Soldiers Three [Stories]
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Rudyard Kipling >> Soldiers Three [Stories]
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The cavalry were very quiet, but each man gripped his carbine and
stood beside his horse. Again the voice called, "Who goes there?"
and in a louder key, "0 brothers, give the alarm!" Now, every man
in the cavalry would have died in his long boots sooner than have
asked for quarter, but it is a fact that the answer to the second
call was a long wail of "Marf karo! Marf karo!" which means, "Have
mercy! Have mercy!" It came from the climbing regiment.
The cavalry stood dumbfoundered, till the big troopers had time to
whisper one to another:
"Mir Khan, was that thy voice? Abdullah, didst thou call?"
Lieutenant Halley stood beside his charger and waited. So long as
no firing was going on he was content. Another flash of lightning
showed the horses with heaving flanks and nodding heads; the men,
white eye-balled, glaring beside them, and the stone watch-tower
to the left. This time there was no head at the window, and the
rude iron-clamped shutter that could turn a rifle-bullet was
closed.
"Go on, men," said the Major. "Get up to the top at any rate!" The
squadron toiled forward, the horses wagging their tails and the
men pulling at the bridles, the stones rolling down the hillside
and the sparks flying. Lieutenant Halley declares that he never
heard a squadron make so much noise in his life. They scrambled
up, he said, as though each horse had eight legs and a spare horse
to follow him. Even then there was no sound from the watch-tower,
and the men stopped exhausted on the ridge that overlooked the pit
of darkness in which the village of Bersund lay. Girths were
loosed, curb-chains shifted, and saddles adjusted, and the men
dropped down among the stones. Whatever might happen now, they
held the upper ground of any attack.
The thunder ceased, and with it the rain, and the soft thick
darkness of a winter night before the dawn covered them all.
Except for the sound of falling water among the ravines below,
everything was still. They heard the shutter of the watch-tower
below them thrown back with a clang, and the voice of the watcher
calling, "Oh, Hafiz Ullah!"
The echoes took up the call, "La-la-la!" and an answer came from
the watch-tower hidden round the curve of the hill, "What is it,
Shahbaz Khan?"
Shahbaz Khan replied in the high-pitched voice of the mountaineer:
"Hast thou seen?"
The answer came back: "Yes. God deliver us from all evil spirits!
There was a pause, and then: "Hafiz Ullah, I am alone! Come to
me."
"Shahbaz Khan, I am alone also; but I dare not leave my post!"
"That is a lie; thou art afraid."
A longer pause followed, and then: "I am afraid. Be silent! They
are below us still. Pray to God and sleep."
The troopers listened and wondered, for they could not understand
what save earth and stone could lie below the watch-towers.
Shahbaz Khan began to call again: "They are below us. I can see
them! For the pity of God come over to me, Hafiz Ullah! My father
slew ten of them. Come over!"
Hafiz Ullah answered in a very loud voice, "Mine was guiltless.
Hear, ye Men of the Night, neither my father nor my blood had any
part in that sin. Bear thou thine own punishment, Shahbaz Khan."
"Oh, some one ought to stop those two chaps crowing away like
cocks there," said the Lieutenant, shivering under his rock.
He had hardly turned round to expose a new side of him to the rain
before a bearded, long-locked, evil-smelling Afghan rushed up the
hill, and tumbled into his arms. Halley sat upon him, and thrust
as much of a sword-hilt as could be spared down the man's gullet.
"If you cry out, I kill you," he said cheerfully.
The man was beyond any expression of terror. He lay and quaked,
gasping. When Halley took the sword-hilt from between his teeth,
he was still inarticulate, but clung to Halley's arm, feeling it
from elbow to wrist.
"The Rissala! The dead Rissala! " he gasped, "It is down there!"
"No; the Rissala, the very much alive Rissala. It is up here,"
said Halley, unshipping his watering-bridle and fastening the
man's hands. "Why were you in the towers so foolish as to let us
pass?"
"The valley is full of the dead," said the Afghan. "It is better
to fall into the hands of the English than the hands of the dead.
They march to and fro below there. I saw them in the lightning."
He recovered his composure after a little, and whispering, because
Halley's pistol was at his stomach, said: "What is this? There is
no war between us now, and the Mullah will kill me for not seeing
you pass!"
"Rest easy," said Halley; "we are coming to kill the Mullah, if
God please. His teeth have grown too long. No harm will come to
thee unless the daylight shows thee as a face which is desired by
the gallows for crime done. But what of the dead regiment?"
"I only kill within my own border," said the man, immensely
relieved. "The dead regiment is below. The men must have passed
through it on their journey - four hundred dead on horses,
stumbling among their own graves, among the little heaps - dead
men all, whom we slew."
"Whew!" said Halley. "That accounts for my cursing Carter and the
Major cursing me. Four hundred sabres, eh? No wonder we thought
there were a few extra men in the troop. Kurruk Shah," he
whispered to a grizzled native officer that lay within a few feet
of him, "hast thou heard anything of a dead Rissala in these
hills?
"Assuredly," said Kurruk Shah with a grim chuckle. "Otherwise, why
did I, who have served the Queen for seven-and-twenty years, and
killed many hill-dogs, shout aloud for quarter when the lightning
revealed us to the watch-towers? When I was a young man I saw the
killing in the valley of Sheor-K“t there at our feet, and I know
the tale that grew up therefrom. But how can the ghosts of
unbelievers prevail against us who are of the Faith? Strap that
dog's hands a little tighter, Sahib. An Afghan is like an eel."
"But a dead Rissala," said Halley, jerking his captive's wrist.
"That is foolish talk, Kurruk Shah. The dead are dead. Hold still,
Sag." The Afghan wriggled.
"The dead are dead, and for that reason they walk at night. What
need to talk? We be men; we have our eyes and ears. Thou canst
both see and hear them down the hillside," said Kurruk Shah
composedly.
Halley stared and listened long and intently. The valley was full
of stifled noises, as every valley must be at night; but whether
he saw or heard more than was natural Halley alone knows, and he
does not choose to speak on the subject.
At last, and just before the dawn, a green rocket shot up from the
far side of the valley of Bersund, at the head of the gorge, to
show that the Goorkhas were in position. A red light from the
infantry at left and right answered it, and the cavalry burnt a
white flare. Afghans in winter are late sleepers, and it was not
till full day that the Gulla Kutta Mullah's men began to straggle
from their huts, rubbing their eyes. They saw men in green, and
red, and brown uniforms, leaning on their arms, neatly arranged
all round the crater of the village of Bersund, in a cordon that
not even a wolf could have broken. They rubbed their eyes the more
when a pink-faced young man, who was not even in the Army, but
represented the Political Department, tripped down the hillside
with two orderlies, rapped at the door of the Gulla Kutta Mullah's
house, and told him quietly to step out and be tied up for safe
transport. That same young man passed on through the huts, tapping
here one cateran and there another lightly with his cane; and as
each was pointed out, so he was tied up, staring hopelessly at the
crowned heights around where the English soldiers looked down with
incurious eyes. Only the Mullah tried to carry it off with curses
and high words, till a soldier who was tying his hands said: -
"None o' your lip! Why didn't you come out when you was ordered,
instead o' keeping us awake all night? You're no better than my
own barrack-sweeper, you white-'eaded old polyanthus! Kim up!"
Half an hour later the troops had gone away with the Mullah and
his thirteen friends. The dazed villagers were looking ruefully at
a pile of broken muskets and snapped swords, and wondering how in
the world they had come so to miscalculate the forbearance of the
Indian Government.
It was a very neat little affair, neatly carried out, and the men
concerned were unofficially thanked for their services.
Yet it seems to me that much credit is also due to another
regiment whose name did not appear in brigade orders, and whose
very existence is in danger of being forgotten.
THE DRUMS OF THE FORE AND AFT
In the Army List they still stand as "The Fore and Fit Princess
Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen-Anspach's Merther-Tydfilshire Own Royal
Loyal Light Infantry, Regimental District 329A," but the Army
through all its barracks and canteens knows them now as the "Fore
and Aft." They may in time do something that shall make their new
title honourable, but at present they are bitterly ashamed, and
the man who calls them "Fore and Aft" does so at the risk of the
head which is on his shoulders.
Two words breathed into the stables of a certain Cavalry Regiment
will bring the men out into the streets with belts and mops and
bad language; but a whisper of "Fore and Aft" will bring out this
regiment with rifles.
Their one excuse is that they came again and did their best to
finish the job in style. But for a time all their world knows that
they were openly beaten, whipped, dumb-cowed, shaking and afraid.
The men know it; their officers know it; the Horse Guards know it,
and when the next war comes the enemy will know it also. There are
two or three regiments of the Line that have a black mark against
their names which they will then wipe out; and it will be
excessively inconvenient for the troops upon whom they do their
wiping.
The courage of the British soldier is officially supposed to be
above proof, and, as a general rule, it is so. The exceptions are
decently shovelled out of sight, only to be referred to in the
freshest of unguarded talk that occasionally swamps a Mess-table
at midnight. Then one hears strange and horrible stories of men
not following their officers, of orders being given by those who
had no right to give them, and of disgrace that, but for the
standing luck of the British Army, might have ended in brilliant
disaster. These are unpleasant stories to listen to, and the
Messes tell them under their breath, sitting by the big wood
fires, and the young officer bows his head and thinks to himself,
please God, his men shall never behave unhandily.
The British soldier is not altogether to be blamed for occasional
lapses; but this verdict he should not know. A moderately
intelligent General will waste six months in mastering the craft
of the particular war that he may be waging; a Colonel may utterly
misunderstand the capacity of his regiment for three months after
it has taken the field, and even a Company Commander may err and
be deceived as to the temper and temperament of his own handful:
wherefore the soldier, and the soldier of to-day more
particularly, should not be blamed for fa1ling back. He should be
shot or hanged afterwards - to encourage the others; but he should
not be vilified in newspapers, for that is want of tact and waste
of space.
He has, let us say, been in the service of the Empress for,
perhaps, four years. He will leave in another two years. He has no
inherited morals, and four years are not sufficient to drive
toughness into his fibre, or to teach him how holy a thing is his
Regiment. He wants to drink, he wants to enjoy himself - in India
he wants to save money - and he does not in the least like getting
hurt. He has received just sufficient education to make him
understand half the purport of the orders he receives, and to
speculate on the nature of clean, incised, and shattering wounds.
Thus, if he is told to deploy under fire preparatory to an attack,
he knows that he runs a very great risk of being killed while he
is deploying, and suspects that he is being thrown away to gain
ten minutes' time. He may either deploy with desperate swiftness,
or he may shuffle, or bunch, or break, according to the discipline
under which he has lain for four years.
Armed with imperfect knowledge, cursed with the rudiments of an
imagination, hampered by the intense selfishness of the lower
classes, and unsupported by any regimental associations, this
young man is suddenly introduced to an enemy
who in eastern lands is always ugly, generally tall and hairy, and
frequently noisy. If he looks to the right and the left and sees
old soldiers - men of twelve years' service, who, he knows, know
what they are about - taking a charge, rush, or demonstration
without embarrassment, he is consoled and applies his shoulder to
the butt of his rifle with a stout heart. His peace is the greater
if he hears a senior, who has taught him his soldiering and broken
his head on occasion, whispering: "They'll shout and carry on like
this for five minutes. Then they'll rush in, and then we've got
'em by the short hairs!"
But, on the other hand, if he sees only men of his own term of
service, turning white and playing with their triggers and saying:
"What the Hell's up now?" while the Company Commanders are
sweating into their sword-hilts and shouting: "Front rank, fix
bayonets. Steady there - steady! Sight for three hundred - no, for
five! Lie down, all! Steady! Front rank kneel!" and so forth, he
becomes unhappy, and grows acutely miserable when he hears a
comrade turn over with the rattle of fire-irons falling into the
fender, and the grunt of a pole-axed ox. If he can be moved about
a little and allowed to watch the effect of his own fire on the
enemy he feels merrier, and may be then worked up to the blind
passion of fighting, which is, contrary to general belief,
controlled by a chilly Devil and shakes men like ague. If he is
not moved about, and begins to feel cold at the pit of the
stomach, and in that crisis is badly mauled and hears orders that
were never given, he will break, and he will break badly, and of
all things under the light of the Sun there is nothing more
terrible than a broken British regiment. When the worst comes to
the worst and the panic is really epidemic, the men must be e'en
let go, and the Company Commanders had better escape to the enemy
and stay there for safety's sake. If they can be made to come
again they are not pleasant men to meet; because they will not
break twice.
About thirty years from this date, when we have succeeded in half-
educating everything that wears trousers, our Army will be a
beautifully unreliable machine. It will know too much and it will
do too little. Later still, when all men are at the mental level
of the officer of to-day, it will sweep the earth. Speaking
roughly, you must employ either blackguards or gentlemen, or, best
of all, blackguards commanded by gentlemen, to do butcher's work
with efficiency and despatch. The ideal soldier should, of course,
think for himself - the "Pocket-book" says so. Unfortunately, to
attain this virtue, he has to pass through the phase of thinking
of himself, and that is misdirected genius. A blackguard may be
slow to think for himself, but he is genuinely anxious to kill,
and a little punishment teaches him how to guard his own skin and
perforate another's. A powerfully prayerful Highland Regiment,
officered by rank Presbyterians, is, perhaps, one degree more
terrible in action than a hard-bitten thousand of irresponsible
Irish ruffians led by most improper young unbelievers. But these
things prove the rule - which is that the midway men are not to be
trusted alone. They have ideas about the value of life and an
upbringing that has not taught them to go on and take the chances.
They are carefully unprovided with a backing of comrades who have
been shot over, and until that backing is re-introduced, as a
great many Regimental Commanders intend it shall be, they are more
liable to disgrace themselves than the size of the Empire or the
dignity of the Army allows. Their officers are as good as good can
be, because their training begins early, and God has arranged that
a clean-run youth of the British middle classes shall, in the
matter of backbone, brains, and bowels, surpass all other youths.
For this reason a child of eighteen will stand up, doing nothing,
with a tin sword in his hand and joy in his heart until he is
dropped. If he dies, he dies like a gentleman. If he lives, he
writes Home that he has been "potted," "sniped," "chipped," or
"cut over," and sits down to besiege Government for a wound-
gratuity until the next little war breaks out, when he perjures
himself before a Medical Board, blarneys his Colonel, burns
incense round his Adjutant, and is allowed to go to the Front once
more.
Which homily brings me directly to a brace of the most finished
little fiends that ever banged drum or tootled fife in the Band of
a British Regiment. They ended their sinful career by open and
flagrant mutiny and were shot for it. Their names were Jakin and
Lew - Piggy Lew and they were bold, bad drummer-boys, both of them
frequently birched by the Drum-Major of the Fore and Aft.
-
Jakin was a stunted child of fourteen, and Lew was about the same
age. When not looked after, they smoked and drank. They swore
habitually after the manner of the Barrack-room, which is cold
swearing and comes from between clenched teeth, and they fought
religiously once a week. Jakin had sprung from some London gutter,
and may or may not have passed through Dr. Barnardo's hands ere he
arrived at the dignity of drummer-boy. Lew could remember nothing
except the Regiment and the delight of listening to the Band from
his earliest years. He hid somewhere in his grimy little soul a
genuine love for music, and was most mistakenly furnished with the
head of a cherub: insomuch that beautiful ladies who watched the
Regiment in church were wont to speak of him as a "darling." They
never heard his vitriolic comments on their manners and morals, as
he walked back to barracks with the Band and matured fresh causes
of offence against Jakin.
The other drummer-boys hated both lads on account of their
illogical conduct. Jakin might be pounding Lew, or Lew might be
rubbing Jakin's head in the dirt, but any attempt at aggression on
the part of an outsider was met by the combined forces of Lew and
Jakin; and the consequences were painful. The boys were the
Ishmaels of the corps, but wealthy Ishmaels, for they sold battles
in alternate weeks for the sport of the barracks when they were
not pitted against other boys; and thus amassed money.
On this particular day there was dissension in the camp. They had
just been convicted afresh of smoking, which is bad for little
boys who use plug-tobacco, and Lew's contention was that Jakin had
"stunk so 'orrid bad from keepin' the pipe in pocket," that he and
he alone was responsible for the birching they were both tingling
under.
"I tell you I 'id the pipe back o' barracks," said Jakin
pacifically.
"You're a bloomin' liar," said Lew without heat.
"You're a bloomin' little barstard," said Jakin, strong in the
knowledge that his own ancestry was unknown.
Now there is one word in the extended vocabulary of barrack-room
abuse that cannot pass without comment. You may call a man a thief
and risk nothing. You may even call him a coward without finding
more than a boot whiz past your ear, but you must not call a man a
bastard unless you are prepared to prove it on his front teeth.
"You might ha' kep' that till I wasn't so sore," said Lew
sorrowfully, dodging round Jakin's guard.
"I'll make you sorer," said Jakin genially, and got home on Lew's
alabaster forehead. All would have gone well and this story, as
the books say, would never have been written, had not his evil
fate prompted the Bazar-Sergeant's son, a long, employless man of
five-and-twenty, to put in an appearance after the first round. He
was eternally in need of money, and knew that the boys had silver.
"Fighting again," said he. "I'll report you to my father, and
he'll report you to the Colour-Sergeant."
"What's that to you?" said Jakin with an unpleasant dilation of
the nostrils.
"Oh! nothing to me. You'll get into trouble, and you've been up
too often to afford that."
"What the Hell do you know about what we've done?" asked Lew the
Seraph. "You aren't in the Army, you lousy, cadging civilian."
He closed in on the man's left flank.
"Jes' 'cause you find two gentlemen settlin' their diff'rences
with their fistes you stick in your ugly nose where you aren't
wanted. Run 'ome to your 'arf-caste slut of a Ma - or we'll give
you what-for," said Jakin.
The man attempted reprisals by knocking the boys' heads together.
The scheme would have succeeded had not Jakin punched him
vehemently in the stomach, or had Lew refrained from kicking his
shins. They fought together, bleeding and breathless, for half an
hour, and, after heavy punishment, triumphantly pulled down their
opponent as terriers pull down a jackal.
"Now," gasped Jakin, "I'll give you what-for." He proceeded to
pound the man's features while Lew stamped on the outlying
portions of his anatomy. Chivalry is not a strong point in the
composition of the average drummer-boy. He fights, as do his
betters, to make his mark.
Ghastly was the ruin that escaped, and awful was the wrath of the
Bazar-Sergeant. Awful too was the scene in Orderly-room when the
two reprobates appeared to answer the charge of half-murdering a
"civilian." The Bazar-Sergeant thirsted for a criminal action, and
his son lied. The boys stood to attention while the black clouds
of evidence accumulated.
"You little devils are more trouble than the rest of the Regiment
put together," said the Colonel angrily. "One might as well
admonish thistledown, and I can't well put you in cells or under
stoppages. You must be birched again."
"Beg y' pardon, Sir. Can't we say nothin' in our own defence,
Sir?" shrilled Jakin.
"Hey! What? Are you going to argue with me?" said the Colonel.
"No, Sir," said Lew. "But if a man come to you, Sir, and said he
was going to report you, Sir, for 'aving a bit of a turn-up with a
friend, Sir, an' wanted to get money out o' you, Sir-"
The Orderly-room exploded in a roar of laughter. "Well?" said the
Colonel.
"That was what that measly jarnwar there did, Sir, and 'e'd 'a'
done it, Sir, if we 'adn't prevented 'im. We didn't 'it 'im much,
Sir. 'E 'adn't no manner o' right to interfere with us, Sir. I
don't mind bein' birched by the Drum-Major, Sir, nor yet reported
by any Corp'ral, but I'm - but I don't think it's fair, Sir, for a
civilian to come an' talk over a man in the Army."
A second shout of laughter shook the Orderly-room, but the Colonel
was grave.
"What sort of characters have these boys?" he asked of the
Regimental Sergeant-Major.
"Accordin' to the Bandmaster, Sir," returned that revered official
- the only soul in the Regiment whom the boys feared - "they do
everything but lie, Sir."
"Is it like we'd go for that man for fun, Sir?" said Lew, pointing
to the plaintiff.
"Oh, admonished - admonished!" said the Colonel testily, and when
the boys had gone he read the Bazar-Sergeant's son a lecture on
the sin of unprofitable meddling, and gave orders that the
Bandmaster should keep the Drums in better discipline.
"If either of you come to practice again with so much as a scratch
on your two ugly little faces," thundered the Bandmaster, "I'll
tell the Drum-Major to take the skin off your backs. Understand
that, you young devils."
Then he repented of his speech for just the length of time that
Lew, looking like a seraph in red worsted embellishments, took the
place of one of the trumpets - in hospital - and rendered the echo
of a battle-piece. Lew certainly was a musician, and had often in
his more exalted moments expressed a yearning to master every
instrument of the Band.
"There's nothing to prevent your becoming a Bandmaster, Lew," said
the Bandmaster, who had composed waltzes of his own, and worked
day and night in the interests of the Band.
"What did he say?" demanded Jakin after practice.
"Said I might be a bloomin' Bandmaster, an' be asked in to 'ave a
glass o' sherry wine on Mess-nights."
"Ho! 'Said you might be a bloomin' noncombatant, did 'e! That's
just about wot 'e would say. When I've put in my boy's service
it's a bloomin' shame that doesn't count for pension - I'll take
on as a privit. Then I'll be a Lance in a year - knowin' what I
know about the ins an' outs o' things. In three years I'll be a
bloomin' Sergeant. I won't marry then, not I! I'll 'old on and
learn the orf'cers' ways an' apply for exchange into a reg'ment
that doesn't know all about me. Then I'll be a bloomin' orf'cer.
Then I'll ask you to 'ave a glass o' sherry wine, Mister Lew, an'
you'll bloomin' well 'ave to stay in the hanty-room while the
Mess-Sergeant brings it to your dirty 'ands."
-
"S'pose I'm going to be a Bandmaster? Not I, quite. I'll be a
orf'cer too. There's nothin' like takin' to a thing an' stickin'
to it, the Schoolmaster says. The Reg'ment don't go 'ome for
another seven years. I'll be a Lance then or near to."
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