Lieutenant of the Line

by Philip McCutchan

  They had marched on, and from time to time had seen more men who looked like Pathans or Afridis from beyond the Afghan passes. Despite Barr, Ogilvie felt certain that was where they were from; after all, it was known in Peshawar, according to Black and Major Wingate, that Afghans had been infiltrating and assembling in this area. They made camp each nightfall with vigilant sentries posted. In the evenings, after the day’s march, a rum ration was issued to each man, neat spirit which had to be drunk in the presence of the officer to ensure that none was kept back for a subsequent binge. Ogilvie, disinclined for disciplinary reasons, to supervise his Colour-Sergeant, felt convinced Barr was in fact keeping back some of his own issue and bottling it, though Barr would have been the first to put on a charge any of the rank and file caught doing the same thing. Ogilvie’s general apprehensions grew as the patrol progressed, and, after they had passed on through Dera, finding a similar atmosphere to that in Mundari, and were heading up for Sikat, three days out now from Peshawar, he took Barr aside during one of the halts on the march when the men fell out to ease sore feet and aching legs.

  ‘That village confirms it,’ he said. ‘They’re definitely up to something, Colour-Sarn’t. I’ve a feeling we don’t need to go any further than this.’

  ‘The orders said a fortnight, Sir.’

  ‘Fortnight maximum. I’m aware of that, Colour-Sarn’t. But my report was wanted urgently. If we’re satisfied with what we’ve already seen, then it could be better to go back fast before anything blows up.’

  Barr looked obstinate; he twirled his waxed moustache. ‘The orders, Sir, were for a fourteen day patrol.’

  ‘I don’t think you’ve got the point, Colour-Sarn’t.’

  ‘No, Mr. Ogilvie, I don’t believe I have.’

  ‘Then I’ll say it again. Speed in making the report may be the most important aspect of the patrol.’

  ‘It may be, Sir, and again it may not. Accuracy is also important. I have no doubt Captain Black and Major Wingate specified a probe into Sikat because they meant us to carry out the order. We have not yet reached Sikat, which is well north of here and therefore in a possibly different position from Mundari and Dera. I have no doubt the officers will be asking for my observations as well as your own, Mr. Ogilvie. With respect, I feel I could scarcely give these gentlemen a decent view on the strength of having passed through only two villages of the three ordered.’

  Barr looked Ogilvie full in the face, with a hint of a smile twisting the corners of his thin mouth, lifting the heavy moustache in an arrogant, irritating smirk. MacKinlay had been right; Barr was going to be difficult, and his difficultness was going to take the form of a near-the-mark insolence. Ogilvie breathed hard, then swung away and walked up and down for a while, thinking furiously, giving himself time to cool down. It would never do, now, to get up against Barr, and it would be disastrous if he were to be seen by the men in open disagreement with his Colour-Sergeant. Not that he would have allowed himself to be swayed by that consideration if he should decide to return to cantonments; he would give the order and that would be that. Barr, as a good and experienced N.C.O., would obey. But there was a strong possibility that Barr was right. Two in three was not one hundred per cent and might not be good enough to satisfy either Black or Wingate, and if anything should go wrong subsequently, Black would undoubtedly remember that he, Ogilvie, had brought his patrol back ahead of time, with his mission uncompleted—in face of the expressed contrary advice from his Colour-Sergeant...

  Ogilvie, stiff-faced, halted in front of Barr. ‘Very well, Colour-Sarn’t,’ he said. ‘You may be right. Thank you for your advice.’

  ‘Then the patrol continues, Mr. Ogilvie?’

  ‘Yes, Colour-Sarn’t, the patrol continues.’

  ‘Very good, Sir.’

  ‘Fall the men in, please.’

  ‘Sir!’ Barr saluted and turned about and began shouting the men back on their feet. Once more they moved off into the day’s mounting heat. It was only 10.0 a.m. but there had undoubtedly been a smell of rum on the Colour-Sergeant’s breath. If the men smelt that, there might be trouble. They were not fools; they would know well enough that the officer must have smelt it too.

  When Lord Dornoch returned to cantonments in Peshawar he had a word with his adjutant. In the privacy of his own quarters, over whisky and cigars, he raised the question of Ogilvie’s patrol. ‘A trifle unnecessary, I’d have thought, Andrew, to recall young Ogilvie from leave?’

  Black pulled at his cigar. ‘I’m sorry, Colonel.’

  ‘There are plenty of other subalterns readily available.’

  ‘True, true. But I fancied Ogilvie could do with the experience—’

  ‘Some of the newer ones could do with it more.’

  ‘Ah, yes, Colonel, but I felt they would not be experienced enough. It is an important patrol, you’ll agree.’

  ‘It’s open to question, but I’m not criticizing the fact that you had to meet the wishes of the Political people, Andrew. My real point is this: why send Ogilvie and Barr together again?’

  Black shrugged and failed to meet the Colonel’s eye. ‘It was the General’s expressed wish that they should continue to serve together, Colonel.’

  ‘I know that.’ Dornoch shifted irritably in his chair. ‘There’s still no need to stick rigidly to what the General said—don’t misunderstand me—no need to deliberately send those two off together. In my view it’s asking for trouble. And I’ll tell you this : I would be sorry, most sorry, to think that my adjutant was acting from any kind of personal spite. I shall say no more than that, but I ask you very earnestly to keep your position as adjutant very well in mind, Andrew, in the future. I think you will understand me.’

  When his cigar was finished Andrew Black stalked back to his quarters, scowling his way across the dark parade ground. The Colonel’s tone had been undeniably sharp during that particular discussion.

  ‘That’s the Black Fort, Mr. Ogilvie,’ Barr said three days later. ‘On the other side is Sikat village. The Black Fort is friendly.’

  ‘So it’s said.’ Ogilvie halted his patrol. He focused his field glasses on the mud-walled fort commanding the valley along which they had been advancing. The walls were thick, very thick he fancied, with a wide platform behind the battlements: Ogilvie could see armed men through the embrasures between the merlons, and a moment later he could hear the tinny note of some native wind instrument. He said, ‘we’ve been spotted, Colour-Sarn’t.’

  ‘I should think we would have been by now, Sir. We’ve not been in much cover just lately.’

  Ogilvie went on looking through the glasses. ‘I’d give a lot to know their intentions. They don’t look all that peaceful or friendly to me.’

  ‘We’ll not know for sure till we approach closer, Mr. Ogilvie, but I don’t believe myself they’ll open on a British patrol, if that’s what you fear.’

  There was an inflexion in the man’s voice that Ogilvie didn’t like. Sharply, as he lowered the glasses, he said, ‘it’s not a case of fearing anything, Colour-Sarn’t, but we happen to be under orders to avoid any engagements.’

  ‘Aye, Sir, that’s right, I know it, but we still have orders to march through Sikat.’ He waved an arm around the enclosing light-brown hills. ‘The one way into the village lies past the Black Fort, Sir.’

  ‘No deviations anywhere?’

  ‘None at all, Sir, short of climbing into the hills and then turning back to the track again farther along, to approach from the north. But I’d not be wanting to give the buggers the idea we were scared of marching past their guns. Sir!’

  Ogilvie compressed his lips. Nettled by the man’s tone as usual, he ordered curtly, ‘Move the men on, Colour-Sarn’t. March at attention.’

  ‘Sir!’ Barr marched smartly towards the soldiers. ‘Patrol, atten—tion. Slope—arms. By the right, quick—march! That’s it, step smart now. Left-right-left...left—left—left. Shoulders back, Mathieson, you’re a soldier, you scraggy bugger, you, not
a skivvy, and this is hostile territory, not Sauchiehall Street on a Saturday night. Left—left—left, right, left. Do we march past in proper order, Sir, or do we not?’

  By ‘proper order’ Barr meant the pipes.

  Ogilvie said, ‘With the pipes, please, Colour-Sarn’t,’ and Barr yelled again and a moment later wind was blown into the pipes and they advanced along the terrible track to the sound of the highland music and the beat of the solitary drummer. The pipes were playing ‘Cock o’ The North’, the notes beating defiantly off the hillsides, bringing the sound of Empire and glory to the wild Frontier hills. The gap closed, the Black Fort loomed nearer, forbidding, lonely in its grim surround. As the British Soldiers came on the tribesmen stared down from the battlements, brooding but immobile, seemingly not meaning to open fire, their long-barrelled pieces slung across their backs. Slowly overhead, vultures wheeled and called. Ogilvie detested the vultures; they seemed, he felt, to sense death before it came. There was always premonition in their very presence, as though they could see, and interpret, what lay beyond the next hill, the next bend in the track.

  Perhaps it was those vultures that made him extra wary and suspicious, despite those peacefully slung rifles, as they neared the fort. Whatever it was, he reacted instantly and almost without conscious thought when suddenly, just as the piper changed his tune to ‘Blue Bonnets Over The Border’, the gates of the Black Fort were thrown wide open. He yelled out, ‘Barr, scatter the men—quickly!’

  Barr stared. ‘What’s the panic, Mr. Ogilvie? There’s no’ but an open gateway—’

  ‘Do as I say!’

  Barr shrugged, but obeyed. Within seconds the patrol was widely dispersed to the right of the track, hidden from view by boulders and in the nullahs. Ogilvie touched his Corporal on the shoulder. ‘Keep under cover, Phillips,’ he said, ‘but go among the men. Tell them, no firing unless I shout and give them a target. They’re just to stay out of sight.’

  ‘Aye, Sir.’ Corporal Phillips crawled away. Ogilvie watched the fort. Barr was crawling towards him, blaspheming. From out of the gates six elephants were now trundling, each of them hauling a heavy piece of artillery.

  ‘Ten-pounders,’ Barr said in a harsh whisper, ‘and by the look of ‘em, well maintained.’ Once again Ogilvie smelt rum. ‘The dirty, treacherous buggers...’

  Ogilvie couldn’t help saying, ‘they didn’t ask us to come here, you know. Treachery’s not quite the word.’

  ‘Old Masrullah makes out he’s a friend.’ Suddenly, Barr spat; Ogilvie was in some doubt as to whether the act was directed at Masrullah or at himself. He said, ‘it looks as though we’ve met the trouble all right, Colour-Sarn’t. If we come out of this, it’s back to cantonments without a doubt this time.’

  ‘As you say, Mr. Ogilvie.’

  They watched and waited as the elephants were moved into position. They were within easy range of those guns, but the enemy gunners were not all that well placed. They would need to aim upwards, and they would need to find their targets. With the men well hidden, they had the whole hillside to choose from, even though they would have some idea of the general whereabouts of the British. Meanwhile, a cool fire from the patrol might be able to make mincemeat of the gunners, even though the range was too great to have much effect on the tough hides of the elephants. ‘Spread the men out in line, Colour-Sarn’t,’ Ogilvie ordered. ‘I want as wide a spread laterally as possible. Report when ready—and tell each man he’s to open fire on the gunners the moment he hears me shout.’

  ‘Very good then.’ Barr moved away on his stomach. A few minutes after he had gone the fort’s artillery opened. There was a ripple of flame and a lot of smoke, and a roar of sound. There were whistles overhead, and Ogilvie pressed his body into the ground in the lee of his covering boulder. The explosions of the shells came from their rear, and debris hurtled down around them. The gunners had overshot, but had been lucky in their bearing. The next salvo was even farther over, and, this time, well to their left.

  Ogilvie grinned to himself. They were pretty poor shots; he felt reasonably confident of being able to pick off the gunners quickly when he was ready, even though the fire from the hillside would give the artillery a nice point of aim. The bombardment was kept up as ineffectively as before, and beneath the rain of debris as the odd shell smacked into the hill above their heads, Colour-Sergeant Barr came crawling and sliding back, covered with dust and muck and with his khaki-drill tunic ripped in several places. He said breathlessly, ‘orders passed, Mr. Ogilvie, and I’m thinking the sooner you give the word to open fire, the better it’ll be?’

  ‘We may as well let ‘em go on wasting ammunition,’ Ogilvie said, then he stiffened in sheer astonishment. He said ‘What the hell!’ He lifted his glasses and studied the scene below. A strange procession was coming from the gateway now, a procession that looked for all the world like some sort of royal progress. In the centre of two lines of scruffy native infantry, a solitary and dignified figure walked. A tall brown man with an upright bearing, broad-shouldered once but shrunken now with age, white-haired and white moustached with a clean-shaven chin—and wearing a blue tunic with polished brass buttons and blue trousers with a broad red stripe down the seams. And on his arm the three gold chevrons of a sergeant of the British Army.

  Ogilvie said, ‘my God.’

  ‘May I have the glasses, please, Mr. Ogilvie.’

  Wordlessly Ogilvie handed Barr his field glasses. Barr looked. In a scandalized tone he said, ‘the man’s wearing the uniform of the Royal Field Artillery, Sir. An old style one, but still the Royal Field Artillery. I don’t understand, Sir.’

  ‘No more do I,’ Ogilvie said, ‘but it’s a fair assumption that somebody, some time, lost his uniform and probably his life as well.’

  They watched.

  The strange figure stalked towards the guns and took up a position in rear of the battery. He seemed to be haranguing the men, then he went individually to each gun and spoke briefly to its native crew, after which he brought up a pair of field glasses and intently studied the hillside. Then Barr came to life again and said urgently, ‘Mr. Ogilvie, are you not going to give the order to open fire, for heaven’s sake?’

  Ogilvie nodded. ‘Open fire!’ he shouted. Immediately the rifles crashed out, a line of smoke puffs from the hillside. Spurts of dust were seen around the guns and three of the gunners keeled over. They were left to lie where they had fallen and the man in the sergeant’s tunic himself leapt forward to the guns as the elephants started squealing under the sustained rifle fire. A moment after that the battery opened again, no longer firing as one, but firing with devilish accuracy all the same. It was almost uncanny; those guns were now laid slap on target, right in the centre of the concealed British line. The earth seemed to erupt alongside Ogilvie; he was thrown into the air, to land with a crash back on bare earth while half the hillside dropped upon him. There were yells, cries, oaths. The rifles crashed out still, less of them now, and down below more gunners were hit. But no one seemed able to hit that blue Field Artillery tunic, though its wearer didn’t appear to be worrying about taking cover. As his gunners died or lay wounded, and no replacements were sent in, he was everywhere at once, laying the guns, firing them, and still firing them with that ferocious accuracy of aim. The man was an expert, a master gunlayer. Ogilvie did the one thing he could do in the circumstances and passed the word for a general retreat up the hillside for re-grouping and the planning of some sort of counter-attack before the fort’s riflemen could move into action. As the men withdrew towards the crest of the hills, the sporadic artillery fire was kept up as accurately as ever, only one gun firing at a time, but reasonably fast as the ancient white-haired gunlayer galloped from gun to gun. Breathlessly what was left of the patrol came over the crest and slid down the far side. Ogilvie counted heads. They had left seven men behind, dead or wounded. Corporal Phillips was one of them. All the others were in a dishevelled state and four were bleeding; one had a broken arm. Barr was in
tact except for a nasty lump on his head and Ogilvie himself was merely shaken and bruised. He asked, ‘what do you make of all that, Colour-Sarn’t?’

  ‘What do I make of it, Mr. Ogilvie?’ Barr shook the dust off his immense body. ‘I’d say we’re bloody well outgunned and all we can do is beat it back to cantonments and report.’

  It was a change of tune with a vengeance; Ogilvie felt like rubbing it in, but all he said was, ‘thank you, Colour-Sarn’t, that’s what we’re going to do if we can—after we’ve had a look for any wounded over there. But what I meant was, what do you make of that gunlayer?’

  ‘He’s good, Sir. Bloody good. Better than any bugger of a native is ever going to be.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  Their eyes met and Barr said, ‘an’ I believe he’s no native, Mr. Ogilvie. He’s an Englishman.’ Once again, he spat. ‘An English bugger that’s deserted from Her Majesty’s forces and is dirty enough to fire on his own kith an’ kin. That’s what I think.’

  ‘Once again, we agree, Colour-Sarn’t. I fancy his skin’s sunburn and not birth, somehow—and there was that bearing. Very regimental. It’s a dirty business, all right!’

  ‘And one that the regiment’ll put right in double quick time, Mr. Ogilvie, if I know the Colonel. Let’s march, Sir, and not waste a minute longer!’

  ‘First, the wounded. I’ll take a look myself, with two men. The fittest—you, Kinnear, and Lochen.’

  ‘Aye, Sir.’ Kinnear and Lochen came towards Ogilvie. Together, keeping low as they neared the crest, they moved back in the direction of the Black Fort. Watching from cover, Ogilvie saw that the guns were being withdrawn, but men were forming up in the fort’s courtyard, ready, no doubt, for the pursuit. All at once he felt doubtful that his men could ever make the journey back to Peshawar. Barr knew this territory well, but its inhabitants must know it better; and it was six days’ march to Peshawar, maybe a little less if they could find a direct route; in the meantime no one in Peshawar would be worried about them for another eight days yet at least. Ogilvie shrugged away his anxieties and concentrated on the task in hand. With Privates Kinnear and Lochen behind him he crawled over the top and made his way down the hillside. So far at any rate, he had not been seen, but that immunity couldn’t last long. Reaching the vicinity of what had been the British line, Ogilvie and the two men hunted around. They found five men dead, and two others seriously wounded and unconscious, but breathing. One was bleeding profusely from a stomach wound—it looked as though a jag of rock had taken off the man’s belly covering—while the other had a completely smashed hip and pelvis. Neither of them would make it back to Peshawar, but along the North-West Frontier a regiment never left its wounded behind. Ogilvie and the privates collected all the rifles, then bent to the wounded. As the men were lifted pain broke through to their consciousness and they screamed in agony, but Ogilvie and the others shut their ears to the dreadful sounds as best they were able and began staggering up the hillside with their burdens. That was when they were seen. There was a long-drawn cry from below and a rifle crashed out, its bullet going wide. More shots followed, and then Ogilvie saw the men running from the open gates. He came over the crest of the hill with Kinnear and Lochen, and men ran up to help them. With two soldiers carrying each of the wounded, the remnants of the patrol made their way as fast as possible down into the next valley, accompanied by the continuing cries of the wounded as the tortured bodies were jogged and twisted in the fast descent. The party had scarcely reached the valley when the tribesmen came over the crest of the hill and the firing began again. A soldier fell with a bullet through his head; the remainder dropped behind the boulders and brought their rifles up. They fired back steadily, began to pick off the advancing, yelling tribesmen. The British held the advantage and they made the fullest use of it. They scarcely wasted a shot; before the gap was half closed, the natives wavered, halted, and then retreated, scrambling back towards the crest, chased by the British fire. Ogilvie’s patrol had suffered no further losses beyond the man shot through the head. Once again, for a spell, they breathed easy. But Colour-Sergeant Hamish Barr voiced the fears of them all when he said, ‘from now on, lads, we’ll have them on our backs till we’re within shouting distance of Peshawar, and we’ll not be able to let up for a single instant.’