Soldiers Three [Stories]
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Rudyard Kipling >> Soldiers Three [Stories]
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The screw-guns were to shell the head of each Afghan rush that was
made in close formation, and the Cavalry, held in reserve in the
right valley, were to gently stimulate the break-up which would
follow on the combined attack. The Brigadier, sitting upon a rock
overlooking the valley, would watch the battle unrolled at his
feet. The Fore and Aft would debouch from the central gorge, the
Goorkhas from the left, and the Highlanders from the right, for
the reason that the left flank of the enemy seemed as though it
required the most hammering. It was not every day that an Afghan
force would take ground in the open, and the Brigadier was
resolved to make the most of it.
"If we only had a few more men," he said plaintively, "we could
surround the creatures and crumple 'em up thoroughly. As it is,
I'm afraid we can only cut them up as they run. It's a great
pity."
The Fore and Aft had enjoyed unbroken peace for five days, and
were beginning, in spite of dysentery, to recover their nerve. But
they were not happy, for they did not know the work in hand, and
had they known, would not have known how to do it. Throughout
those five days in which old soldiers might have taught them the
craft of the game, they discussed together their misadventures in
the past - how such an one was alive at dawn and dead ere the
dusk, and with what shrieks and struggles such another had given
up his soul under the Afghan knife. Death was a new and horrible
thing to the sons of mechanics who were used to die decently of
zymotic disease; and their careful conservation in barracks had
done nothing to make them look upon it with less dread.
Very early in the dawn the bugles began to blow, and the Fore and
Aft, filled with a misguided enthusiasm, turned out without
waiting for a cup of coffee and a biscuit; and were rewarded by
being kept under arms in the cold while the other regiments
leisurely prepared for the fray. All the world knows that it is
ill taking the breeks off a Highlander. It is much iller to try to
make him stir unless he is convinced of the necessity for haste.
507
The Fore and Aft waited, leaning upon their rifles and listening
to the protests of their empty stomachs. The Colonel did his best
to remedy the default of lining as soon as it was borne in upon
him that the affair would not begin at once, and so well did he
succeed that the coffee was just ready when - the men moved off,
their Band leading. Even then there had been a mistake in time,
and the Fore and Aft came out into the valley ten minutes before
the proper hour. Their Band wheeled to the right after reaching
the open, and retired behind a little rocky knoll still playing
while the Regiment went past.
It was not a pleasant sight that opened on the uninstructed view,
for the lower end of the valley appeared to be filled by an army
in position - real and actual regiments attired in red coats, and
- of this there was no doubt - firing Martini-Henry bullets which
cut up the ground a hundred yards in front of the leading company.
Over that pock-marked ground the Regiment had to pass, and it
opened the ball with a general and profound courtesy to the piping
pickets; ducking in perfect time, as though it had been brazed on
a rod. Being half capable of thinking for itself, it fired a
volley by the simple process of pitching its rifle into its
shoulder and pulling the trigger. The bullets may have accounted
for some of the watchers on the hill side, but they certainly did
not affect the mass of enemy in front, while the noise of the
rifles drowned any orders that might have been given.
"Good God!" said the Brigadier, sitting on the rock high above
all. "That Regiment has spoilt the whole show. Hurry up the
others, and let the screw-guns get off."
But the screw-guns, in working round the heights, had stumbled
upon a wasp's nest of a small mud fort which they incontinently
shelled at eight hundred yards, to the huge discomfort of the
occupants, who were unaccustomed to weapons of such devilish
precision.
The Fore and Aft continued to go forward, but with shortened
stride. Where were the other regiments, and why did these niggers
use Martinis? They took open order instinctively, lying down and
firing at random, rushing a few paces forward and lying down
again, according to the regulations. Once in this formation, each
man felt himself desperately alone, and edged in towards his
fellow for comfort's sake.
Then the crack of his neighbor's rifle at his ear led him to fire
as rapidly as he could - again for the sake of the comfort of the
noise. The reward was not long delayed. Five volleys plunged the
files in banked smoke impenetrable to the eye, and the bullets
began to take ground twenty or thirty yards in front of the
firers, as the weight of the bayonet dragged down and to the right
arms wearied with holding the kick of the leaping Martini. The
Company Commanders peered helplessly through the smoke, the more
nervous mechanically trying to fan it away with their helmets.
"High and to the left!" bawled a Captain till he was hoarse. "No
good! Cease firing, and let it drift away a bit."
Three and four times the bugles shrieked the order, and when it
was obeyed the Fore and Aft looked that their foe should be lying
before them in mown swaths of men. A light wind drove the smoke to
leeward, and showed the enemy still in position and apparently
unaffected. A quarter of a ton of lead had been buried a furlong
in front of them, as the ragged earth attested.
That was not demoralizing to the Afghans, who have not European
nerves. They were waiting for the mad riot to die down, and were
firing quietly into the heart of the smoke. A private of the Fore
and Aft spun up his company shrieking with agony, another was
kicking the earth and gasping, and a third, ripped through the
lower intestines by a jagged bullet, was calling aloud on his
comrades to put him out of his pain. These were the casualties,
and they were not soothing to hear or see. The smoke cleared to a
dull haze.
Then the foe began to shout with a great shouting, and a mass - a
black mass - detached itself from the main body, and rolled over
the ground at horrid speed. It was composed of, perhaps, three
hundred men, who would shout and fire and slash if the rush of
their fifty comrades who were determined to die carried home. The
fifty were Ghazis, half maddened with drugs and wholly mad with
religious fanaticism. When they rushed the British fire ceased,
and in the lull the order was given to close ranks and meet them
with the bayonet.
Any one who knew the business could have told the Fore and Aft
that the only way of dealing with a Ghazi rush is by volleys at
long ranges; because a man who means to die, who desires to die,
who will gain heaven by dying, must, in nine cases out of ten,
kill a man who has a lingering prejudice in favour of life. Where
they should have closed and gone forward, the Fore and Aft opened
out and skirmished, and where they should have opened out and
fired, they closed and waited.
A man dragged from his blankets half awake and unfed is never in a
pleasant frame of mind. Nor does his happiness increase when he
watches the whites of the eyes of three hundred six-foot fiends
upon whose beards the foam is lying, upon
whose tongues is a roar of wrath, and in whose hands are yard-long
knives.
The Fore and Aft heard the Goorkha bugles bringing that regiment
forward at the double, while the neighing of the Highland pipes
came from the left. They strove to stay where they were, though
the bayonets wavered down the line like the oars of a ragged boat.
Then they felt body to body the amazing physical strength of their
foes; a shriek of pain ended the rush, and the knives fell amid
scenes not to be told. The men clubbed together and smote blindly
- as often as not at their own fellows. Their front crumpled like
paper, and the fifty Ghazis passed on; their backers, now drunk
with success, fighting as madly as they.
Then the rear ranks were bidden to close up, and the subalterns
dashed into the stew - alone. For the rear-ranks had heard the
clamour in front, the yells and the howls of pain, and had seen
the dark stale blood that makes afraid. They were not going to
stay. It was the rushing of the camps over again. Let their
officers go to Hell, if they chose; they would get away from the
knives.
"Come on!" shrieked the subalterns, and their men, cursing them,
drew back, each closing in to his neighbour and wheeling round.
Charteris and Devlin, subalterns of the last company, faced their
death alone in the belief that their men would follow.
"You've killed me, you cowards," sobbed Devlin and dropped, cut
from the shoulder-strap to the centre of the chest; and a fresh
detachment of his men retreating, always retreating, trampled him
under foot as they made for the pass whence they had emerged.
I kissed her in the kitchen and I kissed her in the hall
Child'un, child'un, follow me!
Oh Golly, said the cook, is he gwine to kiss us all?
Halla - Halla - Halla - Hallelujah!
The Goorkhas were pouring through the left gorge and over the
heights at the double to the invitation of their Regimental Quick-
step. The black rocks were crowned with dark green spiders as the
bugles gave tongue jubilantly: -
In the morning! In the morning by the bright light!
When Gabriel blows his trumpet in the morning!
The Goorkha rear companies tripped and blundered over loose
stones. The front files halted for a moment to take stock of the
valley and to settle stray boot-laces. Then a happy little sigh of
contentment soughed down the ranks, and it was as though the land
smiled, for behold there below was the enemy, and it was to meet
them that the Goorkhas had doubled so hastily. There was much
enemy. There would be amusement. The little men hitched their
kukris well to hand, and gaped expectantly at their officers as
terriers grin ere the stone is cast for them to fetch. The
Goorkhas' ground sloped downward to the valley, and they enjoyed a
fair view of the proceedings. They sat upon the boulders to watch,
for their officers were not going to waste their wind in assisting
to repulse a Ghazi rush more than half a mile away. Let the white
men look to their own front.
"Hi! yi !" said the Subadar-Major, who was sweating profusely.
"Dam fools yonder, stand close order! This is no time for close
order, it is the time for volleys. Ugh!"
Horrified, amused, and indignant, the Goorkhas beheld the
retirement of the Fore and Aft with a running chorus of oaths and
commentaries.
"They run! The white men run! Colonel Sahib, may we also do a
little running?" murmured Runbir Thappa, the Senior Jemadar.
But the Colonel would have none of it. "Let the beggars be cut up
a little," said he wrathfully. "Serves 'em right. They'll be
prodded into facing round in a minute." He looked through his
field-glasses, and caught the glint of an officer's sword.
"Beating 'em with the flat - damned conscripts! How the Ghazis are
walking into them!" said he.
The Fore and Aft, heading back, bore with them their officers. The
narrowness of the pass forced the mob into solid formation, and
the rear ranks delivered some sort of a wavering volley. The
Ghazis drew off, for they did not know what reserve the gorge
might hide. Moreover, it was never wise to chase white men too
far. They returned as wolves return to cover, satisfied with the
slaughter that they had done, and only stopping to slash at the
wounded on the ground. A quarter of a mile had the Fore and Aft
retreated, and now, jammed in the pass, was quivering with pain,
shaken and demoralised with fear, while the officers, maddened
beyond control, smote the men with the hilts and the flats of
their swords.
"Get back! Get back, you cowards - you women! Right about face -
column of companies, form - you hounds!" shouted the Colonel, and
the subalterns swore aloud. But the Regiment wanted to go - to go
anywhere out of the range of those merciless knives. It swayed to
and fro irresolutely with shouts and outcries, while from the
right the Goorkhas dropped volley after volley of cripple-stopper
Snider bullets at long range into the mob of the Ghazis returning
to their own troops.
The Fore and Aft Band, though protected from direct fire by the
rocky knoll under which it had sat down, fled at the first rush.
Jakin and Lew would have fled also, but their short legs left them
fifty yards in the rear, and by the time the Band had mixed with
the Regiment, they were painfully aware that they would have to
close in alone and unsupported.
"Get back to that rock," gasped Jakin. "They won't see us there."
And they returned to the scattered instruments of the Band, their
hearts nearly bursting their ribs.
"Here's a nice show for us," said Jakin, throwing himself full
length on the ground. "A bloomin' fine show for British Infantry!
Oh, the devils! They've gone and left us alone here! Wot'll we
do?"
Lew took possession of a cast-off water-bottle, which naturally
was full of canteen rum, and drank till he coughed again.
"Drink," said he shortly. "They'll come back in a minute or two -
you see."
Jakin drank, but there was no sign of the Regiment's return. They
could hear a dull clamour from the head of the valley of retreat,
and saw the Ghazis slink back, quickening their pace as the
Goorkhas fired at them.
"We're all that's left of the Band, an' we'll be cut up as sure as
death," said Jakin.
"I'll die game, then," said Lew thickly, fumbling with his tiny
drummer's sword. The drink was working on his brain as it was on
Jakin's.
"'Old on! I know something better than fightin'," said Jakin,
stung by the splendour of a sudden thought due chiefly to rum.
"Tip our bloomin' cowards yonder the word to come back. The
Paythan beggars are well away. Come on,
Lew! We won't get hurt. Take the fife an' give me the drum. The
Old Step for all your bloomin' guts are worth! There's a few of
our men coming back now. Stand up, ye drunken little defaulter. By
your right - quick march!"
He slipped the drum-sling over his shoulder, thrust the fife into
Lew's hand, and the two boys marched out of the cover of the rock
into the open, making a hideous hash of the first bars of the
"British Grenadiers."
As Lew had said, a few of the Fore and Aft were coming back
sullenly and shamefacedly under the stimulus of blows and abuse;
their red coats shone at the head of the valley, and behind them
were wavering bayonets. But between this shattered line and the
enemy, who with Afghan suspicion feared that the hasty retreat
meant an ambush, and had not moved therefore, lay half a mile of
level ground dotted only by the wounded.
The tune settled into full swing and the boys kept shoulder to
shoulder, Jakin banging the drum as one possessed. The one fife
made a thin and pitiful squeaking, but the tune carried far, even
to the Goorkhas.
"Come on, you dogs!" muttered Jakin to himself. "Are we to play
forhever?" Lew was staring straight in front of him and marching
more stiffly than ever he had done on parade.
And in bitter mockery of the distant mob, the old tune of the Old
Line shrilled and rattled: -
Some talk of Alexander,
And some of Hercules;
Of Hector and Lysander,
And such great names as these!
There was a far-off clapping of hands from the Goorkhas, and a
roar from the Highlanders in the distance, but never a shot was
fired by British or Afghan. The two little red dots moved forward
in the open parallel to the enemy's front.
But of all the world's great heroes
There's none that can compare,
With a tow-row-row-row-row-row,
To the British Grenadier!
The men of the Fore and Aft were gathering thick at the entrance
into the plain. The Brigadier on the heights far above was
speechless with rage. Still no movement from the enemy. The day
stayed to watch the children.
Jakin halted and beat the long roll of the Assembly, while the
fife squealed despairingly.
"Right about face! Hold up, Lew, you're drunk," said Jakin. They
wheeled and marched back: -
hose heroes of antiquity
Ne'er saw a cannon-ball,
Nor knew the force o' powder,
"Here they come!" said Jakin. "Go on, Lew": -
To scare their foes withal!
The Fore and Aft were pouring out of the valley. What officers had
said to men in that time of shame and humiliation will never be
known; for neither officers nor men speak of it now.
"They are coming anew!" shouted a priest among the Afghans. "Do
not kill the boys! Take them alive, and they shall be of our
faith."
But the first volley had been fired, and Lew dropped on his face.
Jakin stood for a minute, spun round and collapsed, as the Fore
and Aft came forward, the curses of their officers in their ears,
and in their hearts the shame of open shame.
Half the men had seen the drummers die, and they made no
sign. They did not even shout. They doubled out straight across
the plain in open order, and they did not fire.
"This," said the Colonel of Goorkhas, softly, "is the real attack,
as it should have been delivered. Come on, my children."
"Ulu-lu-lu-lu!" squealed the Goorkhas, and came down with a joyful
clicking of kukris - those vicious Goorkha knives.
On the right there was no rush. The Highlanders, cannily
commending their souls to God (for it matters as much to a dead
man whether he has been shot in a Border scuffle or at Waterloo),
opened out and fired according to their custom, that is to say
without heat and without intervals, while the screw-guns, having
disposed of the impertinent mud fort aforementioned, dropped shell
after shell into the clusters round the flickering green standards
on the heights.
"Charrging is an unfortunate necessity," murmured the Colour-
Sergeant of the right company of the Highlanders. "It makes the
men sweer so, but I am thinkin' that it will come to a charrge if
these black devils stand much longer. Stewarrt, man, you're firing
into the eye of the sun, and he'll not take any harm for
Government ammuneetion. A foot lower and a great deal slower! What
are the English doing? They're very quiet, there in the center.
Running again?"
The English were not running. They were hacking and hewing and
stabbing, for though one white man is seldom physically a match
for an Afghan in a sheepskin or wadded coat, yet, through the
pressure of many white men behind, and a certain thirst for
revenge in his heart, he becomes capable of doing much with both
ends of his rifle. The Fore and Aft held their fire till one
bullet could drive through five or six men, and the front of the
Afghan force gave on the volley. They then selected their men, and
slew them with deep gasps and short hacking coughs, and groanings
of leather belts against strained bodies, and realised for the
first time that an Afghan attacked is far less formidable than an
Afghan attacking; which fact old soldiers might have told them.
But they had no old soldiers in their ranks.
The Goorkhas' stall at the bazar was the noisiest, for the men
were engaged - to a nasty noise as of beef being cut on the block
- with the kukri, which they preferred to the bayonet; well
knowing how the Afghan hates the half-moon blade.
As the Afghans wavered, the green standards on the mountain moved
down to assist them in a last rally. This was unwise. The Lancers,
chafing in the right gorge, had thrice despatched their only
subaltern as galloper to report on the progress of affairs. On the
third occasion he returned, with a bullet-graze on his knee,
swearing strange oaths in Hindustani, and saying that all things
were ready. So that squadron swung round the right of the
Highlanders with a wicked whistling of wind in the pennons of its
lances, and fell upon the remnant just when, according to all the
rules of war, it should have waited for the foe to show more signs
of wavering.
But it was a dainty charge, deftly delivered, and it ended by the
Cavalry finding itself at the head of the pass by which the
Afghans intended to retreat; and down the track that the lances
had made streamed two companies of the Highlanders, which was
never intended by the Brigadier. The new development was
successful. It detached the enemy from his base as a sponge is
torn from a rock, and left him ringed about with fire in that
pitiless plain. And as a sponge is chased round the bath-tub by
the hand of the bather, so were the Afghans chased till they broke
into little detachments much more difficult to dispose of than
large masses.
"See!" quoth the Brigadier. "Everything has come as I arranged.
We've cut their base, and now we'll bucket 'em to pieces."
A direct hammering was all that the Brigadier had dared to hope
for, considering the size of the force at his disposal; but men
who stand or fall by the errors of their opponents may be forgiven
for turning Chance into Design. The bucketing went forward
merrily. The Afghan forces were upon the run - the run of wearied
wolves who snarl and bite over their shoulders. The red lances
dipped by twos and threes, and, with a shriek, uprose the lance-
butt, like a spar on a stormy sea, as the trooper cantering
forward cleared his point. The Lancers kept between their prey and
the steep hills, for all who could were trying to escape from the
valley of death. The Highlanders gave the fugitives two hundred
yards' law, and then brought them down, gasping and choking ere
they could reach the protection of the boulders above. The
Goorkhas followed suit; but the Fore and Aft were killing on their
own account, for they had penned a mass of men between their
bayonets and a wall of rock, and the flash of the rifles was
lighting the wadded coats.
"We cannot hold them, Captain Sahib!" panted a Ressaidar of
Lancers. "Let us try the carbine. The lance is good, but it wastes
time."
They tried the carbine, and still the enemy melted away - fled up
the hills by hundreds when there were only twenty bullets to stop
them. On the heights the screw-guns ceased firing - they had run
out of ammunition - and the Brigadier groaned, for the musketry
fire could not sufficiently smash the retreat. Long before the
last volleys were fired, the doolies were out in force looking for
the wounded. The battle was over, and, but for want of fresh
troops, the Afghans would have been wiped off the earth. As it
was, they counted their dead by hundreds, and nowhere were the
dead thicker than in the track of the Fore and Aft.
But the Regiment did not cheer with the Highlanders, nor did they
dance uncouth dances with the Goorkhas among the dead. They looked
under their brows at the Colonel as they leaned upon their rifles
and panted.
"Get back to camp, you. Haven't you disgraced yourself enough for
one day! Go and look to the wounded. It's all you're fit for,"
said the Colonel. Yet for the past hour the Fore and Aft had been
doing all that mortal commander could expect. They had lost
heavily because they did not know how to set about their business
with proper skill, but they had borne themselves gallantly, and
this was their reward.
A young and sprightly Colour-Sergeant, who had begun to imagine
himself a hero, offered his water-bottle to a Highlander whose
tongue was black with thirst. "I drink with no cowards," answered
the youngster huskily, and, turning to a Goorkha, said, "Hya,
Johnny! Drink water got it?" The Goorkha grinned and passed his
bottle. The Fore and Aft said no word.
They went back to camp when the field of strife had been a little
mopped up and made presentable, and the Brigadier, who saw himself
a Knight in three months, was the only soul who was complimentary
to them. The Colonel was heartbroken, and the officers were savage
and sullen.
"Well," said the Brigadier, "they are young troops, of course, and
it was not unnatural that they should retire in disorder for a
bit."
"Oh, my only Aunt Maria ! " murmured a junior Staff Officer.
"Retire in disorder! It was a bally run!"
"But they came again, as we all know," cooed the Brigadier, the
Colonel's ashy-white face before him, "and they behaved as well as
could possibly be expected. Behaved beautifully, indeed. I was
watching them. It's not a matter to take to heart, Colonel. As
some German General said of his men, they wanted to be shooted
over a little, that was all." To himself he said - "Now they're
blooded I can give 'em responsible work. It's as well that they
got what they did. 'Teach 'em more than half a dozen rifle
flirtations, that will - later - run alone and bite. Poor old
Colonel, though."
All that afternoon the heliograph winked and flickered on the
hills, striving to tell the good news to a mountain forty miles
away And in the evening there arrived, dusty, sweating, and sore,
a misguided Correspondent who had gone out to assist at a trumpery
village-burning, and who had read off the message from afar,
cursing his luck the while.
"Let's have the details somehow - as full as ever you can, please.
It's the first time I've ever been left this campaign," said the
Correspondent to the Brigadier; and the Brigadier, nothing loth,
told him how an Army of Communication had been crumpled up,
destroyed, and all but annihilated by the craft, strategy, wisdom,
and foresight of the Brigadier.
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