The Allies

by Winston Groom

  Soon, the officers of the Hussars devised a scheme to become the first polo team from southern India to win the prestigious Indian Empire’s Regimental Cup. The plan was to pool their money and buy the entire string of twenty-five polo ponies from the Poona Light Horse, a native regiment that was stationed in Bombay very close to the docks, where they could have their pick of prized Arabian steeds arriving from the Middle East. A large part of winning at polo depends on the horse and now the Fourth Hussars would have an advantage over other teams that had been in the country for years.

  To the surprise of everyone connected with polo, six weeks after arriving in India the Fourth Hussars won the Golconda Cup in Hyderabad. Prior to the match, the game day was celebrated with an impressive display of marching drills by both native and British troops—including a procession of twenty of the maharajah’s elephants hauling an enormous cannon. (The elephants saluted the reviewing stand by raising their trunks as they passed by.) Churchill played the match magnificently, even with his injured arm still strapped to his side.24

  And, before leaving Hyderabad, Churchill managed to fall in love for the first time.

  She was a Miss Pamela Plowden, “the most beautiful girl I have ever seen,” Churchill wrote his mother, “and very clever.” The two began to see each other and a romance developed, but it was not to be. For the first two years they wrote constantly, then Churchill let the thing fall by the wayside, even as he professed his love for Pamela. She probably would have been a good choice for Churchill, “eminently suitable,” one of his biographers wrote, as the daughter of the distinguished Sir Trevor John Chichele-Plowden and a young woman of great wit and beauty. But his ambition to attain high political office apparently got in the way. Marriages were expensive; houses had to be bought, children provided for—and Churchill wasn’t even paid a living wage in the service of his queen. In any case, when Pamela ultimately wrote accusing him of “lack of ardor,” he responded by denying it. “Why do you say I am incapable of affection? Perish the thought,” he answered and went on to express his love. But little or nothing else happened between them, and Pamela Plowden went on to marry the Earl of Lytton.25

  * * *

  IN THOSE DAYS THE BRITISH RAJ, or Raj for short, meaning “rule,” was in full control in India. The English had constructed a complex civil service system to govern the hundreds of “states” on the enormous subcontinent and filled it with highly educated staff, all supported by a sizable military force of infantry and cavalry regiments strategically located throughout the country. The British had cannily included large numbers of Indians in their civil service, as well as organizing Indian military units, officered by white men. The whites, including those in the military, lived in a rarefied atmosphere compared with regular Indians. It was said, for example, that the only difference between the Bombay Club and the Bengal Club was that one excluded Indians and dogs while the other accepted dogs.26

  India had been relatively peaceful since the Great Mutiny of 1857. After the British quelled that bloody uprising, the country saw a massive increase in British military presence, and control of the colony passed from the Honourable East India Company to the Crown. Over the next half century most of the country seemed pacified. But beneath this misleading surface India seethed. The new, more educated population felt helpless and hapless against the growing British power. Except, that is, for the fierce, ungovernable tribesmen of the North West Frontier, who recognized no authority other than the resolute and unsparing jurisdiction of Islam.

  In the fall of 1893, an event took place that unleashed the wrath of the Pashtun tribesmen, particularly in the Valley of Swat. A British diplomat named Mortimer Durand had drawn up—reportedly over a glass of gin—a somewhat arbitrary one-page document to delineate the fifteen-hundred-mile boundary between India and Afghanistan. This became known as the Durand Line, which ran directly through the mountains where the Pashtun tribesmen lived. Each valley had its own tribe, but all the mountain people spoke Pashto, which was the official language of Afghanistan. From that day until this, the Durand Line remains the most deadly political boundary on earth.*8

  Soon afterward the British came and began building roads. They put up signs; they built forts and bridges and strongpoints. Presently a Muslim holy man known to the British as the “Mad Fakir” appeared in the Swat Valley urging the Pashtuns to rise up and kill the invading infidels. He appealed to their fanaticism, claiming that British bullets had no effect on those following the Islamic faith. (As proof he showed a small scar on his chest, which he said was the only result of his being shot head-on by a British cannon.) Imams and other Muslim leaders made similar pleas to tribes in surrounding valleys for jihad, or holy war.

  At length, with a strength estimated at between ten thousand and fifty thousand men, the Pashtun tribesmen swarmed out of the valleys and attacked the British fortifications at the strategic Malakand Pass near where the Durand Line ran. It was a ferocious battle in which the Pashtun warriors, armed with rifles and curved sabers, nearly overran the British garrison of 2,700: mostly native troops led by British officers. Afterward, the tribesmen laid a weeklong siege of the British position and relentlessly continued their massed attacks. By the time the fort was relieved by a British column, several thousand Pashtun tribesmen lay reeking in the tropic sun. Nearly two hundred British officers and native Indian troops were also killed.

  The reaction of the British Raj in India was no different than that of any colonial power facing a significant uprising. The rebellion must be put down and the rebels punished so as to deter them from future misbehavior. Thus was hatched the Malakand Field Force, designed to enter Pashtun territory and chastise the recalcitrant tribesmen. And who should be chosen to lead this punitive expedition but Winston Churchill’s house party friend: General Sir Bindon Blood.

  * * *

  CHURCHILL WAS HOME ON LEAVE back in England when the Pashtun rebellion broke out. He was on the lawn of Goodwood, the country estate of the Duke and Duchess of Richmond, where he had gone to attend the horse races. There, he picked up a newspaper and read of the revolt, and of General Blood’s assignment to lead the Malakand Field Force. Without hesitation, Churchill sent a telegram to Sir Bindon, reminding him of his promise to take Churchill on his staff if he was ever to lead a fighting expedition. Without waiting for an answer, he caught the next mail boat to India—the first leg of a seven-thousand-mile journey that would carry him back to his regiment at Bangalore, where he would still need to get permission to accompany Blood’s foray.

  At various ports along the way Churchill checked in with telegraph offices, but there was no reply from Sir Bindon Blood. At last, when he reached Bombay, Churchill received the word he had been waiting for. “Very Difficult. No Vacancies,” Blood had wired, but he told Churchill to “come up as a correspondent, will try to fit you in.” That was all he needed. His mother had finally secured a war correspondent’s position for him with London’s Daily Telegraph at £5 per story.27

  When he reached Bangalore, Churchill’s colonel indulged his lieutenant’s passion to take the field. Churchill took his dressing boy and campaign kit and left that same night by rail on a five-day, 2,028-mile trip to the town of Nowshera, which was quite literally the end of the line. From there it was a long forty miles across the plains in astonishing heat, in a small, pony-pulled cart called a tonga, before making the steep, winding ascent to the Malakand Pass in the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains.28 In the staff mess tent, still covered in yellow dust from his tonga trip across the plains, Churchill was acquainting him self with other officers when someone handed him a glass of whisky. He had until then confined his drinking to champagne, wine, and brandy; that “smoky taste” of whisky had always repelled him. But faced with the choice between whisky and the tepid water he “grasped the larger hope” and began a lifelong relationship with the Scottish national beverage. Later he wrote to his mother, somewhat darkly, “By the time this rea
ches you everything will be over so that I do not mind writing about it. I have faith in my star—that is, I am intended to do something in the world—if I am mistaken, what does it matter? My life has been a pleasant one, and though I should regret to leave it—it would be a regret that perhaps I should never know.”29

  General Blood had been away when Churchill arrived, but he soon returned victorious after chastising the mutinous Bunerwali tribe for its part in the uprising that led to the Malakand attack. The notion of chastising involved combing through a valley where every village was fortified by large mud “castles,” often heavily defended by tribesmen. Artillery would be used to reduce the structure to rubble and then the villagers’ mud houses would be set ablaze, their wells ruined and water reservoirs destroyed, their stores of food taken or ruined, their cattle and goats driven off, their shade trees cut down, and every armed man they could find would be killed. The idea was to suppress the tribe and defeat them so totally and utterly that they would lay down their weapons and come to terms. This was done on a tribe-by-tribe basis with those involved in the revolt—Afridis, Swatis, Pathans, Wazirs, Mahsuds, Gilgits, Citirals, and Bunerwalis—peoples who had lived in these mountain valleys for thousands of years, constantly warring with one another and deadly dangerous to any stranger caught alone and unprotected.

  The tribesmen were hideously brave, legendarily strong, notorious for their proficiency with the sword, and renowned as good shots with their long-barreled rifles or, in some cases, with the modern British bolt-action rifles they had either smuggled in from Kabul or found on the battlefield.*9 It was their long-standing practice to hack to death any wounded enemy they could find, and they thoroughly mutilated the dead by chopping off heads, limbs, etc.30

  It was therefore the custom of the British to go to great lengths to recover any of their own wounded or dead. During General Blood’s recent foray several officers had been killed and brought back for funerals and burial. It was also the custom in the regiments to auction off the belongings of dead officers and send the proceeds to their families. Thus Churchill acquired a “complete martial wardrobe,” including two good horses with all their tack—one of them a big white charger—a revolver, water bottle, blanket, and so forth. It was a strange feeling, Churchill wrote afterward, to “see the intimate belongings of one’s comrades unceremoniously distributed among strangers,” and he admitted that he felt a pang a few weeks later when he acquired some equipment belonging to “a gallant friend I had seen killed the day before.”31

  Thus armed, the next morning Churchill joined the staff of Sir Bindon who, erect in his saddle and handsomely resplendent in immaculate khakis, led a force of twelve thousand men and four thousand animals out of the Malakand encampment and into the mountain valleys where the violent tribesmen were grinding their swords.

  There were three brigades in the Malakand Field Force marching at two-day intervals, one behind the other. General Blood and his staff, including Churchill, were in the lead with the First Brigade, marching toward the Valley of the Mohmands to teach them their lesson. Along the way, however, they were compelled to pass the entrance to the Valley of the Mamunds, “whose reputation was pestilential, [so] the greatest care was taken to leave them alone.”

  Encamped for the night where the valley emptied out onto the plain, the First Brigade found itself being sniped at from a distance by some of the tribesmen. When the Second Brigade arrived at the same spot the next day, the Mamunds were waiting and “excited.” As soon as darkness fell, the valley erupted with shots from thousands of men. The British soldiers quickly began digging shallow pits against the fire, but when morning came it was found that more than forty officers and men had been hit, as well as scores of horses and pack animals.32 This was too much for General Blood, who ordered Second Brigade commander General Patrick Jeffreys to retaliate. Turning to Churchill, Blood said, “If you want to see a fight, you may ride back and join Jeffreys.”

  On September 16, 1897, the infantry, cavalry, and artillery of the Second Brigade moved into the Valley of the Mamunds in warlike formation.33 Not an enemy shot was fired, and the villages they found seemed deserted. When they reached the far end of the valley Churchill took out his field glasses and scanned the five-thousand-foot cliffs that hemmed them in on both sides. The enemy were there, all right. Clusters of tiny figures could be seen all along the mountain wall, the sun glinting on their swords and rifle barrels.34 Eventually the leading company of the 35th Sikhs, an Indian outfit, arrived, and it was decided they would attack a village that could be seen on the cliffs above. Two more Sikh companies would fight their way up a long spur to the left; the Bengal Lancers would remain as the rear guard.

  Churchill elected to go up the mountain with the Sikhs. The party consisted of five British officers and about eighty-five Sikh infantrymen. The climbing was rough, especially as they were being shot at in regular intervals. When they reached the village they found it already deserted. The enemy fire died away. Churchill took out his field glasses and scanned the valley plain. Suddenly, no British units could be seen. Here they were, he thought, this small party alone among thousands of well-armed tribesmen watching them from up on the cliffs. “I was fresh enough from Sandhurst to remember the warnings about ‘dispersion of forces,’ ” Churchill observed. “But like most young fools I was looking for trouble, and only hoped that something exciting would happen. It did!”35

  The Sikh company commander, an English captain, arrived to say that the regimental colonel had ordered them to withdraw from the hill because their flanks were “up in the air,” a decision that Churchill pronounced “sound.” The captain told Churchill, then a junior cavalry lieutenant, to take charge of a squad of eight Sikhs and remain as rear guard until the others got down to a fresh position on a knoll below. They had waited rather nervously for about ten minutes, watching the others descend, when all hell broke loose.

  “Suddenly the mountainside sprang to life,” Churchill said. “Swords flashed from behind rocks, bright flags waved here and there. A dozen white smoke puffs broke from the face in front of us.” From high up on the crag, figures in white or blue robes appeared, dropping down the mountainside from ledge to ledge. A shrill cry arose from many points: “Yi! Yi! Yi!”

  As the entire hillside became covered in smoke, Churchill could see in the distance small robed figures descending closer in every moment. The Sikhs commenced fire but it did nothing to stem the flow of the enemy, who leaped down from terraces in the cliffs. About fifty Mamunds had now gathered in rocks a hundred yards distant. The battalion adjutant arrived, dashing under fire between rocks, saying, “Come on back now. There is no time to lose. We can cover you from the knoll.” As they rose to withdraw there was a volley from the rocks, followed by screams and curses. Churchill thought the men had lain down again, which they had, except that two had been shot dead and three wounded. One, his chest torn open, was pouring blood; another “lay on his back, kicking and twisting.” An officer “was spinning around” right behind Churchill. His eye had been shot out.

  They resumed, carrying the wounded downhill. About halfway down they were rushed by about thirty enemy, either firing or brandishing swords. The Sikhs opened fire, breaking the charge, but the adjutant, a popular officer who was bringing up the rear, had been shot. Four of his Sikhs were carrying him when suddenly half a dozen enemy rushed out with swords, screaming. The men carrying the adjutant dropped him and ran off downhill. Churchill turned to try and rescue him, but before he could get there the leading Pashtun had hacked him to death with his saber.

  It had come down at last to man upon man. Broken bodies lay everywhere among the rocky crags. Bullets thrummed, hissed, and often made a curious sound, “like the noise of one sucking in air through pursed lips,” Churchill remembered. As Churchill stormed toward the enemy figure, who awaited him with sword in hand, about a dozen more armed tribesmen dropped down from the cliffs and joined the butcher.

&
nbsp; Suddenly aware of his recent shoulder injury, Churchill reached instead for his revolver. He carefully aimed it at the man, pulled the trigger, and fired with no result. He did it again, and yet again. He continued to approach, and the tribesman stepped backward and “plumped down behind a rock.” Churchill couldn’t tell if he had hit the man or not but wasn’t staying around to find out.

  Churchill clambered down to the first knoll, and then to the second, which was being held by a company of Sikhs. There were dead and wounded lying all around and bullets continued to rip the air. A running gunfight ensued while the soldiers struggled to carry two wounded British officers and six wounded Sikhs to safety. They left a dozen dead Sikhs and a dead British officer to be hacked to pieces by the tribesmen.

  It was Churchill’s first experience with mortal combat, but by no means his last.36 Other units of the Second Brigade had lost even more heavily than the regiment Churchill was with, and casualties filled both the hospital tents and the morgue tent. “I saw for the first time the anxieties, stresses, and perplexities of war,” Churchill said. “It was not apparently a gay adventure.” When Sir Bindon Blood got news of the events in the Valley of the Mamunds, he sent instructions for the Second Brigade to stay there and “lay it waste with fire and sword.” In a two-week cavalcade of punitive vengeance and destruction, the brigade obliterated nearly fifty villages—filled up their wells, blew down the castles, sawed down the shade trees, burned the fields, and wrecked the water reservoirs. All the while, sullen tribesmen watched from the mountains, knowing they were no match for the British on the open plain. The villages in the valley had been fairly easily demolished, but the story was different when it came to those located on the sides of the mountains. There the Pashtun resisted fiercely and for every village, Churchill said, “we lost two or three British officers and fifteen or twenty soldiers. Whether it was worth it, I cannot tell. At any rate…honor was satisfied.”37