Drums Along the Khyber

by Philip McCutchan

“What’s wrong with it—what’s right with it you mean, my lad! Do you think such conduct would go unremarked in Scotland?”

  “Yes—by all but a handful of miserable, hypocritical kirk props.”

  Black’s face grew mottled and he sucked in breath harshly. “You’ll not take that line with me, young Ogilvie, no, not even though your father’s the Divisional General. You damned aristocrats...” His voice trailed away into a muffled curse as he realized that for the first time in his career he had given the game away, let the veneer slip. God, how Ogilvie would laugh now behind his back! He almost screamed as he went on, “I’ll not permit that kind of misbehaviour so long as I’m adjutant of the 114th. I’ll not see the regiment dragged through the filthy mire of—of fornication! May I be forever damned if I do! You’ll not see that woman again. Man, man, I’m told she’s a married woman!”

  “You’ve been busy, haven’t you,” Ogilvie said, “finding things out. I know quite well she’s married. And I have every intention of seeing her again if she wishes it.”

  He’d said it, because he was furiously angry at Black’s ridiculous and hysterical exaggeration; but from then on fear of Andrew Black was to march with him all the way to Jalalabad. Later he felt that if he could have withdrawn it, he would have done so. He never knew how Black kept control of himself. There was a terrible pause then. Black said in a deadly quiet voice, “What I have just said cannot be given as a military order, I realize that. Nevertheless, there are ways and means, Mr. Ogilvie. So just keep it in mind that if you disobey me and see that woman again, I shall make the necessary representations to have you removed from India, from the regiment, and from the Army, on the grounds that you have failed to conduct yourself as an officer and a gentleman.” Then he banged his spurs in hard and shot away up the line of advance.

  *

  They marched, a proud and still fresh, unwearied column of kilted soldiers with their attached mountain battery of six ten-pounder breech-loading guns, officered by the Royal Artillery with the mules driven by natives, past the old Sikh fort of Jamrud eight miles west from Peshawar. Beyond this they rested briefly, falling out by the wayside, then pressed on the four miles that took them to the eastern entry to the Khyber Pass. From Jamrud to Torkham at the western end was a full fifty miles, which meant long days of forced marching, much of it in single file along narrow ledges that would prove especially hard on the animals, whose hooves would slither dangerously towards deep drops. Entering the pass, they pressed on through the stalking terror where every high crag, every peak along the way could hide a skilled Afridi or Shinwari marksman. On the way they made contact with isolated men of a field telegraph company guarding the miles of wire, unreeled from drums, that kept the division outside Jalalabad in touch with base. It was two days later, when they were well inside the pass and beyond the fort of Ali Masjid on its rocky perch, that Black suggested to the Colonel that Mr. Ogilvie might gain valuable experience by taking over the advanced scouting party as the column began to approach Landi Khotal.

  Four

  They were all tired now, weary from the slog along the Khyber, weary of the dust and sun and from the constant watch that had to be kept on the peaks and crags that towered above them for most of the way. Their feet were blistered, their uniforms dirty with sweat and with dust that the sweat had turned to a thin layer of near-mud on their bodies. Their kilts were bedraggled from the immersion from time to time in the river that ran along the gorge and in places crossed the track so that they had to ford it with their rifles held high above their heads. The pitiless sun of high summer seemed to burn right through the pith helmets; but a winter passage would probably have been worse, even if it were possible at all. In earlier days whole companies of British soldiers had perished in the Khyber snows, frozen into the very ground where they had sunk to exhausted rest.

  So far there had been no action of any sort but there was a strong feeling that it could not go on like this for long, a feeling that the rebel was drawing them on, allowing them to come thus far unhindered, lulled into a false sense of security, until they were past the point of no return. The column had straggled under the guns of the fortress of Ali Masjid; they had seen the native garrison, the friendly garrison, watching them from above, lean stringy men with hawk-like faces and tattered clothing, remotely watching from behind old-fashioned long-barrelled rifles; there had been no word from them even though the Divisional Commander had set the heliograph into the sun to wink out a message of goodwill and felicity. He might have saved the signallers’ time. The lack of response was discouraging and seemed to indicate that even though the fort was currently friendly enough not to fire on the passing regiment, such friendliness might be wearing a trifle thin under some pressure from the rebel in Jalalabad. This was another good reason for scouting well ahead towards Landi Khotal. Allegiances sometimes changed swiftly on the Frontier, and most of all, perhaps, here inside the Khyber...

  When James Ogilvie and his scouts had been joined by the main column the pipes continued their weird skirl along the pass towards the now uncovered ambush ahead, the wild thin notes beating off the mountains, rising up to reach the hovering, expectant vultures, those inevitable accompaniments to the exchange of rifle fire among opposing human disturbers of the peace. And now there was such an exchange in progress. Soon after the sharpshooters on the flanks of the column had scored a bull’s-eye on one of the advanced snipers, those vultures dived down for their meal, but rose again with the next crackle of rifle fire. A moment later the Colonel’s hand went up and the column halted. The pipes died. Men eased their packs, wiped the streaming sweat from their eyes. Talking rose, dwindled back again as the adjutant cantered down the line. Black called, “Break ranks, move off the track, take what cover you can find. Look sharp now.” He moved on. The company commanders repeated the order and the section sergeants scattered the men to left and right under the ferocious sun. For the moment there was no more firing from the peaks. Ogilvie found himself behind a large boulder with his Colour-Sergeant, MacNaught. He said, “I wonder what’s in the wind?”

  “If you’re asking me, sir, I’d say the Colonel’s decided to pick off all the snipers and reduce the ambush before continuing the march.”

  “Nothing more than that?” Ogilvie stared around, met the bleak eye of a descending carrion bird, and shuddered.

  “Nothing more than that, Mr. Ogilvie?” MacNaught gave a short, entirely humourless laugh. “We’ll be bound to lose some men, sir, and to them it’ll be just the same as if the whole bloody Afghan army had been set on to them.”

  Ogilvie coloured. “Of course.” He looked around again, at the men steady behind the rifles, their eyes scanning the pass and the high, rocky sides that hemmed them in. There was a tense and utter silence, the kind of silence that comes only in high places, and a dead stillness in the air. The only things that moved, it seemed, in all the landscape were the slow-motion wings of the hovering carrion birds and above them a few strands of high cloud. Time hung in the air, a suspended sword. Ogilvie felt, not exactly fear as yet, but a kind of horrible anticipation and a strong desire for something to start happening, anything to break the mounting tension. He was conscious of a corporal’s rather wheezy breathing over his shoulder, and this began to irritate him beyond all reason, as though something might in fact happen and, because of the corporal’s heavy breath, drawn through a drooping moustache, he would be unable to hear it. But when it did come, which was within the next thirty seconds, there was no doubt about whether he could hear it or not. It was a tearing screen of fire, of bullets that whistled down from the seemingly uninhabited peaks to smash into rocks and hard earth and human bodies. There were yells and cries and shouted orders and the 114th answered with every rifle and with the battalion’s two machine-guns, the Maxims. As more fire came down upon them they began to isolate the smoke bursts and find their targets. Bodies crashed down to the pass, falling with outflung arms and legs to bounce bloodily off the rocky crags. Behind Ogil
vie, the heavy breathing had stopped, and it had stopped because the corporal was dead. A wetness that Ogilvie felt on the back of his neck was the corporal’s blood that had welled and spurted from a hole in his neck and another in his forehead. As his father had warned, Ogilvie felt sick. The scene spun around him, oddly woven in drifting acrid gun-smoke. Near him, two more men lay dead, another worked the bolt of his rifle with blood streaming down his right arm. Then, as suddenly as it had started, the shooting stopped.

  Ogilvie lifted his head, looked out over the top of the boulder. Distantly, Lord Dornoch was standing with his father and Major Hay, out in the open, looking through field glasses, scanning the peaks. From behind, hooves rang on the hard track, Black’s horse came back up the line at a fast canter, slipping on loose stones. Black’s uniform was awry, his helmet had gone, his trews were dark with blood, he was leaning down to one side and his right hand was gripping the wrist of a tribesman whose body bumped cruelly along the rough, lacerating ground. Black, it seemed, was taking his prisoner to the Colonel. Or attempting to. He had gone past Ogilvie when his grip slipped and the man fell and lay still. Four soldiers jumped hum, started kicking him. He made no sound. No officer interfered, no order was given to stop the kicking. Again Ogilvie felt sick. Sandhurst had failed to prepare him for this. Sandhurst produced gentlemen, not mindless brutes. You played up and you played the game. Surely this was not the way British soldiers behaved? At Sandhurst, as well as in the story books, the British soldier had been represented as a chivalrous hero who treated his enemy with courtesy once vanquished. When the Colonel reached the spot he said briefly, “All right, men, that’ll do. Stand him on his feet.” The tribesman was dragged brutally upright, bayonets pressed into his back, another booted foot took him hard in the groin. He had a proud face, hawk-like as the men who had stared down from Ali Masjid, with an out-thrust bearded chin. He stared boldly up at the Colonel on horseback. Lord Dornoch spoke to him in some hill dialect that Ogilvie couldn’t follow. There was no answer, but after a while the man’s head jerked forward like a snake’s and a stream of stained spit landed fair and square on Dornoch’s shabraque.

  Dornoch’s head went back and his lip curled. He glanced at Black. “Have you been following what I was saying?” he asked.

  “I’m afraid not, Colonel. I’m not familiar with—”

  “Well, I’m asking him for information as to the strength and disposition of any more tribal forces along the pass. I’ve told him that if he doesn’t give me a satisfactory answer he’s going to die.”

  Hay, who had ridden up by this time, said, “I doubt if he’ll talk, Colonel. These men don’t mind death.”

  Dornoch gave a bleak smile. “They don’t fear death by shooting, John, but they do fear a dishonourable death, and he knows quite well what he’s going to get. I’m pretty sure he understands me, but I’ll try another dialect to make quite certain.”

  He did so; he tried patiently, several times more. At last he said, “He understands. I can see it in his eyes. But you’re right, Major. He’s not going to talk.” He spoke once again to the captive tribesman. There was no reaction beyond a shrug. Dornoch studied him hard for a few more moments, then said indifferently to the adjutant, “Very well, Andrew. Set up a sheer-legs, if you please.”

  Black saluted and wheeled his horse. He shouted orders. Men ran to bring out three lengths of heavy timber from the baggage-train. These were lashed together at one end with rope belonging to the gunners; another rope was rove over the join, and then the three lengths were drawn inwards at the foot and the top thus raised until it was some twelve feet above the ground. Black personally tested it for firmness by swinging on the rope, then a dozen men tailed on to the trailing part of the rope while the farrier-sergeant made a hangman’s knot at the end falling between the sheer-legs. The tribesman was lifted on to a horse with his hands tied behind his back and the horse was led to its position below the dangling knot, which was looped over the man’s head and pulled taut around his neck. With the soldiers standing by, ready to take the strain, just a little slack was allowed and then the horse was given a sharp welt on its flank with a whip. The animal shot forward and Ogilvie believed he heard the sharp click from the man’s neck as his weight came with a jerk on to the rope. The body was left to dangle while the British dead were decently covered with cairns of stones. Lord Dornoch read a simple service over them, the dead man was then cut down and his body left in the sun, the sheer-legs were dismantled and the timbers stowed away again, and then the battalion formed up in column and continued along the pass towards Jalalabad. It had been a small and un-noteworthy engagement. And had left its mark only in a handful of wounded and in the dead they had abandoned to the company of the many others that signposted earlier engagements of British regiments that had brought the Raj to the sub-continent.

  As night fell, the 114th were once again halted, this time to fall out and make camp and then find much-needed sleep. Ogilvie was trying to make himself a comfortable bivouac in the entry to a fissure in the rock when MacKinlay came to him.

  “Brooding, James?” MacKinlay asked.

  Ogilvie straightened. “A little, perhaps.”

  “Well; you’ve had a minor blooding today and you came through it well. You’ll feel just as scared next time, though. And the time after that.” He looked quizzically at Ogilvie. “I take it you were scared? No. disgrace, old boy, you know.”

  “I wasn’t as scared as I’d thought I might be. The whole thing seemed rather…well, impersonal. As though it wasn’t happening to me.”

  “It doesn’t happen to you till it’s you that stops a bullet. I know just what you mean, James.” MacKinlay squatted and lit up his pipe. Fragrance wafted over Ogilvie, pleasant in the cool evening air. “We’ll be getting more of today’s little effort. We’re in the danger zone now and the Pathans won’t have used up all their tricks by any means.”

  “I didn’t think they would’ve,” Ogilvie said shortly. “It’s not that that bothers me.”

  MacKinlay looked at him over the bowl of his pipe. “What, then?”

  Ogilvie said, “The way our fellows kicked that poor devil half to death—”

  “Oh come! That’s an exaggeration, James!”

  “Well, anyway, they did kick him. And no one stopped them. And the hanging—just to make it more beastly. The Colonel could have had him shot, couldn’t he?”

  MacKinlay nodded sombrely. “He could, but thank God he didn’t. The Colonel was right, James, even if your kicking beauties were not. But even their conduct is perfectly understandable. They’re as green as grass, just as green as they can be in terms of Indian service, and they’re scared, and they’d lost some friends. To them, that one man was the whole enemy and they took it out on him. If it had gone on too long, it’d have been stopped, but a good officer lets his men have their head for a space when necessary. You’d do well to bear that in mind, James.” He grinned. “It purges the system!”

  “It’s still not British.”

  “No, it’s not, I agree—not what we’ve all been taught at home and at school is British, at all events. Cricket—not hitting a man when he’s down—walloping some bounder who’s annoyed one’s sister—the hunting field...though I doubt if we’re awfully British towards the fox when all’s said and done!” He frowned. “What is British, James? Do you know?”

  “Fair play,” Ogilvie answered. “A touch of chivalry towards a beaten enemy.”

  “Again I agree,” MacKinlay said. “Or rather, I would agree west of Suez, say. But out here we’re dealing with natives. They’re different. The whole way they look at things is different. I remember my grandmother saying once that the villagers at my mother’s family home in Sussex didn’t feel things the way people of our sort did. You know what I mean—they were closer to the earth, to life and death—if they lost a child, say, they simply got down to it and had another, it didn’t affect them as it did us. The inference, of course, was that they were a kind of unfee
ling species, almost sub-human. I don’t say I agree with that view at all. But it does illustrate what the Pathan, and the Indian too, really is. They have totally different values out here, my lad! They wouldn’t know the difference between fair play and a fried egg. They wouldn’t show you or me any fair play, and chivalry is just weakness to them—to the low-caste ones anyway.” He shook his head, blew a great cloud of tobacco smoke around. “There’s lots of things that aren’t British by Sandhurst standards—you’ll find out! No, take it from me, the Colonel was dead right today. That hanged body’s going to be a warning to the tribes, all of them, as to what’ll happen to them when we’ve settled the Jalalabad rebel’s hash. It may make them more amenable to surrender as soon as they can do so without losing too much face. I repeat once again, the Colonel was right, James. Right from another point of view as well: us! Or most of us, that is. As I said, the men are green, and they’re going into action far too soon after arrival out here, really. Dornoch knows that. So does the Staff—so does your old man, of course. And what we’re badly in need of is a crash course in the ways of the North-West Frontier. That’s what the Colonel started to give us today, old son, and you’ll find you won’t feel so badly about it next time.”

  “I suppose anyone can get coarsened if they try.”

  MacKinlay said quietly, “That’s not the way to look at it. You want to survive, don’t you? You’ve got to get used to the idea that this isn’t Buck House guard duty. Well—’nough said, old boy. I’ll take myself off to bed. ’Night, James.”

  “Good night...”

  MacKinlay got heavily to his feet, seemed about to say something further but evidently thought better of it. He turned away. For a while Ogilvie watched him making for his own bivouac and after he had vanished he heard the crunch of his footsteps. And after that, silence, and the night, and the moon over the cruel peaks, and a scud of dark cloud, and time to think. And, one way and another, plenty to think about.