by George Bruce
Mrs. Boyd was helped up out of the snow and on to his horse by a passing trooper, while another took her son up with him. Shortly after this the trooper was shot and the boy was seized by the Afghans.
Mrs. Mainwaring had scrambled up out of the snow with her baby in her arms to find that little Mary Anderson had disappeared. She stumbled on with her own child until an Afghan horseman rode up and threatened her with his sword. While she was pleading with him a sepoy forced his way through the melee and shot the Afghan dead. He then gave his arm to her and supported her along three miles of the pass until he suddenly fell without a sound — shot dead by a hidden marksman.
Mrs. Mainwaring must have gritted her teeth then. She waded on through the deep snow, across the icy stream, picking her way with her baby in her arms over the bodies of the dead and the dying while the Afghan bullets droned through the air and fugitives all around her were struck down. ‘She, however,’ said Lady Sale, ‘got safe to camp with her child, but had no opportunity to change her clothes; and I know from experience that it was many days ere my wet habit became thawed, and can fully appreciate her discomforts.’
Three thousand troops and camp-followers were shot down or knifed by the bloodthirsty Ghilzyes in this pass. The destruction of the army was following its inevitable course.
The hostages — Pottinger, Mackenzie and Lawrence, riding with Mahommed Akbar, Sultan Jan Fishar and about thirty horsemen — threaded their way among the dead and dying in the wake of the retreating forces. Already, the tribesmen — some of them boys — were stripping the wounded, then hacking them to pieces. Mackenzie saw children cut in two; men and women with their throats cut from ear to ear.
Mahommed Akbar himself now rode ahead to try to stop the firing. But Major Pottinger swore he heard him issue contradictory orders — ‘Stop firing!’ in Persian which a few of the British officers understood too, and ‘Slay them!’ in Pushtu, the Afghan native tongue, which probably only Pottinger knew.
If this was so, and Mahommed Akbar was guilty of such treachery, it was contradicted in part by acts of kindness and mercy. He personally sent back first a wounded soldier of the 44th Foot to the safety of the hostages’ party; later Captain Boyd’s little son Hugh, whom he had found captured by the tribesmen — Lawrence took the boy up on his horse. Then Sultan Jan, who was with Akbar, up where the firing was hottest, sent back to them a Mrs. Bourke, wife of a private of the 13th Foot, whom he had rescued as a tribesman was about to cut off her fingers because her rings were too tight to pull off.
Mrs. Bourke was pregnant and so stupefied with fear and cold that she could hardly be roused enough to be hoisted up behind Mackenzie on his horse. He recalls that they wrapped a sheepskin coat around her, tying the sleeves in front, but it was only with the greatest pains that he could keep her petticoats from riding up, a point on which he was especially anxious on account of the Afghans.
Mrs. Bourke was terribly thirsty he recalled, and cried out every now and then: ‘Och, Captain dear, for the love of God get me a dhrink of wather!’ A heavy snowstorm began and Mackenzie felt her licking up the snow as it fell on his shoulders.
One of the Afghan escort now gave Mackenzie another precious burden — little Seymour Stoker, aged two, son of a private in the 13th Foot. He was found in the arms of his dead mother, all splashed with her blood — ‘a very fine young woman’ — Mackenzie recalled.
That night the hostages and their escort spent in a small fort in a large room with a smoky fire in the middle of the stone floor. Mrs. Bourke was at last given a drink of water. ‘Lawrence and I,’ Mackenzie relates, ‘pulled off little Stoker’s shoes and stockings, dried and warmed them, and made him nice, and then put him down to sleep.
‘We all lay down with our heads close to the ground to avoid the smarting, blinding smoke. At midnight they brought in sheep’s tail boiled in water, and half-baked indigestible bread, which we dipped in the broth. Poor little Stoker ate a mouthful or two but he was quite exhausted with terror and fatigue. Little Boyd lay snug under George Lawrence’s poshteen and Mrs. Bourke crouched down a little apart from the circle of men.’
The carnage in the pass had gone on until late in the afternoon. Companies of the 44th and 37th Foot had protected the rear, doggedly keeping up a heavy fire on the Afghans. At one time the pass became completely choked — the rearguard troops were stationary under a heavy flanking fire from the heights and they withdrew to higher ground, under the shelter of some rocks.
Here they were joined by General Elphinstone, Colonel Chambers of the 5th Light Cavalry, Captain Hay, a few troopers and the only remaining gun. They held the Afghans back while the remnants of the retreat straggled on out of the pass. Finally as darkness fell, the rearguard marched on, the soldiers heroically manhandling through the deep snow the gun which the horses were too weak to pull alone; and in this way they reached the camp.
But it was a halting-place in a snowstorm on high undulating ground, rather than a camp. There were no fires, no food — all reserve rations had been lost — and for most of the survivors no shelter. Four small tents only remained. One belonged to the General, two to the ladies and children and one to the sick and wounded. ‘But an immense number of poor wounded wretches wandered about the camp destitute of shelter and perished during the night,’ Captain Vincent Eyre relates. ‘Groans of misery and distress assailed the ear from all quarters… The snow was the only bed for all, and of many, ere morning, it proved the winding-sheet. It is only marvellous that any should have survived that fearful night.’
Lady Sale and her daughter and the dying Sturt rested on the side of a bank until a tent was pitched for her and the other women and their husbands and children. Lady Sale was an odd nineteenth-century mixture of brave stoicism and domestic incapacity. When the tent was pitched, she complains — ‘We had no one to scrape the snow off the ground in it.’ She later faced painful surgery without anaesthetic or a word of complaint. ‘Dr. Bryce, Horse Artillery, came and examined Sturt’s wound: he dressed it; but I saw by the expression of his countenance that there was no hope. He afterwards kindly cut the ball out of my wrist and dressed both my wounds.’
Sturt, a brave and intelligent junior officer, who by virtue of his influence as the only engineer officer had more than once urged upon his seniors on the staff, action — such as a move into the Bala Hissar — that could have saved the force, was carried into the tent by Captain Johnson and Lieutenant Mein. ‘Mrs. Sturt’s bedding (saved by the ayah riding on it, whom we kept up close with ourselves),’ Lady Sale relates, ‘was now a comfort for my poor wounded son. He suffered dreadful agony all night, and intolerable thirst; and most grateful did we feel to Mr. Mein for going out constantly to the stream to procure water: we had only a small vessel to fetch it in, which contained but a few mouthfuls.
‘To sleep in such anxiety of mind and intense cold was impossible. There were nearly thirty of us packed together without room to turn. The sepoys and camp-followers, half-frozen tried to force their way,’ she complained, ‘not only into the tent but actually into our beds — a poshteen or pelisse of sheep skin, half spread on the snow and the other half wrapped over one.’
At sunrise next morning, 9 January, the fourth day of the retreat, the camp-followers and sepoys moved off without orders, and the depleted British force followed an hour later. Sturt was dying, most probably through loss of blood, and since he was unable to ride, other transport had to be found for him. ‘Mrs. Trevor,’ Florentia Sale recorded, ‘kindly rode a pony, and gave up her place in the kajava to Sturt, who must otherwise have been left to die on the ground. The rough motion increased his suffering and accelerated his death, but he was still conscious that his wife and I were with him; and we had the sorrowful satisfaction of giving him Christian burial.’ He was the only one of all to receive it.
The British troops had gone about a mile next day at sunrise when the General ordered them to return. Akbar Khan had suggested that the retreat should halt for the day, in return fo
r which he would send food and fuel. More important, he had offered through Captain Skinner to give protection to the handful of English women and children because the troops could no longer protect them; barely a thousand of them were left alive.
Akbar’s promise of food and fuel had three times already failed the starving force, but again Elphinstone had believed him and had halted the retreat — though it would have been possible to send over the women and children without stopping the onward march to safety.
The delay caused despair. Shelton went to the General and protested that such a measure would cause the total destruction of the whole force. ‘But he was not to be moved, replying that the Sirdar had sent to him to say, if he would stop there, that he would send him provisions, which, as I foretold, never came.’
A party of Afghan horsemen arrived to escort the women and children — and the husbands, for upon this Elphinstone had rightly insisted — to Akbar’s camp in a fort near by. They must at this time have said goodbye to their compatriots, half-beaten as they were, with mixed feelings, for there was no guarantee of their security with Akbar.
Lady Sale was too upset about Sturt’s death to note the reactions of the other women. ‘Overwhelmed with domestic affliction, neither Mrs. Sturt nor I were in a fit state to decide for ourselves whether we would accept the Sirdar’s protection or not,’ she relates. ‘There was but faint hope of our ever getting safe to Jellalabad; and we followed the stream. But although there was much talk regarding our going over, all I personally know of the affair is, that I was told we were all to go, and that our horses were ready, and we must mount immediately and be off.’
Apart from Lady Macnaghten, Lady Sale and Mrs. Sturt, the group included Mrs. Boyd and two children, Mrs. Mainwaring and one child, Mrs. Anderson and two children, one ten days old, the third having been carried off; Mrs. Eyre and one child, Mrs. Waller and one child, Mrs. Trevor and seven children; Mrs. Ryley and two children, Mrs. Wade, Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Burnes.
They were accompanied by Captain Waller, Troup, Trevor and Eyre, all of whom were wounded; Captains Boyd and Anderson, Mr. Ryley and Sergeant Wade. Lieutenant Melville escorted them and returned to report their safe arrival. It was doubtless not forgotten by both the General and Akbar Khan, that the latter’s father, brother, their wives and many members of their families were then in the hands of the British in India. Each group of hostages thus guaranteed the safe return of the other.
Mahommed Akbar received the ladies very courteously, according to Lawrence. He added, however, that ‘it wag destressing beyond expression to see our countrywomen placed in the hands of these ruffians, but there was no help for it… Many of them during these four wretched days had tasted nothing but some dry biscuits and some sherry or brandy. With the exception of Lady Macnaghten… they had lost everything except the clothes they were wearing.’
Lawrence then explained, at Akbar’s request, that they were the Sirdar’s honoured guests, that they should want for nothing he could give them and that on the first favourable occasion he would have them escorted safely to Jellalabad. They were then distributed among three small rooms in the inner court of the fort, the men were assigned a fourth room and a sheepskin cloak was supplied to everyone who needed it.
The remnants of the troops and camp-followers began their hopeless struggle onwards to Jellalabad. In the various written accounts of the retreat there is no evidence that daily returns of casualties were made in the normal way — all military organisation had long since vanished and the official records of the force were lost or destroyed.
But it can be deduced that on this morning of 10 January, when some of the worst ambushes had still to be faced, that out of the force of 4,500 fighting-men which had left Kabul only four days earlier, some 3,750 had been killed outright, wounded or fallen sick and left to die. And of the pathetic camp-followers only 4,000 men, women and children were still alive out of the 12,000 who had left Kabul.
It is hard to imagine the tortured state of mind of the survivors. ‘Every man among us,’ Captain Johnson noted in his Journal, ‘thought that ere many hours should pass he was doomed to die either by cold, hunger, or the swords of our enemies; for, if attacked, although we might for a short time hold out, nothing could eventually save us…’
In the high mountain passes where the snow glittered brilliantly except where it was stained dark with blood, snow blindness now affected many of the troops on top of all their other terrors. ‘My eyes,’ Johnson lamented, ‘had become so inflamed from the reflection of the snow that I was nearly blind and the pain intense.’
And they were now to feel the enemy’s most savage attacks so far.
After the Khoord-Kabul Pass, a series of narrow precipitous gorges followed, the first of which was Tunghee Tareekee, barely 50 yards long and 15 feet wide. Through it flowed a small stream and towards the heights numbers of Afghan tribesmen had been seen hurrying. The British troops were the only efficient ones left, the sepoys having nearly all suffered so much from frostbite that they could barely hold a musket, much less aim and squeeze the trigger.
The advance, led by the British 44th Foot, with the 5th Cavalry troopers and the gunners with the remaining gun, a howitzer, forced their way with difficulty through the terrified camp-followers to the front of the column. Directly they approached the gorge they met with a heavy fire. By fighting back desperately they managed to get through, though with men falling continually. The mingled sepoys and camp-followers packed together in the narrow gorge met with even more deadly attacks.
‘Fresh numbers fell at every volley, and the gorge was soon choked with the dead and the dying,’ noted Vincent Eyre. ‘The Afghans rushed down upon their helpless and unresisting victims sword in hand and a general massacre took place. The last small remnant of the Native Infantry regiments were here scattered and destroyed; and the public treasure with all the remaining baggage fell into the hands of the enemy.’
The advance pushed on to Kubbur-i-Jubbar, about five miles ahead and there waited to enable the rest of the force to join them. But only a few stragglers from time to time came up. Soon the awful truth dawned upon them. Of the troops, they were the sole survivors — about 50 men of the Horse Artillery, with one 12-pounder howitzer; 250 redcoats of the 44th, and 150 cavalry troopers.
Fifteen British officers and more than 300 men had died in the last deadly defile, and almost 100 camp-followers.
Akbar Khan and a party of heavily armed Afghan horsemen now approached this weary band of survivors and General Elphinstone at once sent Captain Skinner to protest at the attack made despite his promise of safe conduct. Akbar replied that he had been powerless to stop the tribesmen’s savage fury — even their own immediate chiefs could not control them.
He then proposed that nevertheless the force should now lay down its arms, place itself under his protection and he would guarantee its safe escort to Jellalabad — though the camp-followers, being so numerous, would have to be left to their fate.
It is hard to arrive at a valid estimate of Akbar’s actions towards the retreat. Remembering that he was an impetuous, primitive person it is very possible that there was no consistency — there were times when he encouraged slaughter and others when he tried to stop it, for example, when the restraining fact that his family were held as hostages in India clashed with his revengeful urge to kill. Moreover, out of the 14½ lakhs promised the various chiefs by the British for safe conduct, the Ghilzye chiefs, in whose territory the retreat was now, were to receive only half a lakh, the smallest share of all. Akbar had no powers but persuasion over the Ghilzyes, who doubting that any of this conditional payment would ever be received now that the British force was all but destroyed, could well have opted for killing and plunder, despite Akbar’s protests.
Thus his claim that he was powerless to stop the Ghilzyes seems to have been genuine, as well as his offer to escort the remainder of the force to Jellalabad, but this, Elphinstone turned down probably because, in spite of all his def
ects, he had sufficient compassion not to leave the camp-followers to be slaughtered out of hand. So the retreat struggled onwards, a very much smaller body now, down a steep incline into another narrow gorge, the Halft-Kotil, about three miles long.
Again the tribesmen on the heights fired at them volley after volley. The rear was now commanded by Brigadier Shelton — in his element in such a dangerous situation — and about a score of picked redcoats. ‘Nobly and heroically these fine fellows stood by me,’ Shelton recorded, while Eyre noted that ‘but for Shelton’s persevering energy and unflinching fortitude… it is probable the whole would have been sacrificed.’
The force pushed on to the camping ground in the valley of the Tezeen. To save more slaughter, there was another attempt at negotiation with Akbar, but being faced again with the same demand for disarming, Elphinstone accepted Shelton’s proposal that they should try by a rapid night march to reach Jugdulluk, 22 miles away. They could thus perhaps save themselves by crossing the pass at night, before thousands of Ghilzye tribesmen had gathered there.
Word was sent to Mahommed Akbar that they intended to march to Seh Baba, only another seven miles on — in the forlorn hope that he would be deceived. The last gun was spiked and abandoned. With it was left Dr. Cardew, one of the ‘fighting doctors’ of the Indian army, who was much loved by the men. They had lashed him to it when he was fatally wounded and too weak to walk in the hope of saving him on the only sort of transport left. They said goodbye now as his life ebbed and left him on the bare mountain.
Lawrence, who followed the retreat with the women and the hostages, next morning saw Dr. Cardew’s body lying there. ‘He had come to Kabul from Ghuznee, on his way to India to meet his betrothed, whose anticipations of happiness were thus for ever blighted by the stern vicissitudes of war,’ he related.
