fire-irons falling into the fender, and the grunt of a pole-axed ox. If
he can be moved about a little and allowed to watch the effect of his
own fire on the enemy he feels merrier, and may be then worked up to
the blind passion of fighting, which is, contrary to general belief,
controlled by a chilly Devil and shakes men like ague. If he is not
moved about, and begins to feel cold at the pit of the stomach, and in
that crisis is badly mauled and hears orders that were never given, he
will break, and he will break badly, and of all things under the
light of the Sun there is nothing more terrible than a broken British
regiment. When the worst comes to the worst and the panic is really
epidemic, the men must be e'en let go, and the Company Commanders had
better escape to the enemy and stay there for safety's sake. If they can
be made to come again they are not pleasant men to meet; because they
will not break twice.
About thirty years from this date, when we have succeeded in
half-educating everything that wears trousers, our Army will be a
beautifully unreliable machine. It will know too much and it will do too
little. Later still, when all men are at the mental level of the officer
of to-day, it will sweep the earth. Speaking roughly, you must employ
either blackguards or gentlemen, or, best of all, blackguards commanded
by gentlemen, to do butcher's work with efficiency and despatch. The
ideal soldier should, of course, think for himself--the “Pocket-book”
says so. Unfortunately, to attain this virtue, he has to pass through
the phase of thinking of himself, and that is misdirected genius. A
blackguard may be slow to think for himself, but he is genuinely anxious
to kill, and a little punishment teaches him how to guard his own skin
and perforate another's. A powerfully prayerful Highland Regiment,
officered by rank Presbyterians, is, perhaps, one degree more terrible
in action than a hard-bitten thousand of irresponsible Irish ruffians
led by most improper young unbelievers. But these things prove the
rule--which is that the midway men are not to be trusted alone. They have
ideas about the value of life and an upbringing that has not taught them
to go on and take the chances. They are carefully unprovided with a
backing of comrades who have been shot over, and until that backing is
re-introduced, as a great many Regimental Commanders intend it shall be,
they are more liable to disgrace themselves than the size of the Empire
or the dignity of the Army allows. Their officers are as good as good
can be, because their training begins early, and God has arranged that a
clean-run youth of the British middle classes shall, in the matter of
backbone, brains, and bowels, surpass all other youths. For this reason
a child of eighteen will stand up, doing nothing, with a tin sword in
his hand and joy in his heart until he is dropped. If he dies, he dies
like a gentleman. If he lives, he writes Home that he has been “potted,”
“sniped,” “chipped,” or “cut over,” and sits down to besiege Government
for a wound-gratuity until the next little war breaks out, when he
perjures himself before a Medical Board, blarneys his Colonel, burns
incense round his Adjutant, and is allowed to go to the Front once more.
Which homily brings me directly to a brace of the most finished little
fiends that ever banged drum or tootled fife in the Band of a British
Regiment. They ended their sinful career by open and flagrant mutiny
and were shot for it. Their names were Jakin and Lew--Piggy Lew and
they were bold, bad drummer-boys, both of them frequently birched by the
Drum-Major of the Fore and Aft.
Jakin was a stunted child of fourteen, and Lew was about the same age.
When not looked after, they smoked and drank. They swore habitually
after the manner of the Barrack-room, which is cold swearing and comes
from between clenched teeth, and they fought religiously once a week.
Jakin had sprung from some London gutter, and may or may not have
passed through Dr. Barnardo's hands ere he arrived at the dignity of
drummer-boy. Lew could remember nothing except the Regiment and the
delight of listening to the Band from his earliest years. He hid
somewhere in his grimy little soul a genuine love for music, and was
most mistakenly furnished with the head of a cherub: insomuch that
beautiful ladies who watched the Regiment in church were wont to speak
of him as a “darling.” They never heard his vitriolic comments on their
manners and morals, as he walked back to barracks with the Band and
matured fresh causes of offence against Jakin.
The other drummer-boys hated both lads on account of their illogical
conduct. Jakin might be pounding Lew, or Lew might be rubbing Jakin's
head in the dirt, but any attempt at aggression on the part of an
outsider was met by the combined forces of Lew and Jakin; and the
consequences were painful. The boys were the Ishmaels of the corps, but
wealthy Ishmaels, for they sold battles in alternate weeks for the sport
of the barracks when they were not pitted against other boys; and thus
amassed money.
On this particular day there was dissension in the camp. They had just
been convicted afresh of smoking, which is bad for little boys who use
plug-tobacco, and Lew's contention was that Jakin had “stunk so
'orrid bad from keepin' the pipe in pocket,” that he and he alone was
responsible for the birching they were both tingling under.
“I tell you I 'id the pipe back o' barracks,” said Jakin pacifically.
“You're a bloomin' liar,” said Lew without heat.
“You're a bloomin' little barstard,” said Jakin, strong in the knowledge
that his own ancestry was unknown.
Now there is one word in the extended vocabulary of barrack-room abuse
that cannot pass without comment. You may call a man a thief and risk
nothing. You may even call him a coward without finding more than a boot
whiz past your ear, but you must not call a man a bastard unless you are
prepared to prove it on his front teeth.
“You might ha' kep' that till I wasn't so sore,” said Lew sorrowfully,
dodging round Jakin's guard.
“I'll make you sorer,” said Jakin genially, and got home on Lew's
alabaster forehead. All would have gone well and this story, as the
books say, would never have been written, had not his evil fate prompted
the Bazar-Sergeant's son, a long, employless man of five-and-twenty, to
put in an appearance after the first round. He was eternally in need of
money, and knew that the boys had silver.
“Fighting again,” said he. “I'll report you to my father, and he'll
report you to the Colour-Sergeant.”
“What's that to you?” said Jakin with an unpleasant dilation of the
nostrils.
“Oh! nothing to me. You'll get into trouble, and you've been up too
often to afford that.”
“What the Hell do you know about what we've done?” asked Lew the Seraph.
“You aren't in the Army, you lousy, cadging civilian.”
He closed in on the man's left flank.
“Jes' 'cause you find two gentlemen settlin' their diff'rences with
their fistes you stick in your ugly nose where you aren't wanted. Run
'ome to your 'arf-caste slut of a Ma--or we'll give you what-for,” said
Jakin.
The man attempted reprisals by knocking the boys' heads together. The
scheme would have succeeded had not Jakin punched him vehemently in
the stomach, or had Lew refrained from kicking his shins. They fought
together, bleeding and breathless, for half an hour, and, after heavy
punishment, triumphantly pulled down their opponent as terriers pull
down a jackal.
“Now,” gasped Jakin, “I'll give you what-for.” He proceeded to pound
the man's features while Lew stamped on the outlying portions of his
anatomy. Chivalry is not a strong point in the composition of the
average drummer-boy. He fights, as do his betters, to make his mark.
Ghastly was the ruin that escaped, and awful was the wrath of the
Bazar-Sergeant. Awful too was the scene in Orderly-room when the two
reprobates appeared to answer the charge of half-murdering a “civilian.”
The Bazar-Sergeant thirsted for a criminal action, and his son lied. The
boys stood to attention while the black clouds of evidence accumulated.
“You little devils are more trouble than the rest of the Regiment
put together,” said the Colonel angrily. “One might as well admonish
thistledown, and I can't well put you in cells or under stoppages. You
must be birched again.”
“Beg y' pardon, Sir. Can't we say nothin' in our own defence, Sir?”
shrilled Jakin.
“Hey! What? Are you going to argue with me?” said the Colonel.
“No, Sir,” said Lew. “But if a man come to you, Sir, and said he was
going to report you, Sir, for 'aving a bit of a turn-up with a friend,
Sir, an' wanted to get money out o' you, Sir-”
The Orderly-room exploded in a roar of laughter. “Well?” said the
Colonel.
“That was what that measly jarnwar there did, Sir, and 'e'd 'a' done it,
Sir, if we 'adn't prevented 'im. We didn't 'it 'im much, Sir. 'E 'adn't
no manner o' right to interfere with us, Sir. I don't mind bein' birched
by the Drum-Major, Sir, nor yet reported by any Corp'ral, but I'm--but
I don't think it's fair, Sir, for a civilian to come an' talk over a man
in the Army.”
A second shout of laughter shook the Orderly-room, but the Colonel was
grave.
“What sort of characters have these boys?” he asked of the Regimental
Sergeant-Major.
“Accordin' to the Bandmaster, Sir,” returned that revered official--the
only soul in the Regiment whom the boys feared--“they do everything but
lie, Sir.”
“Is it like we'd go for that man for fun, Sir?” said Lew, pointing to
the plaintiff.
“Oh, admonished--admonished!” said the Colonel testily, and when the
boys had gone he read the Bazar-Sergeant's son a lecture on the sin of
unprofitable meddling, and gave orders that the Bandmaster should keep
the Drums in better discipline.
“If either of you come to practice again with so much as a scratch on
your two ugly little faces,” thundered the Bandmaster, “I'll tell the
Drum-Major to take the skin off your backs. Understand that, you young
devils.”
Then he repented of his speech for just the length of time that Lew,
looking like a seraph in red worsted embellishments, took the place
of one of the trumpets--in hospital--and rendered the echo of a
battle-piece. Lew certainly was a musician, and had often in his more
exalted moments expressed a yearning to master every instrument of the
Band.
“There's nothing to prevent your becoming a Bandmaster, Lew,” said the
Bandmaster, who had composed waltzes of his own, and worked day and
night in the interests of the Band.
“What did he say?” demanded Jakin after practice.
“Said I might be a bloomin' Bandmaster, an' be asked in to 'ave a glass
o' sherry wine on Mess-nights.”
“Ho! 'Said you might be a bloomin' noncombatant, did 'e! That's just
about wot 'e would say. When I've put in my boy's service it's a
bloomin' shame that doesn't count for pension--I'll take on as a privit.
Then I'll be a Lance in a year--knowin' what I know about the ins an'
outs o' things. In three years I'll be a bloomin' Sergeant. I won't
marry then, not I! I'll 'old on and learn the orf'cers' ways an' apply
for exchange into a reg'ment that doesn't know all about me. Then I'll
be a bloomin' orf'cer. Then I'll ask you to 'ave a glass o' sherry wine,
Mister Lew, an' you'll bloomin' well 'ave to stay in the hanty-room
while the Mess-Sergeant brings it to your dirty 'ands.”
“S'pose I'm going to be a Bandmaster? Not I, quite. I'll be a orf'cer
too. There's nothin' like takin' to a thing an' stickin' to it, the
Schoolmaster says. The Reg'ment don't go 'ome for another seven years.
I'll be a Lance then or near to.”
Thus the boys discussed their futures, and conducted themselves
piously for a week. That is to say, Lew started a flirtation with the
Colour-Sergeant's daughter, aged thirteen--“not,” as he explained to
Jakin, “with any intention o' matrimony, but by way o' keep in' my 'and
in.” And the black-haired Cris Delighan enjoyed that flirtation more
than previous ones, and the other drummer-boys raged furiously together,
and Jakin preached sermons on the dangers of bein' tangled along o'
petticoats.
But neither love nor virtue would have held Lew long in the paths of
propriety had not the rumour gone abroad that the Regiment was to be
sent on active service, to take part in a war which, for the sake of
brevity, we will call “The War of the Lost Tribes.”
The barracks had the rumour almost before the Mess-room, and of all the
nine hundred men in barracks, not ten had seen a shot fired in anger.
The Colonel had, twenty years ago, assisted at a Frontier expedition;
one of the Majors had seen service at the Cape; a confirmed deserter in
E Company had helped to clear streets in Ireland; but that was all. The
Regiment had been put by for many years. The overwhelming mass of
its rank and file had from three to four years' service; the
non-commissioned officers were under thirty years old; and men and
sergeants alike had forgotten to speak of the stories written in brief
upon the Colours--the New Colours that had been formally blessed by an
Archbishop in England ere the Regiment came away. They wanted to go to
the Front--they were enthusiastically anxious to 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 overscanty
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 have 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 a 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 wore 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 dare say 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
Sergeant's tailor 'elp me. Keep it always, Piggy, an' remember I love
you true.”
They marched to the railway station, nine hundred and sixty strong,
and every soul in cantonments turned out to see them go. The drummers
gnashed their teeth at Jakin and Lew marching with the Band, the married
women wept upon the platform, and the Regiment cheered its noble self
black in the face.
“A nice level lot,” said the Colonel to the Second-in-Command as they
watched the first four companies entraining.
“Fit to do anything,” said the Second-in-Command enthusiastically. “But
it seems to me they're a thought too young and tender for the work in
hand. It's bitter cold up at the Front now.”
“They're sound enough,” said the Colonel. “We must take our chance of
sick casualties.”
So they went northward, ever northward, past droves and droves of
camels, armies of camp-followers, and legions of laden mules, the throng
thickening day by day, till with a shriek the train pulled up at
a hopelessly congested junction where six lines of temporary track
accommodated six forty-waggon trains; where whistles blew, Babus
sweated, and Commissariat officers swore from dawn till far into the
night, amid the wind-driven chaff of the fodder-bales and the lowing of
a thousand steers.
“Hurry up--you're badly wanted at the Front,” was the message that
greeted the Fore and Aft, and the occupants of the Red Cross carriages
told the same tale.
“Tisn't so much the bloomin' fightin',” gasped a headbound trooper
of Hussars to a knot of admiring Fore and Afts. “Tisn't so much the
bloomin' fightin', though there's enough o' that. It's the bloomin'
food an' the bloomin' climate. Frost all night 'cept when it hails, and
b'iling sun all day, and the water stinks fit to knock you down. I got
my 'ead chipped like a egg; I've got pneumonia too, an' my guts is all
out o' order. 'Tain't no bloomin' picnic in those parts, I can tell
you.”
“Wot are the niggers like?” demanded a private.
“There's some prisoners in that train yonder. Go an' look at 'em.
They're the aristocracy o' the country. The common folk are a dashed
sight uglier. If you want to know what they fight with, reach under my
seat an' pull out the long knife that's there.”
They dragged out and beheld for the first time the grim, bone-handled,
triangular Afghan knife. It was almost as long as Lew.
“That's the thing to j'int ye,” said the trooper feebly. “It can take
off a man's arm at the shoulder as easy as slicing butter. I halved the
beggar that used that un, but there's more of his likes up above. They
don't understand thrustin', but they're devils to slice.”
The men strolled across the tracks to inspect the Afghan prisoners.
They were unlike any “niggers” that the Fore and Aft had ever met--these
huge, black-haired, scowling sons of the Beni-Israel. As the men stared
the Afghans spat freely and muttered one to another with lowered eyes.
“My eyes! Wot awful swine!” said Jakin, who was in the rear of the
procession. “Say, ole man, how you got puckrowed, eh? Kiswasti you
wasn't hanged for your ugly face, hey?”
The tallest of the company turned, his leg-irons clanking at the
movement, and stared at the boy. “See!” he cried to his fellows in
Pushto. “They send children against us. What a people, and what fools!”
“Hya.” said Jakin, nodding his head cheerily. “You go down-country.
Khana get, peenikapanee get--live like a bloomin' Raja ke marfik. That's
a better bandobust than baynit get it in your innards. Good-bye, ole
man. Take care o' your beautiful figure'ead, an' try to look kushy.”
The men laughed and fell in for their first march, when they began to
realise that a soldier's life is not all beer and skittles. They were
much impressed with the size and bestial ferocity of the niggers whom
they had now learned to call “Paythans,” and more with the exceeding
discomfort of their own surroundings. Twenty old soldiers in the corps
would have taught them how to make themselves moderately snug at night,
but they had no old soldiers, and, as the troops on the line of march
said, “they lived like pigs.” They learned the heart-breaking cussedness
of camp-kitchens and camels and the depravity of an E. P. tent and a
wither-wrung mule. They studied animalculae in water, and developed a
few cases of dysentery in their study.
At the end of their third march they were disagreeably surprised by the
arrival in their camp of a hammered iron slug which, fired from a steady
rest at seven hundred yards, flicked out the brains of a private seated
by the fire. This robbed them of their peace for a night, and was the
beginning of a long-range fire carefully calculated to that end. In the
daytime they saw nothing except an unpleasant puff of smoke from a crag
above the line of march. At night there were distant spurts of flame and
occasional casualties, which set the whole camp blazing into the gloom
and, occasionally, into opposite tents. Then they swore vehemently and
vowed that this was magnificent but not war.
Indeed it was not. The Regiment could not halt for reprisals against the
sharpshooters of the country-side. Its duty was to go forward and
make connection with the Scotch and Goorkha troops with which it
was brigaded. The Afghans knew this, and knew too, after their first
tentative shots, that they were dealing with a raw regiment Thereafter
they devoted themselves to the task of keeping the Fore and Aft on the
strain. Not for anything would they have taken equal liberties with a
seasoned corps--with the wicked little Goorkhas, whose delight it was to
lie out in the open on a dark night and stalk their stalkers--with the
terrible big men dressed in women's clothes, who could be heard praying
to their God in the night-watches, and whose peace of mind no amount
of “sniping” could shake--or with those vile Sikhs, who marched so
ostentatiously unprepared and who dealt out such grim reward to those
who tried to profit by that unpreparedness. This white regiment was
different--quite different. It slept like a hog, and, like a hog,
charged in every direction when it was roused. Its sentries walked with
a footfall that could be heard for a quarter of a mile; would fire at
anything that moved--even a driven donkey--and when they had once fired,
could be scientifically “rushed” and laid out a horror and an offence
against the morning sun. Then there were camp-followers who straggled
and could be cut up without fear. Their shrieks would disturb the white
boys, and the loss of their services would inconvenience them sorely.
Thus, at every march, the hidden enemy became bolder and the Regiment
writhed and twisted under attacks it could not avenge. The crowning
triumph was a sudden night-rush ending in the cutting of many
tent-ropes, the collapse of the sodden canvas, and a glorious knifing
of the men who struggled and kicked below. It was a great deed, neatly
carried out, and it shook the already shaken nerves of the Fore and Aft.
All the courage that they had been required to exercise up to this point
was the “two o'clock in the morning courage”; and, so far, they had only
succeeded in shooting their comrades and losing their sleep.
Sullen, discontented, cold, savage, sick, with their uniforms dulled and
unclean, the Fore and Aft joined their Brigade.
“I hear you had a tough time of it coming up,” said the Brigadier. But
when he saw the hospital-sheets his face fell.
“This is bad,” said he to himself. “They're as rotten as sheep.” And
aloud to the Colonel--“I'm afraid we can't spare you just yet. We want
all we have, else I should have given you ten days to recover in.”
The Colonel winced. “On my honour, Sir,” he returned, “there is not the
least necessity to think of sparing us. My men have been rather mauled
and upset without a fair return. They only want to go in somewhere where
they can see what's before them.”
“Can't say I think much of the Fore and Fit,” said the Brigadier in
confidence to his Brigade-Major. “They've lost all their soldiering,
and, by the trim of them, might have marched through the country from
the other side. A more fagged-out set of men I never put eyes on.”
“Oh, they'll improve as the work goes on. The parade gloss has been
rubbed off a little, but they'll put on field polish before long,” said
the Brigade-Major. “They've been mauled, and they don't quite understand
it.”
They did not. All the hitting was on one side, and it was cruelly hard
hitting with accessories that made them sick. There was also the real
sickness that laid hold of a strong man and dragged him howling to the
grave. Worst of all, their officers knew just as little of the country
as the men themselves, and looked as if they did. The Fore and Aft were
in a thoroughly unsatisfactory condition, but they believed that
all would be well if they could once get a fair go-in at the enemy.
Pot-shots up and down the valleys were unsatisfactory, and the bayonet
never seemed to get a chance. Perhaps it was as well, for a long-limbed
Afghan with a knife had a reach of eight feet, and could carry away lead
that would disable three Englishmen.
The Fore and Aft would like some rifle-practice at the enemy--all seven
hundred rifles blazing together. That wish showed the mood of the men.
The Goorkhas walked into their camp, and in broken, barrack-room English
strove to fraternise with them: offered them pipes of tobacco and stood
them treat at the canteen. But the Fore and Aft, not knowing much of
the nature of the Goorkhas, treated them as they would treat any other
“niggers,” and the little men in green trotted back to their firm
friends the Highlanders, and with many grins confided to them: “That
dam white regiment no dam use. Sulky--ugh! Dirty--ugh! Hya, any tot for
Johnny?” Whereat the Highlanders smote the Goorkhas as to the head, and
told them not to vilify a British Regiment, and the Goorkhas grinned
cavernously, for the Highlanders were their elder brothers and entitled
to the privileges of kinship. The common soldier who touches a Goorkha
is more than likely to have his head sliced open.
Three days later the Brigadier arranged a battle according to the rules
of war and the peculiarity of the Afghan temperament. The enemy were
massing in inconvenient strength among the hills, and the moving of
many green standards warned him that the tribes were “up” in aid of
the Afghan regular troops. A squadron and a half of Bengal Lancers
represented the available Cavalry, and two screw-guns, borrowed from a
column thirty miles away, the Artillery at the General's disposal.
“If they stand, as I've a very strong notion that they will, I fancy
we shall see an infantry fight that will be worth watching,” said the
Brigadier. “We'll do it in style. Each regiment shall be played into
action by its Band, and we'll hold the Cavalry in reserve.”
“For all the reserve?” somebody asked.
“For all the reserve; because we're going to crumple them up,” said the
Brigadier, who was an extraordinary Brigadier, and did not believe in
the value of a reserve when dealing with Asiatics. Indeed, when you come
to think of it, had the British Army consistently waited for reserves in
all its little affairs, the boundaries of Our Empire would have stopped
at Brighton beach.
The battle was to be a glorious battle.
The three regiments debouching from three separate gorges, after duly
crowning the heights above, were to converge from the centre, left, and
right upon what we will call the Afghan army, then stationed towards
the lower extremity of a flat-bottomed valley. Thus it will be seen that
three sides of the valley practically belonged to the English, while the
fourth was strictly Afghan property. In the event of defeat the Afghans
had the rocky hills to fly to, where the fire from the guerrilla tribes
in aid would cover their retreat. In the event of victory these same
tribes would rush down and lend their weight to the rout of the British.
The screw-guns were to shell the head of each Afghan rush that was
made in close formation, and the Cavalry, held in reserve in the right
valley, were to gently stimulate the break-up which would follow on
the combined attack. The Brigadier, sitting upon a rock overlooking the
valley, would watch the battle unrolled at his feet. The Fore and Aft
would debouch from the central gorge, the Goorkhas from the left, and
the Highlanders from the right, for the reason that the left flank of
the enemy seemed as though it required the most hammering. It was not
every day that an Afghan force would take ground in the open, and the
Brigadier was resolved to make the most of it.
“If we only had a few more men,” he said plaintively, “we could surround
the creatures and crumple 'em up thoroughly. As it is, I'm afraid we can
only cut them up as they run. It's a great pity.”
The Fore and Aft had enjoyed unbroken peace for five days, and were
beginning, in spite of dysentery, to recover their nerve. But they were
not happy, for they did not know the work in hand, and had they known,
would not have known how to do it. Throughout those five days in
which old soldiers might have taught them the craft of the game, they
discussed together their misadventures in the past--how such an one was
alive at dawn and dead ere the dusk, and with what shrieks and struggles
such another had given up his soul under the Afghan knife. Death was
a new and horrible thing to the sons of mechanics who were used to die
decently of zymotic disease; and their careful conservation in barracks
had done nothing to make them look upon it with less dread.
Very early in the dawn the bugles began to blow, and the Fore and Aft,
filled with a misguided enthusiasm, turned out without waiting for a cup
of coffee and a biscuit; and were rewarded by being kept under arms in
the cold while the other regiments leisurely prepared for the fray. All
the world knows that it is ill taking the breeks off a Highlander. It
is much iller to try to make him stir unless he is convinced of the
necessity for haste. 507 The Fore and Aft waited, leaning upon their
rifles and listening to the protests of their empty stomachs. The
Colonel did his best to remedy the default of lining as soon as it was
borne in upon him that the affair would not begin at once, and so well
did he succeed that the coffee was just ready when--the men moved off,
their Band leading. Even then there had been a mistake in time, and
the Fore and Aft came out into the valley ten minutes before the proper
hour. Their Band wheeled to the right after reaching the open, and
retired behind a little rocky knoll still playing while the Regiment
went past.
It was not a pleasant sight that opened on the uninstructed view,
for the lower end of the valley appeared to be filled by an army in
position--real and actual regiments attired in red coats, and--of this
there was no doubt--firing Martini-Henry bullets which cut up the ground
a hundred yards in front of the leading company. Over that pock-marked
ground the Regiment had to pass, and it opened the ball with a general
and profound courtesy to the piping pickets; ducking in perfect time, as
though it had been brazed on a rod. Being half capable of thinking for
itself, it fired a volley by the simple process of pitching its
rifle into its shoulder and pulling the trigger. The bullets may have
accounted for some of the watchers on the hill side, but they certainly
did not affect the mass of enemy in front, while the noise of the rifles
drowned any orders that might have been given.
“Good God!” said the Brigadier, sitting on the rock high above all.
“That Regiment has spoilt the whole show. Hurry up the others, and let
the screw-guns get off.”
But the screw-guns, in working round the heights, had stumbled upon
a wasp's nest of a small mud fort which they incontinently shelled at
eight hundred yards, to the huge discomfort of the occupants, who were
unaccustomed to weapons of such devilish precision.
The Fore and Aft continued to go forward, but with shortened stride.
Where were the other regiments, and why did these niggers use Martinis?
They took open order instinctively, lying down and firing at random,
rushing a few paces forward and lying down again, according to the
regulations. Once in this formation, each man felt himself desperately
alone, and edged in towards his fellow for comfort's sake.
Then the crack of his neighbor's rifle at his ear led him to fire as
rapidly as he could--again for the sake of the comfort of the noise. The
reward was not long delayed. Five volleys plunged the files in banked
smoke impenetrable to the eye, and the bullets began to take ground
twenty or thirty yards in front of the firers, as the weight of the
bayonet dragged down and to the right arms wearied with holding the kick
of the leaping Martini. The Company Commanders peered helplessly through
the smoke, the more nervous mechanically trying to fan it away with
their helmets.
“High and to the left!” bawled a Captain till he was hoarse. “No good!
Cease firing, and let it drift away a bit.”
Three and four times the bugles shrieked the order, and when it was
obeyed the Fore and Aft looked that their foe should be lying before
them in mown swaths of men. A light wind drove the smoke to leeward, and
showed the enemy still in position and apparently unaffected. A quarter
of a ton of lead had been buried a furlong in front of them, as the
ragged earth attested.
That was not demoralizing to the Afghans, who have not European nerves.
They were waiting for the mad riot to die down, and were firing quietly
into the heart of the smoke. A private of the Fore and Aft spun up his
company shrieking with agony, another was kicking the earth and gasping,
and a third, ripped through the lower intestines by a jagged bullet, was
calling aloud on his comrades to put him out of his pain. These were the
casualties, and they were not soothing to hear or see. The smoke cleared
to a dull haze.
Then the foe began to shout with a great shouting, and a mass--a black
mass--detached itself from the main body, and rolled over the ground at
horrid speed. It was composed of, perhaps, three hundred men, who would
shout and fire and slash if the rush of their fifty comrades who were
determined to die carried home. The fifty were Ghazis, half maddened
with drugs and wholly mad with religious fanaticism. When they rushed
the British fire ceased, and in the lull the order was given to close
ranks and meet them with the bayonet.
Any one who knew the business could have told the Fore and Aft that
the only way of dealing with a Ghazi rush is by volleys at long ranges;
because a man who means to die, who desires to die, who will gain heaven
by dying, must, in nine cases out of ten, kill a man who has a lingering
prejudice in favour of life. Where they should have closed and gone
forward, the Fore and Aft opened out and skirmished, and where they
should have opened out and fired, they closed and waited.
A man dragged from his blankets half awake and unfed is never in a
pleasant frame of mind. Nor does his happiness increase when he watches
the whites of the eyes of three hundred six-foot fiends upon whose
beards the foam is lying, upon whose tongues is a roar of wrath, and in
whose hands are yard-long knives.
The Fore and Aft heard the Goorkha bugles bringing that regiment forward
at the double, while the neighing of the Highland pipes came from the
left. They strove to stay where they were, though the bayonets wavered
down the line like the oars of a ragged boat. Then they felt body to
body the amazing physical strength of their foes; a shriek of pain
ended the rush, and the knives fell amid scenes not to be told. The
men clubbed together and smote blindly--as often as not at their own
fellows. Their front crumpled like paper, and the fifty Ghazis passed
on; their backers, now drunk with success, fighting as madly as they.
Then the rear ranks were bidden to close up, and the subalterns dashed
into the stew--alone. For the rear-ranks had heard the clamour in front,
the yells and the howls of pain, and had seen the dark stale blood that
makes afraid. They were not going to stay. It was the rushing of the
camps over again. Let their officers go to Hell, if they chose; they
would get away from the knives.
“Come on!” shrieked the subalterns, and their men, cursing them, drew
back, each closing in to his neighbour and wheeling round.
Charteris and Devlin, subalterns of the last company, faced their death
alone in the belief that their men would follow.
“You've killed me, you cowards,” sobbed Devlin and dropped, cut from the
shoulder-strap to the centre of the chest; and a fresh detachment of his
men retreating, always retreating, trampled him under foot as they made
for the pass whence they had emerged.
I kissed her in the kitchen and I kissed her in the hall Child'un,
child'un, follow me! Oh Golly, said the cook, is he gwine to kiss us
all? Halla--Halla--Halla--Hallelujah!
The Goorkhas were pouring through the left gorge and over the heights at
the double to the invitation of their Regimental Quick-step. The black
rocks were crowned with dark green spiders as the bugles gave tongue
jubilantly:--
In the morning! In the morning by the bright light!
When Gabriel blows his trumpet in the morning!
The Goorkha rear companies tripped and blundered over loose stones.
The front files halted for a moment to take stock of the valley and to
settle stray boot-laces. Then a happy little sigh of contentment soughed
down the ranks, and it was as though the land smiled, for behold there
below was the enemy, and it was to meet them that the Goorkhas had
doubled so hastily. There was much enemy. There would be amusement. The
little men hitched their kukris well to hand, and gaped expectantly at
their officers as terriers grin ere the stone is cast for them to fetch.
The Goorkhas' ground sloped downward to the valley, and they enjoyed a
fair view of the proceedings. They sat upon the boulders to watch,
for their officers were not going to waste their wind in assisting to
repulse a Ghazi rush more than half a mile away. Let the white men look
to their own front.
“Hi! yi!” said the Subadar-Major, who was sweating profusely. “Dam fools
yonder, stand close order! This is no time for close order, it is the
time for volleys. Ugh!”
Horrified, amused, and indignant, the Goorkhas beheld the retirement of
the Fore and Aft with a running chorus of oaths and commentaries.
“They run! The white men run! Colonel Sahib, may we also do a little
running?” murmured Runbir Thappa, the Senior Jemadar.
But the Colonel would have none of it. “Let the beggars be cut up a
little,” said he wrathfully. “Serves 'em right. They'll be prodded into
facing round in a minute.” He looked through his field-glasses, and
caught the glint of an officer's sword.
“Beating 'em with the flat--damned conscripts! How the Ghazis are
walking into them!” said he.
The Fore and Aft, heading back, bore with them their officers. The
narrowness of the pass forced the mob into solid formation, and the rear
ranks delivered some sort of a wavering volley. The Ghazis drew off, for
they did not know what reserve the gorge might hide. Moreover, it was
never wise to chase white men too far. They returned as wolves return
to cover, satisfied with the slaughter that they had done, and only
stopping to slash at the wounded on the ground. A quarter of a mile had
the Fore and Aft retreated, and now, jammed in the pass, was quivering
with pain, shaken and demoralised with fear, while the officers,
maddened beyond control, smote the men with the hilts and the flats of
their swords.
“Get back! Get back, you cowards--you women! Right about face--column
of companies, form--you hounds!” shouted the Colonel, and the subalterns
swore aloud. But the Regiment wanted to go--to go anywhere out of the
range of those merciless knives. It swayed to and fro irresolutely with
shouts and outcries, while from the right the Goorkhas dropped volley
after volley of cripple-stopper Snider bullets at long range into the
mob of the Ghazis returning to their own troops.
The Fore and Aft Band, though protected from direct fire by the rocky
knoll under which it had sat down, fled at the first rush. Jakin and Lew
would have fled also, but their short legs left them fifty yards in the
rear, and by the time the Band had mixed with the Regiment, they were
painfully aware that they would have to close in alone and unsupported.
“Get back to that rock,” gasped Jakin. “They won't see us there.”
And they returned to the scattered instruments of the Band, their hearts
nearly bursting their ribs.
“Here's a nice show for us,” said Jakin, throwing himself full length on
the ground. “A bloomin' fine show for British Infantry! Oh, the devils!
They've gone and left us alone here! Wot'll we do?”
Lew took possession of a cast-off water-bottle, which naturally was full
of canteen rum, and drank till he coughed again.
“Drink,” said he shortly. “They'll come back in a minute or two--you
see.”
Jakin drank, but there was no sign of the Regiment's return. They could
hear a dull clamour from the head of the valley of retreat, and saw the
Ghazis slink back, quickening their pace as the Goorkhas fired at them.
“We're all that's left of the Band, an' we'll be cut up as sure as
death,” said Jakin.
“I'll die game, then,” said Lew thickly, fumbling with his tiny
drummer's sword. The drink was working on his brain as it was on
Jakin's.
“'Old on! I know something better than fightin',” said Jakin, stung by
the splendour of a sudden thought due chiefly to rum. “Tip our bloomin'
cowards yonder the word to come back. The Paythan beggars are well away.
Come on, Lew! We won't get hurt. Take the fife an' give me the drum. The
Old Step for all your bloomin' guts are worth! There's a few of our
men coming back now. Stand up, ye drunken little defaulter. By your
right--quick march!”
He slipped the drum-sling over his shoulder, thrust the fife into Lew's
hand, and the two boys marched out of the cover of the rock into
the open, making a hideous hash of the first bars of the “British
Grenadiers.”
As Lew had said, a few of the Fore and Aft were coming back sullenly
and shamefacedly under the stimulus of blows and abuse; their red coats
shone at the head of the valley, and behind them were wavering bayonets.
But between this shattered line and the enemy, who with Afghan suspicion
feared that the hasty retreat meant an ambush, and had not moved
therefore, lay half a mile of level ground dotted only by the wounded.
The tune settled into full swing and the boys kept shoulder to shoulder,
Jakin banging the drum as one possessed. The one fife made a thin and
pitiful squeaking, but the tune carried far, even to the Goorkhas.
“Come on, you dogs!” muttered Jakin to himself. “Are we to play
forhever?” Lew was staring straight in front of him and marching more
stiffly than ever he had done on parade.
And in bitter mockery of the distant mob, the old tune of the Old Line
shrilled and rattled:--
Some talk of Alexander,
And some of Hercules;
Of Hector and Lysander,
And such great names as these!
There was a far-off clapping of hands from the Goorkhas, and a roar from
the Highlanders in the distance, but never a shot was fired by British
or Afghan. The two little red dots moved forward in the open parallel to
the enemy's front.
But of all the world's great heroes
There's none that can compare,
With a tow-row-row-row-row-row,
To the British Grenadier!
The men of the Fore and Aft were gathering thick at the entrance into
the plain. The Brigadier on the heights far above was speechless with
rage. Still no movement from the enemy. The day stayed to watch the
children.
Jakin halted and beat the long roll of the Assembly, while the fife
squealed despairingly.
“Right about face! Hold up, Lew, you're drunk,” said Jakin. They wheeled
and marched back:--
'hose heroes of antiquity
Ne'er saw a cannon-ball,
Nor knew the force o' powder,
“Here they come!” said Jakin. “Go on, Lew”:--
To scare their foes withal!
The Fore and Aft were pouring out of the valley. What officers had said
to men in that time of shame and humiliation will never be known; for
neither officers nor men speak of it now.
“They are coming anew!” shouted a priest among the Afghans. “Do not kill
the boys! Take them alive, and they shall be of our faith.”
But the first volley had been fired, and Lew dropped on his face. Jakin
stood for a minute, spun round and collapsed, as the Fore and Aft came
forward, the curses of their officers in their ears, and in their hearts
the shame of open shame.
Half the men had seen the drummers die, and they made no sign. They
did not even shout. They doubled out straight across the plain in open
order, and they did not fire.
“This,” said the Colonel of Goorkhas, softly, “is the real attack, as it
should have been delivered. Come on, my children.”
“Ulu-lu-lu-lu!” squealed the Goorkhas, and came down with a joyful
clicking of kukris--those vicious Goorkha knives.
On the right there was no rush. The Highlanders, cannily commending
their souls to God (for it matters as much to a dead man whether he
has been shot in a Border scuffle or at Waterloo), opened out and fired
according to their custom, that is to say without heat and without
intervals, while the screw-guns, having disposed of the impertinent mud
fort aforementioned, dropped shell after shell into the clusters round
the flickering green standards on the heights.
“Charrging is an unfortunate necessity,” murmured the Colour-Sergeant
of the right company of the Highlanders. “It makes the men sweer so, but
I am thinkin' that it will come to a charrge if these black devils stand
much longer. Stewarrt, man, you're firing into the eye of the sun, and
he'll not take any harm for Government ammuneetion. A foot lower and a
great deal slower! What are the English doing? They're very quiet, there
in the center. Running again?”
The English were not running. They were hacking and hewing and stabbing,
for though one white man is seldom physically a match for an Afghan in
a sheepskin or wadded coat, yet, through the pressure of many white
men behind, and a certain thirst for revenge in his heart, he becomes
capable of doing much with both ends of his rifle. The Fore and Aft held
their fire till one bullet could drive through five or six men, and the
front of the Afghan force gave on the volley. They then selected
their men, and slew them with deep gasps and short hacking coughs, and
groanings of leather belts against strained bodies, and realised for the
first time that an Afghan attacked is far less formidable than an Afghan
attacking; which fact old soldiers might have told them.
But they had no old soldiers in their ranks.
The Goorkhas' stall at the bazar was the noisiest, for the men were
engaged--to a nasty noise as of beef being cut on the block--with the
kukri, which they preferred to the bayonet; well knowing how the Afghan
hates the half-moon blade.
As the Afghans wavered, the green standards on the mountain moved down
to assist them in a last rally. This was unwise. The Lancers, chafing in
the right gorge, had thrice despatched their only subaltern as galloper
to report on the progress of affairs. On the third occasion he returned,
with a bullet-graze on his knee, swearing strange oaths in Hindustani,
and saying that all things were ready. So that squadron swung round the
right of the Highlanders with a wicked whistling of wind in the pennons
of its lances, and fell upon the remnant just when, according to all the
rules of war, it should have waited for the foe to show more signs of
wavering.
But it was a dainty charge, deftly delivered, and it ended by the
Cavalry finding itself at the head of the pass by which the Afghans
intended to retreat; and down the track that the lances had made
streamed two companies of the Highlanders, which was never intended by
the Brigadier. The new development was successful. It detached the enemy
from his base as a sponge is torn from a rock, and left him ringed about
with fire in that pitiless plain. And as a sponge is chased round the
bath-tub by the hand of the bather, so were the Afghans chased till they
broke into little detachments much more difficult to dispose of than
large masses.
“See!” quoth the Brigadier. “Everything has come as I arranged. We've
cut their base, and now we'll bucket 'em to pieces.”
A direct hammering was all that the Brigadier had dared to hope for,
considering the size of the force at his disposal; but men who stand or
fall by the errors of their opponents may be forgiven for turning Chance
into Design. The bucketing went forward merrily. The Afghan forces were
upon the run--the run of wearied wolves who snarl and bite over their
shoulders. The red lances dipped by twos and threes, and, with a shriek,
uprose the lance-butt, like a spar on a stormy sea, as the trooper
cantering forward cleared his point. The Lancers kept between their prey
and the steep hills, for all who could were trying to escape from the
valley of death. The Highlanders gave the fugitives two hundred yards'
law, and then brought them down, gasping and choking ere they could
reach the protection of the boulders above. The Goorkhas followed suit;
but the Fore and Aft were killing on their own account, for they had
penned a mass of men between their bayonets and a wall of rock, and the
flash of the rifles was lighting the wadded coats.
“We cannot hold them, Captain Sahib!” panted a Ressaidar of Lancers.
“Let us try the carbine. The lance is good, but it wastes time.”
They tried the carbine, and still the enemy melted away--fled up the
hills by hundreds when there were only twenty bullets to stop them.
On the heights the screw-guns ceased firing--they had run out of
ammunition--and the Brigadier groaned, for the musketry fire could not
sufficiently smash the retreat. Long before the last volleys were fired,
the doolies were out in force looking for the wounded. The battle was
over, and, but for want of fresh troops, the Afghans would have been
wiped off the earth. As it was, they counted their dead by hundreds, and
nowhere were the dead thicker than in the track of the Fore and Aft.
But the Regiment did not cheer with the Highlanders, nor did they dance
uncouth dances with the Goorkhas among the dead. They looked under their
brows at the Colonel as they leaned upon their rifles and panted.
“Get back to camp, you. Haven't you disgraced yourself enough for one
day! Go and look to the wounded. It's all you're fit for,” said the
Colonel. Yet for the past hour the Fore and Aft had been doing all that
mortal commander could expect. They had lost heavily because they did
not know how to set about their business with proper skill, but they had
borne themselves gallantly, and this was their reward.
A young and sprightly Colour-Sergeant, who had begun to imagine himself
a hero, offered his water-bottle to a Highlander whose tongue was black
with thirst. “I drink with no cowards,” answered the youngster huskily,
and, turning to a Goorkha, said, “Hya, Johnny! Drink water got it?” The
Goorkha grinned and passed his bottle. The Fore and Aft said no word.
They went back to camp when the field of strife had been a little mopped
up and made presentable, and the Brigadier, who saw himself a Knight
in three months, was the only soul who was complimentary to them. The
Colonel was heartbroken, and the officers were savage and sullen.
“Well,” said the Brigadier, “they are young troops, of course, and it
was not unnatural that they should retire in disorder for a bit.”
“Oh, my only Aunt Maria!” murmured a junior Staff Officer. “Retire in
disorder! It was a bally run!”
“But they came again, as we all know,” cooed the Brigadier, the
Colonel's ashy-white face before him, “and they behaved as well as could
possibly be expected. Behaved beautifully, indeed. I was watching them.
It's not a matter to take to heart, Colonel. As some German General said
of his men, they wanted to be shooted over a little, that was all.” To
himself he said--“Now they're blooded I can give 'em responsible work.
It's as well that they got what they did. 'Teach 'em more than half a
dozen rifle flirtations, that will--later--run alone and bite. Poor old
Colonel, though.”
All that afternoon the heliograph winked and flickered on the hills,
striving to tell the good news to a mountain forty miles away And in
the evening there arrived, dusty, sweating, and sore, a misguided
Correspondent who had gone out to assist at a trumpery village-burning,
and who had read off the message from afar, cursing his luck the while.
“Let's have the details somehow--as full as ever you can, please.
It's the first time I've ever been left this campaign,” said the
Correspondent to the Brigadier; and the Brigadier, nothing loth, told
him how an Army of Communication had been crumpled up, destroyed, and
all but annihilated by the craft, strategy, wisdom, and foresight of the
Brigadier.
But some say, and among these be the Goorkhas who watched on the
hillside, that that battle was won by Jakin and Lew, whose little
bodies were borne up just in time to fit two gaps at the head of the big
ditch-grave for the dead under the heights of Jagai.