Soldier of the Raj

by Philip McCutchan

  ‘But Healey —’

  ‘Off with you! Are you like me, old boy — no ears? Can’t you hear?’

  In bewilderment Ogilvie listened to the mixed sounds of fighting, the cries of men and the neighing of the horses; already Healey had moved away on foot, and seemed to be looking out for another mount. Ogilvie swung himself into the saddle of Healey’s horse and then, losing no more time, headed back along the way he had come into the arena, digging his heels in and riding like the wind. And as he sped like an arrow through the milling hordes, the by now utterly confused hordes of tribesmen, dodging bullets and bayonet thrusts and the whirling, slicing swords, he began to hear .the sounds, so faint at first, so thin, so reedy, so insubstantial, the distant but closing sounds of the pipes and drums of the 114th Highlanders borne along the wind as they marched to relieve his tiny force. Soon the sounds came stronger, bringing a lump into Ogilvie’s throat as the regiment came on, the words drumming through his head:

  ‘The Campbells are coming, they are, they are

  The Campbells are coming, hurrah, hurrah

  The Campbells are coming to bonnie Loch Leven

  The Campbells are coming, they are, they are!’

  The tribes began to hear it. The men on the jut of rock had told the truth and the British Army was coming in. There was a fresh stir in the arena, an instinctive movement away.

  *

  The head of the regimental column wound into view from the rock, snake-like as it twisted along the pass below. Behind the pipers and the drummers, now in full uniform and resplendent, Lord Dornoch was riding, still in native dress, and behind him marched the companies with their officers and Colour-Sergeants and Corporals — marching smartly in their weird assortment of clothing and marching proudly. Across the horse of one of the officers a white-wrapped bundle was laid. Cunningham turned to Ogilvie, who had now rejoined. ‘That’ll be the sadhu, sir.’ He added, ‘This looks much like victory, though I’d sooner have seen the Colonel come in in darkness than now, for the size of the force will soon be seen, and they’ll know we exaggerated, sir.’

  ‘It won’t matter. The regiment could be merely the van...and I don’t believe they’ll wait to see in any case! Just look at that, Sar’nt-Major ! ‘

  Cunningham looked down into the great bowl of the assembly arena. There was sheer panic as the bulk of the once confident native levies strove to get clear before the expected British guns reached the surrounding crests and opened. For now the arena had become in their view a rat-trap and would become a slaughter ground once the British troops had climbed to the heights. It was a rout now, or almost. A fairly large number of the tribesmen were in fact standing their ground — but, as soon became evident, they were doing much more than that.

  They were standing guard over Nashkar Ali Khan.

  The Pathan and his staff were sitting their horses in the centre of this guard while a cloud of dust swept across the bowl, dust stirred up by the thousands of milling feet. Ogilvie turned away and sent two of his remaining privates down to act as guides to the Colonel, informing him that Ogilvie advised the bringing of the sadhu’s body to the rock for final display. Then he smiled across at the R.S.M. ‘Last act coming up,’ he said.

  Wordlessly, Cunningham nodded. Ogilvie looked down once more, looked down towards Nashkar Ali Khan in his finery. He noted that Healey had not rejoined the Pathan leader, was nowhere to be seen. He recalled Healey’s words, the last he had spoken just before he, Ogilvie, had made his escape from the palace escort: ‘Don’t think too badly of me, old boy.’ Strange last words, those! What was the truth about Captain Edward Healey, late the Bengal Lancers? As Ogilvie had remarked on their very first encounter, Healey was a little off his normal beat around Ootacamund — in fact some fifteen hundred miles off it, though of course he’d had an explanation for this. Yes — strange!

  Cunningham broke into his thoughts. ‘You know what is going to happen now, sir?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s not pleasant to have to watch such things.’

  ‘I know. Nashkar was only fighting for what he believed to be right — just the same as us. I wonder if the world will ever learn?’

  ‘It will not, sir, it will not! Our trade will last till the day of judgment.’

  ‘One day, it may be our turn to be thrown out of India.’

  Cunningham was shocked. ‘Never, sir! Never! With great respect, sir, that’s not a sentiment for a British officer to have.’

  ‘No, you’re right, Sar’nt-Major, it’s not.’ Ogilvie lifted a hand and rubbed wearily at his eyes. ‘There’s a lot of cruelty in the native States, and we do our best to clean the place up and bring some kind of justice to bear. I don’t know if we really succeed or not. Here they come, Sar’nt-Major.’

  They turned as the sudden increase in the volume of the pipes and drums announced that they were emerging into the open from the cleft in the hills. On the peaks around the nearer sector, heads were already appearing, and bayonetted rifles. Coming onto the rock projection was one half-company of the Royal Strathspeys, led by Rob MacKinlay with Lord Dornoch ahead of him, on foot now. In the lead were the pipes and drums, their kilts a splendid splash of bright colour amidst the barren brown of the hills and the blown dust of the arena, as the tartan of the Royal Strathspey swirled around the knees of the men. In the centre of the half-company two privates, in front of a Colour-Sergeant, carried the white-shrouded burden, the sadhu’s corpse.

  They marched straight down the rock as if on parade at Invermore in Scotland, the pipes and drums beating out in succession The High Road to Gairloch, The Heroes of Vittoria, and the Old 93rd. Ogilvie felt a surge of pride as the notes of war beat off the hills; so, obviously, did Cunningham. The R.S.M. was standing stiff and straight, his big chest thrust out against his rags; and Ogilvie fancied he caught a moist gleam in his eye as the battalion marched swinging up, to the tune now of Farewell to the Creeks, to halt on the Colonel’s order, smartly and together. The pipes fell silent, and the Regimental Sergeant-Major, helmetless though he was, gave an almost fierce salute; so did Ogilvie.

  Lord Dornoch looked out over the arena below. ‘All’s well, Captain Ogilvie?’

  ‘We’re still here, Colonel,’ he answered inadequately.

  ‘So I see, so I see! Casualties?’

  ‘Seven dead, Colonel.’

  ‘That’s bad — but not as bad as it might have been, God knows! I have a feeling of victory. Your arm, Sar’nt-Major?’

  ‘It’s nothing, sir, just needs a wash and a decent bandage.’

  The Colonel nodded. ‘Your report, James, if you please.’

  ‘Yes, Colonel.’ Ogilvie made his report in full and added, ‘The levies have largely gone, as you can see, Colonel. I think they know already they’ve had the truth about the sadhu after all!’

  ‘So it would seem. But having brought him all this way, he must still be made to play his final part, James, and dispel any lingering doubts! And we’ll lose no time over it.’ Turning, he signed to the Colour-Sergeant in charge of the corpse. The Colour-Sergeant and the two privates moved away from the half-company, carrying their burden to the edge of the rock. From the arena, every eye was watching them. The air now was very still, and there was a tense silence and expectancy; even the brooding hills seemed to be an integral part of the drama, seemed to be watching and waiting.

  Dornoch nodded briefly, and the Colour-Sergeant flipped away the shroud at his feet. The two privates hoisted the skinny, almost disembowelled corpse to shoulder height, and walked with it to the brink. The sightless eyes of the old holy man stared across the arena, and on his shattered skull a few wispy hairs moved slightly in a waft of breeze.

  For a moment the dead silence held.

  Then, low at first but increasing, a murmur arose, almost a keening, a sound of total despair that quickly changed to hostility and menace. Around Nashkar Ali Khan, around the Earless One, the mob suddenly seemed to explode inwards, pressing, yelling, fighting. The p
ersonal escort, whether or not they remained loyal no one could see for certain, were overwhelmed. Nashkar Ali Khan was jostled, seemed for a moment to be lifted high above the mob, his brilliant red cloak hanging now in strips and the sky-blue turban awry, and then a sword flashed in the strong sunlight and came down on the leader’s neck, slicing through it. The severed head lifted in the air, then fell into the midst of the infuriated mob, and at that moment the firing started. Bullets swept the rock, and the Royal Strathspeys flattened to the ground behind their rifles as they returned the fire. Simultaneously the rest of the battalion, disposed around the one sector of the arena, also opened fire with rifles and machine-guns. The Maxims were deadly. In the confusion, in the rout that this firing brought down upon the shaken, disillusioned remnant of the tribal levies, Lord Dornoch executed a rapid withdrawl from the rock, leaving the sadhu’s body behind. Looking back, Ogilvie fancied he caught a glimpse of Captain Healey laying about himself with a sword and spurring his horse towards a gap in the hills, but he could not be sure. Later, when the battalion had reformed and was marching in column of route behind the pipes and drums, right across the arena to the east which, as the Colonel said, was the quickest way home, he saw no sign of Healey among the few living and the many dead.

  *

  ‘I’d like to Court Martial him!’ Fettleworth snapped. ‘But how the devil can I? He’s a — a blasted hero! So is that young Ogilvie. I suppose you’ve read Sir George White’s telegraphed comments, and the Viceroy’s?’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ the Chief of Staff said.

  ‘Well, then! Oh, tear the damn Court Martial papers up!’ General Fettleworth wriggled furiously beneath his uniform tunic. ‘And Lakenham!’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘You’ve treated this particular matter in confidence all along, of course?’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  Fettleworth drummed his fingers on his desk; there was an absent yet furtive look in his eye. With only his Chief of Staff and his aide-de-camp, possibly one or two others, aware that he had started a Court Martial file, something might yet be saved. He fizzed and fussed, trying to think the matter out sanely. Dornoch had done well — so had Ogilvie. Very, very well. He, Fettleworth himself, had been responsible for sending Ogilvie in on that mission. Ha! He preened a little, feeling happier...but of course the same couldn’t quite be said about the movement of the 114th Highlanders...

  Not without a little covering up, anyway, a few little fibs. It was extraordinary what could be achieved, quite extraordinary, by a word here and there, a hint, a nod, a tactful silence. A good deal could be made to rub off, as it were, on a Divisional Commander one of whose regiments had done so splendidly. And perhaps a very straight talk to that fellow Black about his drinking habits might be better than the publicity of a Court Martial? Yes.

  *

  ‘Interesting — what you’ve told me about Healey,’ O’Kelly said, fondling the hairy body of Wolseley.

  ‘Yes, isn’t it.’ Ogilvie was damnably tired and was finding concentration difficult and O’Kelly’s suave manner irritating. ‘He said you were at school with him, by the way.’ Then he added, ‘You were wrong about Kaspaturos being Peshawar, I fancy, Major, although Healey had an idea that could turn out to be the case. As a theory, I never heard it advanced by Nashkar Ali Khan or anyone else...though I suppose it’s possible the sadhu might have come out with it if he’d lived.’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t much matter,’ O’Kelly said. ‘So long as Kaspaturos was somewhere around these parts, it’d have been good enough to suit Nashkar’s purpose of tribal inflammation. In fact, I gather from your report it was good enough.’

  ‘Yes...’

  ‘Healey, now. Yes, I was at school with him.’ O’Kelly leaned back in his chair and lifted a glass of whisky to his lips, thoughtfully. He frowned. ‘Curious chap — very. Odd, you know. Never quite saw him in the service — not in the cavalry, anyhow —’

  ‘He was a good horseman.’

  ‘Oh, I know, but I don’t mean that, old boy. I mean, he’s not the sort to fit. He was never a really pukka sahib, hadn’t the conventional outlook at all. Really, he was a bit of a case.’ The Political Officer gave Ogilvie a long, hard stare. ‘I don’t see why I shouldn’t tell you in the circumstances. Damn it — you’re entitled! Mind you...it’s supposed to be secret.’ He cleared his throat and stroked Wolseley. ‘Healey disappeared from Southern Command about a year ago. No one knew what had happened to him, and for various reasons it was never made public that he’d gone. He was written off as missing, believed killed on duty. But you see, I knew Healey as well as anyone ever did know him. I suppose you didn’t know he was a chi-chi?’

  ‘No!’ Ogilvie was startled.

  ‘Well, only remotely. His grandmother was a Pathan woman...the grandfather, who never actually married her, was a Major on Sir Henry Havelock’s staff in Afghanistan a long while ago. It’s a long story — he told me it all once, when he’d had a good deal to drink. In a way, the army being what it is, it’s a wonder he was ever commissioned. But he’s got a damn good brain, you know. Never made the most of it.’

  Ogilvie asked the question direct: ‘Was he loyal, Major?’

  O’Kelly lifted his eyebrows. ‘Funny you should ask that. I used to have my doubts. Still have. I think his loyalties were divided, that’s the best answer I can give. I know what you mean, of course — having heard your report, you see. Sometimes he seemed to be acting for us, sometimes he could have been acting against us. Right?’

  ‘Yes. There was the blowing up of the arms dump, but...’

  ‘Yes, the buts. Oh, I know! That’s Edward Healey. Same at school — take too long to explain.’

  ‘I wonder what’s happened to him.’ Ogilvie frowned and bit his lip. ‘He wanted to be left behind, but I feel hellish guilty about that.’

  ‘You needn’t.’ Surprisingly, O’Kelly closed his eyes and recited what seemed to be a verse, and after the first line Ogilvie recognized it as being a follow-on from what Healey himself had quoted to him back in Waziristan: ‘“Be it hoarse as Corrievrechan, Spouting when the storm is high, Give me but one hour of Scotland, Let me see it e’er I die.” And you see, Ogilvie, the Waziri hills were Healey’s Scotland. He often quoted that verse, as a matter of fact.’ Suddenly he became brisk. ‘Enough of all that,’ he said. ‘Tell me — would you care to take up this work, transfer to the Political, old boy?’

  ‘No,’ Ogilvie said, and laughed. ‘Sorry, but it’s not for me. I’ve got my company now, and I’m sticking with it.’

  ‘That’s your final word?’

  ‘Yes.’

  O’Kelly shrugged. ‘Oh, well! Chaqu’un a son gout. Personally, I’d detest the bloody infantry. How’s Mrs. Archdale?’ he asked suddenly.

  ‘Well, thank you.’

  ‘She played a big part in this.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Of course, you’ll see more of her if you stay with your regiment than if you were liable to be whirled off in disguise into Afghanistan or somewhere at any moment, in the Political.’

  Ogilvie snapped, ‘I wasn’t thinking of that when I gave you my answer. I was thinking of — other things. Poor old Jones, for instance. He did well, too.’

  ‘Yes, indeed. Far be it from me to denigrate the useful Jones. Nevertheless, he was expendable. His was a dirty trade, too!’

  ‘Isn’t yours?’

  O’Kelly looked startled. ‘Look here, old boy, I wouldn’t be heard saying that outside this room if I were you. I’m broadminded. Others may not be. And don’t go around with a long face because of Jones, for heaven’s sake! What did you expect for him — a retrospective military funeral and a gun carriage?’

  ‘It’s just that no one’s so much as mentioned him since he died,’ Ogilvie said, mentally contrasting that bouncing, bloody trunk with the image of a dignified funeral and military honours — horses, firing-parties, full dress and muffled drums. ‘It doesn’t seem right.’

  He
got to his feet.

  ‘Where are you going?’ O’Kelly asked.

  ‘I’ve an appointment with Mrs. Archdale.’

  ‘Give her my regards, won’t you, old boy.’

  Ogilvie went out into hot sunshine, into the military atmosphere of Peshawar and its marching men, its drilling defaulters, its loud-voiced Colour-Sergeants, its brilliant uniforms and its beating drums. And its peace and security. He returned to his room in cantonments before keeping his appointment with Mary Archdale, and as he went past the Mess he saw Andrew Black sitting with a glass of whisky and a heavy scowl; sitting quite alone. Ogilvie had been back in cantonments for only a few hours, but he had noticed that something more than usual was bothering the adjutant. He had done nothing but scowl, and mutter, and avoid people. Especially the Colonel. After what MacKinlay had told him, Ogilvie was scarcely surprised. It seemed that Captain Andrew Black had wilfully deprived himself of taking part in a march that could have helped his promotion prospects no end.

  If you enjoyed Soldier of the Raj you might be interested in Drums Along the Khyber by Philip McCutchan also published by Endeavour Press.

  Extract from Drums Along the Khyber by Philip McCutchan

  One

  “Mr. Ogilvie!” It was Black’s voice, sharply critical, coming up in his rear. “Can you, or can you not, read a heliograph?”

  James Ogilvie turned with a start, cursing under his breath as his right hand rose towards his Wolseley helmet. He had failed to see the winking field heliograph, its mirrors reflecting the sun, for the simple reason that it was coming from behind him. No doubt, however, subalterns were expected to have eyes in the backs of their heads; and it would not have occurred to him to pass the blame to his men for being no more vigilant than he. His face scarlet, he read off the message. It was from the Colonel, who was currently resting the main body of the regiment back along the cruel pass that ran through out of India. Ogilvie had been sent ahead with a corporal and three recruits to scout. This would, Black had suggested to Ogilvie’s company commander and the Colonel, be excellent experience for a young officer and green soldiers.