Treachery in Tibet

by John Wilcox

  The returning officer joined Jones and Fonthill’s little party round their campfire that night – where whisky was dispensed to celebrate Jenkins’s escape – and from the young subaltern they learnt that the gate in the Yatung wall had, in fact, been left open and the army had gone through without opposition. A forward supply base had been established in the Chumbi Valley some six miles or so ahead, where the main party had been joined from the north by the original expedition from Khamba Jong. The escort under Macdonald had gone forward to reconnoitre the way ahead of the base, which had been christened New Chumbi and where it was planned that Christmas would be spent.

  ‘Good God!’ exclaimed Alice. ‘Is it Christmas? I had completely forgotten. Oh dear, I have bought no presents for anyone. I never gave it a thought.’

  ‘Well,’ sniffed Jenkins, ‘I knew it was approachin’, like.’

  Simon regarded him sceptically. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Back up there in the snow, I saw this old feller, dressed in red, with a great white beard. “Where’re you goin, bach?” I called. “Back to me sledge,” ’e shouted back. “It’s too bloody dangerous for me up ’ere,” he says, “I’m off out of it, back to Iceland, where it’s warmer.” Very wise, I thought. Very wise.’

  Everyone sighed and grinned, although Sunil, listening intently as ever, remained with his mouth open, looking from face to face, with a puzzled frown on his face.

  The next morning the two trains parted company and the descent continued. The ice had now given way completely to a brown slush which provided almost as insecure a footing as the ice, but the trail had widened and the column was able to increase its pace. Soon they advanced cautiously down a wooded gorge and, rounding a bend, their way was blocked by a stone wall over which the roofs of a small village could be glimpsed. But the gateway set in the middle of the wall was propped open and they were waved through by a grinning Gurkha.

  On the other side the trail led through the mean streets of Yatung and immediately the little column was winding its way between excited men, women and children, all smiling and waving.

  ‘Blimey,’ said Jenkins, whose confidence had now been regained and who had taken to bowing from his pony and waving his hand in little gestures, ‘It’s like King Eddy’s coronation. I think we can put away our guns.’

  ‘We’re now in Tibet proper,’ called back Jones. ‘But I’m told that the people of this valley are not your true Tibetans. They are not of pure Tibetan stock and they’re called Tromopos. Much more friendly, I hear, than the folk further into the land. So it’s not too surprising, perhaps, that our way has not been challenged so far.’

  ‘Just as well,’ muttered Fonthill. ‘We could never have fought off an attack up on that damned mountain.’

  The way now led down in easy stages until they were in the sunlit valley of Chumbi itself, which, at only 8,000 feet above sea level, seemed green and pleasant indeed, with the river Ammo Chu gurgling and bouncing between rocks in its middle. They plodded along, following the course of the river, until by the end of the day, they reached the base camp of New Chumbi, which had been established a few miles beyond the village of Chumbi.

  The camp sprawled out onto the plain in a series of ridged tents, interspersed with mounds of provisions, which had been roughly fenced off. Fonthill could see no sign of any defence works, except for guards who patrolled the perimeter. The base, he presumed, was not far enough advanced into Tibet to be considered under danger of attack and certainly any troops advancing across the rocky plain would be seen at a distance in the thin mountain air. The great white peak of Mount Chomolhari, at 23,950 feet looking remarkably like the Matterhorn, thought Simon, glittering and shimmering over all in the distance.

  They were met by a quartermaster who directed where the pack transport should unload and sent a giant Sikh (Alice remembered hearing that Kitchener had promised Younghusband that he would select only the tallest native troops to accompany the mission, so to impress the Tibetans) to show them where to pitch their tents. Then Fonthill went in search of Younghusband.

  He found the Colonel in a tent no more impressive than any other, leaning back in his camp chair, reading a book, one booted foot on a table leg to balance it. He sprang to his feet on the approach of the new arrival and stood, smiling gently, his hand outstretched. Simon took it and found his hand engulfed in the firmest of grips. He regarded Francis Younghusband keenly.

  Before setting out, Fonthill had done his best to add to the little he knew about this famous frontier diplomat and explorer of the Himalayas. He knew that the man was nine years younger than himself and had been born into a very distinguished Indian army family. Gazetted into the King’s Dragoon Guards, he had joined them at Meerut, India, in 1882. Despite having few private means with which to keep up with his contemporaries in this smartest of regiments, he was appointed adjutant and then given six months’ leave to travel in Manchuria. An explorer was born.

  Although only in his mid twenties, he rode alone through Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang and then, through a previously unexplored pass, into Kashmir. He was seconded to the Indian government and clashed amicably with the Russians in the high passes and in 1893 became the first political agent in Chitral, where he met the peripatetic Curzon, with whom he formed a bond. While home on leave, Chitral was attacked by Pathans and a British mission besieged in the capital. Younghusband had pleaded to be sent back but when permission was refused he went back anyway, to report on the uprising for The Times, eventually galloping on ahead of the relieving column and becoming the first man to reach the beleaguered garrison. All this adventuring was frowned upon by the Indian government and he was relegated to obscure civil service postings until Curzon rescued him and appointed him Resident in Indore, from where he had been summoned to lead the mission to Tibet.

  It was, then, a man who – very like Fonthill himself – had earned almost myth-like status in the Empire, who now shook Simon’s hand so firmly. He was not physically impressive, being only 5ft 6ins tall, but he had a wiry frame and rather bulbous piercing blue eyes that, usually, were kindly and sparkling, above a walrus moustache of Kitchener proportions.

  ‘I am amazed that our paths have not crossed before, my dear fellow,’ he said now, pumping Fonthill’s hand. ‘Although I have been shut up in these, I must say, beautiful mountains for most of the time that you have been gallivanting about the Empire doing goodness knows what splendid things.’

  Simon smiled deprecatingly. ‘Good gracious no,’ he said. ‘I have been a gadfly compared to you, sir.’

  ‘Oh please don’t “sir” me, Fonthill. I shall be covered in embarrassment. After all, I have just been given only the temporary – very temporary most probably – rank of colonel, while you ended the Boer War as a brigadier general, indeed.’

  ‘Yes, but also very temporary. And I am now just an ordinary civilian who, to be quite frank, is a little puzzled about what My Lord Curzon wants me to do here.’

  Younghusband threw back his head and chuckled. ‘Yes, well, I can quite understand that. We have me, supposed to be in overall charge of the mission but particularly here to serve a diplomatic purpose, and we have Macdonald, with the also temporary rank of brigadier, in charge of the escort and therefore all military matters, and now you here as well. But, between us, if we don’t get to Lhasa and put a spoke into the Russians’ wheel, I shall be very surprised.’

  Then he frowned and gestured into the tent. ‘But I am forgetting my manners, my dear fellow. I am sure you would like some tea?’

  He shouted loudly in Hindustani and the two sat down, a trifle awkwardly, opposite each other on camp stools. Fonthill felt an immediate liking for this charming and twinkle-eyed man, who seemed so definitively English and yet who had spent most of his adult life in the mountains of Central Asia.

  ‘Curzon, of course, wrote and told me that you had accepted his invitation to join the mission,’ said Younghusband.

  ‘I do hope that you had no objection to that?
’

  ‘Of course not. Although, like you, I was a little unsure about what exactly would be your role on this rather difficult expedition.’

  ‘Quite so. Well …’ Simon shifted a touch uneasily on his chair. ‘Curzon wrote that I would be his special representative with the mission and suggested that I should put myself at the disposal of yourself and of General Macdonald, with …’ he paused awkwardly again ‘the suggestion that, if problems did emerge between the two of you, perhaps I could provide some sort of ameliorative influence. I’m afraid it’s all rather vague.’

  Younghusband regarded him quizzically for a moment, with one eyebrow raised. ‘But you accepted his invitation, despite the perhaps rather nebulous nature of the brief?’

  Fonthill grinned. ‘Oh, like a shot. You see, I have always wanted to go to Tibet and the Himalayas have always fascinated me. Alice and I were planning to go climbing there some years ago but we got caught up in the Pathan rebellion, got … er … diverted, so to speak and the opportunity then slipped away.’

  ‘Ah yes, your wife – the amazing Alice Griffith. I have been a committed reader of her work in The Morning Post for years. Her name was never on her pieces but the word spread and I grew to recognise her style and became an admirer. I presume she is with you?’

  ‘Oh yes. She has been accredited to the column.’

  ‘Good. I won’t make the mistake of questioning her physical ability to cope with conditions on the march. Knowing her record, I expect that she is probably fitter than any soldier, well, white soldier, that is, in the ranks. She will stir us up, no doubt. It is difficult to entertain here, of course, but when you have settled in you must come and have supper.’

  ‘That’s kind of you.’

  ‘There are three other correspondents expected soon, you know, Edmund Candler of the Daily Mail, Perceval Landon of The Times, who is supposed to know the Viceroy personally, and I believe that some feller from Reuters News Agency is also on his way. No doubt your wife will know them?’

  ‘No doubt.’

  Younghusband produced his infectious chuckle again. ‘I am not at all disconcerted by the presence of press people here. But Macdonald – he’s gone ahead reconnoitring the way forward, you know …’

  Simon nodded.

  ‘Yes, dear old Mac isn’t happy with them at all. Feels that they are an intrusion and an unnecessary complication on what could be a difficult project.’

  ‘I must confess I feel that, in this age of democratic, open government and so on, that’s a rather old-fashioned view.’

  ‘Quite so. But now, we have digressed on this important matter of your role here …’ He was interrupted by the arrival of a rather dishevelled, Mongolian-looking native, wearing what looked like dirty sacking, who brought in a teapot and bowl of milk, placed it on the table without ceremony, grinned at the two Englishman and shuffled away.

  ‘Tibetan,’ grunted Younghusband. ‘A local. Like to employ ’em when I can, although,’ he smiled, ‘they are not exactly overflowing with social graces. No lemon, I’m afraid. Milk?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Yes,’ his pouring duties completed, the Colonel sat back, teacup in hand. ‘Back to you. Curzon wrote to me about you in exactly the same terms as he expressed to you. Saying that your great experience in the field, both as a … ah … rather irregular soldier and sometime amateur but successful diplomat could be of invaluable help both to Mac and to me.’

  Simon smiled. ‘Offering me as a kind of dogsbody, by the sound of it.’

  ‘Well, a bit more than that, I would think. But, as you have already hinted, I think there was a bit more to it than that. You see,’ he paused. ‘May I be frank?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well, although I was delighted when Macdonald was appointed – lots of experience and, as a sapper, well qualified to handle the sort of tasks that have cropped up on this excursion into most difficult terrain: road laying, bridge building and all that, you know?’

  Simon nodded.

  ‘Also, he had the backing of Kitchener, the army commander-in-chief in India, a fellow Engineer.’ Younghusband sipped his tea, reflectively. ‘Which brings me to the point. It is no secret, alas, that Curzon and K don’t altogether see eye to eye on the breakdown of responsibilities between the army and the civil service in India. Two strong personalities and,’ he smiled, ‘egos, clashing here, I fear.’

  Nodding again, Fonthill felt that, at last, they were getting to the nub of the affair – and a faint sense of uneasiness about the future of the expedition crept over him.

  ‘Yes, well,’ the Colonel continued, ‘to some extent that split might have repercussions here with us in Tibet. There is no one person in overall command of this expedition. Macdonald has been given a rank senior to me, of course, and is formally in charge of the escort and is responsible for the safety of us all. I am the diplomatic head of the mission and, as our orders strictly give the purpose of this whole enterprise as opening up diplomatic channels with the Tibetans – with strict orders not to instigate military operations against them or to occupy Tibetan property or territory – it is a command situation which could prevent problems.’

  A silence fell on the tent, broken only by the distant grunting of mules and the creaking of harness. ‘Hmmm,’ responded Fonthill. ‘I see that. Although,’ he smiled, ‘it all depends, of course, upon the character and personalities of the … er … joint commanders.’

  The Colonel put down his tea sharply and brushed the edge of his luxurious moustache. ‘Absolutely!’ he cried. ‘You have put your finger on it exactly. There lies the problem. Now,’ he leant forward, ‘when he returns you will see that Macdonald will pitch his tent and that of his staff on the right-hand side of the column.’ He raised an enquiring eyebrow. ‘You will appreciate the significance of that?’

  ‘Oh yes. The senior officer always takes that position in the field.’

  ‘Quite so. Well, I have never made a fuss about that, but I find it a little irksome. The most important thing, however, is that I am discovering that Macdonald is ridiculously cautious on the advance, to the point that he has slowed down the progress of the whole column and is constantly in opposition to me about the supplies needed to support us. He is now foraging ahead to set up supply depots for the march. We are becoming so preoccupied with our supply line that it appears to me that it will be next Christmas before we even get to Gyantse.’

  ‘I see. Are you expecting to be challenged, militarily by the Tibetans along the way?’

  ‘We just don’t know. It has not happened so far, but we can be vulnerable, of course, in the high passes and we have more of those to surmount before we reach Gyantse. It remains to be seen.’

  ‘Well,’ Simon frowned, ‘I suppose the General feels his responsibility keenly. An armed advance deeply into so-called enemy territory will throw up logistical problems. The further you go into these mountains in midwinter the longer your lines of communication – always the most vulnerable part of any advancing troops. And, of course, these mountains and plateaus are among the most inhospitable places on earth.’ His frown softened into a smile. ‘I have already seen enough to realise that.’

  ‘Good. You appreciate the military situation. But, you know, I am not unaware of the problems we have in trying to approach the Tibetans and getting them to talk. They are ruled not by the Dalai Lama, as everyone thinks, but by the religious caste of monks and lamas that completely dominate the country. These are all, it seems, xenophobic medievalists who subjugate the people in the most cruel way.’

  Younghusband leant forward in emphasis. ‘My dear Fonthill, do you know that until Mac improvised a basic little wooden cart here on this plain to carry supplies, wheeled vehicles had never been used in Tibet! Just think of that.’

  He took a gulp of tea and leant back comfortably. ‘They are arrogant in the extreme and contemptuous of our power in India. Any sign of weakness on our part – our snail’s pace advance, looking as though we a
re timorously afraid of them, or any temporary retreat, will give them heart and distance them even further from the negotiating table.

  ‘You know,’ the walrus moustache bent into a warm smile, ‘I suppose that both Macdonald and I have our individual careers at stake on this mission. I want to surge on ahead, as fast as is humanly possible, to put pressure on the Tibetans to negotiate with us and give us equal, if not greater influence in Lhasa than the Russians. Mac, on the other hand, is terrified of being defeated by an attack on us by the Tibetan army. It would be the end of his career. Hence his excessive caution.

  ‘But look here. Things are not quite as bad, perhaps, as I have painted them. These are very early days in terms of our task here. I am only pointing out embryonic problems which, I do hope, will not develop further and to illustrate to you what, I think, was in the back of Curzon’s mind in asking you to join us as his … ah … what you might call “special representative”. Because of K, he could not put me in overall command here, but I feel he could sense that issues, such as those I have described, could arise to threaten the success of the mission.’

  The bulbous eyes twinkled. ‘It’s a great tribute to you, my dear fellow, that he thinks you might prove to be an ameliorative influence here, if things get worse.’ He gestured towards Fonthill with both hands, as though giving some kind of benediction.

  Simon sat deep in thought and was unconscious of the darkness developing within the tent as the sun disappeared quickly. Eventually, he grunted. ‘I am most grateful to you for explaining things, so openly, ah … may I call you Francis?’

  ‘Of course, Simon.’

  ‘I presume that Lord Curzon did not quite put things so clearly to you?’