Red Runs the Helmand

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‘Mark your targets, men.’ Another needless but self- reassuring order spilled from Keenan’s mouth, as Kala jinked hard to avoid one of the enemy who had dropped to the ground. The Afghan had realised, almost too late, that he’d caught the eye of at least three angry Scinde Horsemen. In the first wave Captain Reynolds had cut at him, doing nothing more than ripping his kurta. Next, Sowar Ram – the trumpeter – sliced the soft, sheepskin cap off his head, but left the man unharmed. Then it was Keenan’s turn. The young officer tried to reach low enough to spit his enemy on the ground, but the Durani had learnt more in the last sixty seconds than in a lifetime of swordplay. First he crouched. Then, as Keenan’s blade came close, he sprang like a cat, took the full force of his attacker’s steel on the boss of his shield and cut up hard with his long Khyber knife. Keenan was past his target, over-exposed, leaning down from the saddle, and had it not been for the lance daffadar riding close behind him, the knife would have taken him squarely in the back. Instead, an issue lance, with twelve stone of cavalryman behind it, entered the Afghan’s left lung, emerged just above his heart and left him dead before he hit the ground.

‘Shukria, bahadur,’ gasped Keenan, as the corpse dropped away. The lance daffadar seemed almost as surprised by the perfection of the blow as the officer was to be in one piece.

The charge slowed and broke, as the horsemen fell upon their enemies, knots of cavalrymen soon surrounded by a sea of Duranis who had quickly recovered from the crashing impact. Keenan found himself in a sandy gully filled with pushing, yelling tribesmen, his own troopers hacking left and right in a desperate attempt to force the enemy swordsmen back.

‘More than we thought, sahib,’ said Miran, almost matter-of-factly. ‘I hope the colonel sahib has got those owls in B Squadron ready to come and help.’ The last few words were said with a grunt – the daffadar had abandoned his lance and drawn his sword. Now the blade sickled through a sheepskin poshteen and deep into the shoulder of an older, bearded warrior, who quit the fight with a yelp of pain.

‘Aye, Daffadar, but they’ll need to be quick – look to Captain Reynolds, won’t you?’ Keenan saw his squadron leader just a few paces further up the nullah engulfed by a dozen attackers. The trumpeter – who was taught to protect the officer when at close quarters like this – seemed to be down. Keenan thought he’d seen one of the horses roll on to its side as muskets and matchlocks banged all around. Then, at first, Reynolds had slashed all about him, driving the Duranis back, but Keenan saw one bolder than the rest who threw down his shield and musket, drew his knife and scrambled forward. The tribesman had come from the captain’s rear, and the long knife poked hard over Reynolds’s rolled blanket and darted into the small of his back. The blade disappeared and re-emerged, stained red, and, in an instant, the officer had gone from a fighting man to a semi-cripple: he dropped his sword and yelled in pain, gripping the pommel of his saddle as the rest of the foe closed in and tried to drag him to the ground.

With no further words, the daffadar had dug his spurs into his mount, the pony kicking up the grit as she surged towards the mob. Keenan did the same, Kala barging one man out of her way with her left shoulder before putting her master right among the struggling throng.

Just in front of Keenan, a young Durani had thrown down his sword and seized Reynolds’s tunic with both hands, dragging at the wounded officer who was feebly kicking out with the toes of his riding boots while trying to control his rearing horse. Keenan was about to strike a living target for the first time but, despite hours of practice, every bit of training deserted him. His victim was facing away from him, intent upon Reynolds in the noise and confusion that overwhelmed them all – a perfect mark for a deep stab with the point of the sword. Such a strike, Keenan had been taught, would be effective and economical, yet blunt instinct took over as he swept his tulwar over his left shoulder and let go a great scything cut that almost unbalanced him.

The carefully sharpened steel hit the foot soldier in two places at once. The base of the blade struck the man just above the left ear, his woollen cap taking some of the power out of the blow, but not before a great wound was opened on his scalp. At the same time, the forward part of the sword sliced obliquely through the Durani’s left hand, neatly cutting off a couple of fingers and carving a wide flap of skin under which the bones showed whitely. The blow had been awkward, clumsy, and his opponent, though hurt and shouting in pain, still clung to Reynolds with fanatical determination.

‘Use the point, sahib, finish him properly.’ Next to Keenan in the plunging mêlée, the daffadar was jabbing at his own countrymen expertly, while remaining detached enough to guide his British officer.

Pulling the hilt of his sword back over Kala’s rump, Keenan lunged hard at his shrieking opponent. The point of the weapon hit the man under his armpit and pushed obliquely through his major organs with surprising ease. One moment the tribesman had been wounded, but alive and dangerous; at the next he fell away, slipping easily off Keenan’s blade into the cloud of dust and thrashing hoofs below, a look of horror on his bristly face.

So, that was what it was like to kill, thought Keenan. He glanced at the corpse – it was already shrunken and shapeless in death – but any pang of guilt had no time to develop as the daffadar bawled, ‘Shabash, sahib!’ at him and ran yet another of the enemy through the shoulder to send the man corkscrewing back behind them and right on to the lance of a sowar riding with the second rank. Keenan knew the lad, a well-muscled youngster who’d come down from Rawalpindi to enlist last year. He was a wrestler and now every bit of sinew was put into a blow that buried his spear deep in the wounded tribesman’s belly, finishing the brutal work that the daffadar had started. Keenan glanced at the cavalryman as he brought his weapon back to the ‘recover’. There was no regret, no sympathy, just a vulpine grin behind his beard – a soldier satisfied with a job well done.

The immediate danger was over. Keenan watched as the Durani infantry loped away from his men, dodging among the brush and trees, one or two pausing to fire but most running hard to regroup among the buildings from which they had emerged. Even as Keenan took all this in, however, even as he looked back at the bundles of dusty rags that had been his enemy and the odd khaki figure sprawled beside them, he realised that a badly cut-about, barely conscious Captain Reynolds was being helped down from his saddle by two soldiers.

‘What are your orders, sahib?’ Rissaldar Singh, the senior of the squadron’s two native officers, stood before him, a fleck of blood on his horse’s neck but otherwise as unruffled as if he were on parade.

‘Orders?’ Keenan answered bemusedly, wondering why one of the other troop officers should have come to him for guidance.

‘Yes, sahib, orders. You’re in charge now that Reynolds sahib is hurt,’ Singh continued calmly.

‘Yes . . . yes, of course I am.’ Despite Keenan’s lack and Singh’s depth of experience, as the only British officer left in the squadron, command automatically devolved upon him. Now he looked at the enemy. He could see a great crowd of them, probably two hundred strong, he guessed, turning to face his troops from the mud-walled hamlet that lay a furlong away over open, tussocky ground. Even as he watched he could see their confidence returning: they had started to shout defiance and fire wild shots towards the Scinde Horse.

‘Let’s be at ’em, then. Get your troops shaken out either side of mine beyond this nullah . . .’ Keenan pointed to the shallow ditch immediately to their front, but stopped as Singh shook his head.

‘No, sahib, we are too few – look.’

Keenan took stock of his new command. Singh was right: not only had the squadron lost its commander and several men, but many of the horses had been cut by swords and knives or grazed by bullets and all were blown. Most of the men had lost or broken their lances and two score simply could not hope to repeat the success of their earlier action, especially now that surprise was lost and the enemy had planted himself among protective walls and enclosures.

‘The colonel will want to finish them with the other squadrons – we must hold them with our carbines, sahib,’ Singh suggested, with quiet insistence.

‘Aye, you’re right, sahib. Trumpeter . . .’ But there was no one to obey Keenan – he’d forgotten that the signaller had been one of the first to fall. ‘Dismount, prepare to skirmish,’ he shouted, the command being taken up by the NCOs who tongue-lashed the dazed troopers off their horses and forward with their weapons.

Keenan looked away to his right where the main body of the rearguard had been concentrated before the fight. Again Singh seemed to have been correct: he could see the remaining two squadrons of the Scinde Horse wheeling amid their own cloud of dust, shaking out into line abreast, while the company of the 29th Beloochis were trotting off to a flank to give covering fire, he guessed, with their long Snider rifles. Their own carbine fire, if quick and accurate, would gall the enemy just as the rest of Colonel Malcolmson’s horsemen charged home.

‘Squadron, load.’ The men had flung themselves down behind any cover they could find and now they rammed cartridges into the breech of their weapons and clicked the breech-traps closed. ‘Two fifty . . . aim high.’ Keenan reckoned the range to be a little less than three hundred yards. The men adjusted their sights. ‘Fire!’ The snub-nosed rifles crashed out, pleasingly together, immediately obscuring his view of the target with a dense grey cloud.

‘Reload.’ The gentle breeze cleared some of the smoke, allowing Keenan to see where his men’s bullets had whipped and stung the enemy. Where, just seconds before, there had been a dense packet of defiant tribesmen, now wounded men were struggling on the ground and their chanting had been replaced by moans of pain.

‘Fire!’ Again, the carbines banged out, and the rifles of the 29th joined in from way over on his troop’s right. Behind the bank of muzzle smoke, Keenan could see the hundred and twenty lancers of the other two squadrons gathering speed as they trotted, then cantered up the gentle slope towards the village.

‘Engage by troops.’ Keenan wondered if this was the right thing to do or whether it would have been better to continue to volley fire.

‘Shabash, sahib.’ The daffadar beamed delightedly at his officer as he encouraged his soldiers’ frantic marksmanship. ‘See them run.’

And, through the smoke, Keenan could see how the Durani formation was beginning to disintegrate. Lashed by bullets, with more and more warriors writhing on the ground, a steady trickle of men was edging away into the cover of the village. Then the remaining two Scinde Horse squadrons charged home. The buildings and walls took some of the momentum away from the assault, but as Keenan watched, and Miran capered with delight beside him, the cavalrymen began their lethal trade.

Lances stabbed and curved steel hacked, poked and slashed; some tribesmen resisted bravely, trying to meet the terrible blades with shields and muskets, but most just melted away through the village, running for all they were worth into the hills beyond.

‘Fire at will!’ It was the last command that Keenan gave in his first action. As his men blazed at fleeing targets, he took his own carbine, which, until then, he hadn’t thought to fire, but now he found a mark. One Durani was moving well from cover to cover, firing a captured Snider at Malcolmson’s men as they hunted down the few who still resisted. Keenan watched his man shelter behind a bush, topple a trooper from his saddle with one shot, then rise and scuttle back to his next position. But as the man broke into a trot, Keenan put the metal V of his foresight on the knot of his target’s belt, aimed just a fraction more to the left to allow for the time of flight of the round and gently squeezed the trigger. The warrior dropped like a shot rabbit, falling towards Keenan as the lead ploughed through his flesh. There was not even a flicker of life in him: the half-inch lump of lead had ripped it from him.

He’s trying to be as modest as he can be, but I know that Sam was in the thick of it – word soon got back to me, especially as he had ended up commanding a squadron when things got tight. Firing his carbine alongside the men . . . I did the same in my first action – well, almost. But I don’t see any of the self-doubt that beset me: there’s a poise about the lad that I never had and which I’ve never noticed in him before – must get it from his mother. I expect I’ve been blinded by setting Billy’s course for him, making sure that the Morgan name is held high. Well, much good may that do, for both my boys are out here in Afghanistan now – though I doubt that Billy will get the same chance to earn his spurs that Sam’s had. It’ll take Billy an age to live down that business in Kandahar with the child.

‘Well, anyway, Father, that was months ago. We’ve seen a little more skirmishing since then, but nothing to compare with Khusk-i-Nakud. D’you think there’s likely to be another campaign this season, or will we be going back to India?’ asked Sam.

The boy even holds a glass like I do, both hands curled around the base,

‘I doubt there’ll be any more fighting, Sam. All the spunk’s gone out of things now that hand-wringing Gladstone has got in. Mark my words, if we don’t show the Afghans who’s in charge, the bloody Russians will be in Kabul, like rats up a gutter, and then we’ll see just how safe India’s borders are. But I expect we’ll sweat out the hot weather here and then take a gentlemanly trek back through the passes some time in late summer. I think you may have seen all the action you’re likely to get just for the moment, my lad. Just be glad your hide’s in one piece.’

‘Aye, Father, you’re right. A nice silver medal and a notch on my hilt are probably as much as I want. Some of the other officers are full of piss and vinegar – they can’t wait for the next round – but a little swordplay with an angry Durani goes a long way in my book.’

I looked at my first son and liked what I saw. It would have been so easy to give his superior officer – and his father – some sort of devil-may-care, God-rot-Johnny-Afghan patter. But, no, he’d tasted blood and once was quite enough for him. I admired his frankness. Mind you, I wonder if I really did expect a quiet summer and a long walk, or was I just trying to calm the lad’s expectations? If I’d really thought that things in Afghanistan were all but over that spring, I was sorely disappointed.

Chapter Four - The March

I’d hung around in garrisons before, but nothing ever like this. In Dublin, Pembroke Dock, Bombay and Karachi, you could establish some sort of routine, some sort of rhythm, to your work and have as good a social life as the people, the shooting and the hunting would allow. Then, when man oeuvres, postings or even campaigns beckoned, you could gear yourself up, jildi the men, tighten belts and set about whatever it was that Horse Guards wanted with gusto.

But Kandahar was debilitating. We weren’t at war yet we were; we were expecting trouble yet we weren’t. The rumours about a troublesome Ayoob Khan in Herat on the Persian border, which had held so much sway when I assumed command of the brigade in April, more than a month ago now, waxed and waned. Meanwhile, fighting was still going on in the north and the town was just as uneasy and bloody unpleasant as it had always been. Patrols continued to be knocked around, scuffles were frequent, and yet we had to pretend that everything was sweetness and light with the wali and his scabrous troops.

At least the dithering gave me time to get to know the units in the brigade and to push them into some sort of shape. By early May I’d visited the two companies of the 66th who were detached to protect the lines of communication at Khelati-Ghilzai, eighty-five miles away on the Kabul road, and got a good idea of how the land lay to the north-east. More importantly, I’d come to realise how I would miss them in the event of a serious fight around Kandahar. Their detachment meant that Galbraith only had six companies under his command, and these four hundred and fifty men were the only European troops – other than the Gunners – that I had to my name.

But the 66th were a good lot. Even though Galbraith had never seen active service before, he’d had a fair old time with the regiment and established a pretty firm grip on them. I’d already noticed how many long-service men they had with them and my son’s sergeant – Kelly – was typical of their senior NCOs. I was also impressed with Beresford-Pierce, Billy’s captain commanding H Company. He and his colour sergeant – James – seemed as close as McGucken and I had ever been in the old days, and it was this company that Galbraith chose to demonstrate to me the 66th’s skill at arms.

The British battalion was the only unit to be armed with the Martini-Henry breech-loader; they’d had it for several years now and were thoroughly proficient with a weapon whose rate of fire could be devastating in the right hands. Galbraith and his musketry officer had trained the soldiers to fire eight volleys a minute; a high number of men were good enough shots to have qualified for the extra pay that a certified marksman received. As long as the weapon didn’t overheat and fail to eject a spent cartridge case, each rifleman would be crucial if the sort of fighting that Roberts’s troops had experienced up north came our way.

The only fly in Galbraith’s ointment seemed to be his men’s thirst. The Temperance Movement had got a real grip in India with, in my experience, most British units having at least a hundred men or so who had forsworn the bottle. But there were many fewer in the 66th, and I noticed that the regimental prison was always full of lads doubling about in full kit in the heat of the day with an energetic provost corporal in close attendance. Still, there were worse problems, and while there continued to be clashes between the regiment and the toughs in town, there were no repeats of the incident in which Billy had been involved in April.

But when I managed to get some time with my native battalions, I discovered how much work there was to do. The 1st Bombay Grenadiers came with a high reputation for steadiness earned in the Mutiny – but that was a long time ago now – and they had done well in Aden in ’65, but I didn’t like the way that my brigade major, Heath, talked about them. He’d been their adjutant, after all, and whenever we discussed them he would mention nothing except their steadiness on parade and the various complicated devices they used to ensure that they all took a graduated pace when each company wheeled from column to line. He never mentioned their musketry or their ability to cover miles without a man dropping out and seemed oddly ignorant about which tribe and caste each man came from.

But that was better than the open suspicion that swirled around the other battalion, the 30th Bombay Native Infantry, or Jacob’s Rifles. They had made quite a good start in my eyes, being more ready for the field than their counterparts, yet they were a new regiment, having been raised after the Mutiny, and had no battle honours to hang on their colours. On top of this, the vast majority of their recruits were Pathans, the very same folk from whom we had most trouble in Kandahar. As was the way with the Army, someone had decided that the loyalty of Jacob’s Rifles was in doubt, so everyone treated them like pariahs, yet Sam’s 3rd Scinde Horse – also mainly Pathani – were never criticised for the same thing, not in my hearing, anyway.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the composition of both battalions, I was more concerned with how they would perform in a fight. Since the Mutiny, it was our habit to keep the Indian units equipped with the last generation of small-arms rather than the most modern. So it was that the Grenadiers and the Jacobs both carried the .577 Snider-Enfield conversion rifles. These were the old muzzle-loaders that I had known in my young day, with a trap affair let into the breech and a metal cartridge and bullet fixed together as one neat round. The result was good enough in well-trained hands, allowing six volleys to be fired per minute with accurate individual fire up to about six hundred paces. But the Snider was prone to jam and fouling and it took a lot of practice before a soldier became really proficient with it. Also, many of our Afghan enemies had the same weapon, which meant that the only advantage we might enjoy would come from stern discipline and plenty of practice.

My strongest card, for sure, were the six guns of E Battery, B Brigade Royal Horse Artillery. The men were smart and sharp, every horse I saw was beautifully groomed and a proper source of pleasure to its driver, while the rifled nine-pounders were lethally well kept.

‘Them fuckers’ll soon sort out Johnny Afghan, sir.’ I let Lynch, my trumpeter, who was on loan from E Battery, regale me with the tools of his trade. ‘Aye, we can hit a sixpence up to three an’ a half thousand paces with high-explosive or shrapnel rounds, we can, sir.’ Lynch was bursting with pride, delighted to be back among his pals with ‘his’ general under his wing. I allowed him to think that I was a complete tyro in such matters. ‘An’ the lads can get off four rounds a minute once they’ve found the range.’

Lynch was right to be proud of his guns and his battery, but our nine-pounders were still muzzle-loading and slow compared with the new breech-loaders that were coming into service. Now I’d seen what well-handled guns could do, especially to native troops, but there was a nasty rumour that Ayoob Khan had rifled guns like we did, and further intelligence to suggest that Russian advisers were to be seen openly in Herat. I preferred to forget how bloody good the Russian gunners had been in the Crimea.

Whatever the strengths and weaknesses of this lot, I managed to get them out of cantonments for two full man oeuvres by mid-May, and saw that they seemed to be settling down. I was still fretting over the compatibility of my two native battalions with my British one when rumours began to filter into the lines of a bloody little affair in which the 29th Baloochis and some of the 66th, who were detached, had been involved near Khelat-i-Ghilzai. I was called to Primrose’s headquarters with the other brigade commanders to be told what was in the wind.

‘Gentlemen, three days ago, on the second of May, a wing of the Twenty-ninth Bombay and a half-company of the Sixty-sixth under Tanner’s command were ambushed on Shahbolan Hill. They’d been out on a punitive expedition along the lines of communication towards Kabul and were returning to Khelat-i-Ghilzai when they got bounced. Now, as it happened, none of our men was killed and we found fourteen enemy bodies.’ I hated the way that Primrose strutted about while he told us this. A starched white liner stuck out above the collar of his neat khaki drill while he paced to and fro, hands clasped behind his back, apparently relishing the idea of sudden death. ‘But there’s far more to this little skirmish than meets the eye. McGucken, would you take over, please?’

‘Aye, General, thank you.’ The political officer stood up from his camp chair, towering over the scrawny form of our commander. I hadn’t seen much of Jock in the intervening weeks for we’d both been busy. I’d knocked into him as he was riding out towards Kabul with an escort of native troopers, himself wearing Afghan dress and looking very much the part with the beard he’d grown, but we’d had no time for the ‘swally’ we’d been promising each other.

Now he cleared his throat in a way that took me back more years than I cared to remember, swept the room with an uncompromising eye and continued. ‘Gentlemen, I canna pretend that intelligence is as reliable as I would like. Simla has been insisting that Ayoob Khan’s troops are as good as useless because they continue to have major differences with one another. Sadly, however, this affair up near Khelat-iGhilzai is the first real proof I’ve had that Simla’s talking rot.’ McGucken’s suggestion that our headquarters in India was incompetent – which we all suspected – raised a chuckle. ‘No, this was a determined attack by Herati troops. It was well planned but was dealt with by Colonel Tanner’s quick thinking and the determination of our men. Some of the bodies are believed to be from one of the Afghan regular units that were involved in the murder of Sir Louis Cavagnari last year.’ This prompted an uneasy muttering among the audience. ‘It’s the first real demonstration of how far afield Ayoob Khan’s men are able to operate – and his intention to destabilise the situation here in Kandahar even further.

‘You’ll all be aware of the guns that we presented to the wali recently.’ McGucken looked round the brigade commanders to assess their reaction: there had been all sorts of moaning about the decision to give Sher Ali Khan a battery of brass smooth-bores. Primrose had backed McGucken, whose idea it had been, suggesting that the guns would be seen as a gesture of trust that might lead to greater co-operation from the wali, but I thought back to my brief meeting with Sher Ali last month and his own lack of confidence in his troops. I didn’t like the idea of giving away gun-metal that might very well be turned upon its donors. ‘Well, that ordnance seems to have served as a key that’s unlocked our host’s lips. I always suspected that those who might be persuaded to talk to us were being told to keep their traps shut by the rebellious elements in the wali’s forces. Well, the wali gave the guns into his son’s safe keeping and that young fellow, some of yous gentlemen’ – McGucken’s speech dropped back into pure Glasgow only occasionally – ‘will have met him already, has suddenly become much more talkative. He tells me that Ayoob Khan plans to move out of Herat in the middle of June, in about five weeks’ time. He will try to make us believe that his forces will skirt north of us and go on to Kabul, where he and several thousand troops will then do a spot of gentle lobbying. His real intention, however, will be to fall upon Kandahar.’

‘You say several thousand troops, McGucken. What does he actually have?’ Nuttall, the cavalry brigade commander, voiced my question.

‘Well, sir, we don’t know for sure and we won’t until he marches – and we don’t yet know if his mind’s fully made up. Anyway, the wali intends to send a body of his troops up here to the fords over the Helmand river.’ McGucken pointed on the map at an area that I could see was a natural convergence of several different roads near Khusk-i-Nakud, seventy-odd miles away, where Sam and the Scinde Horse had drawn first blood more than a year ago. ‘He’s still getting his own house in order and, as we all know to our cost, Kandahar will only become more volatile with a reduction in the wali’s garrison, while the troops themselves are not dependable. I have no doubt, General’ – I saw the flash of dislike in McGucken’s eyes as he turned to Primrose – ‘that he’ll ask for some of our regiments to accompany his forces to act as a stiffener.’

‘I’m sure he will, McGucken, and as you and I have discussed before, I’m reluctant to diminish what strength I have here in Kandahar for the reasons that you’ve just outlined. On top of that, I believe in concentration of force’ – sometimes Primrose talked like a field manual – ‘and I don’t want to split what few units I have. But I shall do what Simla tells me to as the picture becomes clearer. In the meantime, I want you all to be prepared to take the field for an indefinite period at twenty-four hours’ notice.’ He prosed on about musketry, skirmishing practice, preparation of the horses and their fodder, and a host of minor details that Harry Brooke, Nuttall and I had already been working on.

We scratched away in our notebooks to show willing while Primrose tried to tell us our jobs. What he didn’t cover, though, were the vital details that we all wanted to know. Eventually he ran out of steam and asked for any questions.

‘Yes, General. McGucken’s intelligence, understandably, is less than perfect.’ Harry Brooke, I knew, had become good friends with McGucken, admiring the Scotsman’s plain speaking and direct approach. ‘But what do we actually know about the forces that Ayoob Khan might have available to him?’

‘He’s got about eight thousand regular troops of which some two thousand are cavalry, and as many as six batteries of guns, many of which are rifled pieces, but we lack detail, Brooke.’ I could see why Primrose was reluctant to divide his already slender force.

‘Aye, General, but that’s only really half the story.’ This was McGucken at his best. He was by far the most junior in terms of both military and social rank yet the rest of us would hardly have dared to correct Primrose: we were too career-conscious, too much the victims of the Army’s strangling habit of unthinking obedience and uncritical respect. But not big Jock McGucken, who wore the DCM and knew that he had naught to fear from men like Primrose for there was nothing they could do for him. His reward was the knowledge that his children wouldn’t grow up in the Glasgow slum that had been his home, and the respect that all of us showed him. ‘The real question is how many irregulars, tribesmen and mad Ghazis he’ll be able to draw to his colours. If he’s a halfway decent commander, he could double the number of men he’s already got – and we’ve all seen what ugly buggers the Ghazis and their like can be.’

I was as stunned by McGucken’s monologue as the rest of them. Suddenly there was the prospect of the best part of fifteen thousand men with more guns than we had descending on our three untried and untested brigades in a town that had no serious defences and was riven by malcontents. On top of that, I remembered the wali’s words of caution about his own troops’ dependability and the dubious attractions of a swarm of Ghazis. Surely he would know better than any of us Feringhees what a ticklish spot we could be in.

‘General, I wonder if we shouldn’t prepare the town for defence.’ Harry Brooke, Nuttall and I had spent hours wondering why Primrose hadn’t done what should have been done an age ago by Stewart.

‘We’ve discussed this before, Morgan, but, I grant you, the situation has evolved so tell me what’s on your mind.’

I knew from the tone of Primrose’s voice that he wouldn’t relent. ‘Well, sir, should we not bring the troops within the walls of the town and establish a proper defensive routine rather than trying to live in the cantonments as if we were a peacetime garrison? We could then put the troops to work on improving the walls and preparing gun positions both there and in the Citadel. And we ought to start to clear the shanties and mud dwellings that deprive us of any fields of fire.’

‘Yes, and that’s exactly the point I’ve tried to make all of you understand.’ I’d annoyed Primrose – but Brooke had made a pretty good start on that with his earlier questions. Now the peppery little sod was about to go for all of us. ‘Right, everyone except the brigade commanders – you as well, McGucken – please leave us.’ The three brigade majors and Primrose’s own pair of lickspittles grabbed at their papers and maps and scuttled from the room, only too happy to leave their superiors to face the storm. ‘Can’t you see that we’ve got to make this whole situation look as normal as possible and that the least little thing we do’ – the man was getting redder and redder in the face as the discussion turned into a rant – ‘could upset the whole damned applecart and cause the wali’s troops to revolt?’

‘All the more reason to have us on top of them, surely. If we’re in the town then we can watch them more closely and act more quickly – it makes sense,’ McGucken was unable to conceal his irritation any longer, not even adding a per functory ‘sir’, treating Primrose like a particularly dim recruit.

‘And I’ll thank you not to interrupt, Major McGucken!’ The venom in the general’s hissed reply shocked me – and it seemed to have the same effect on the others, for there was a sudden silence. Even the flies stopped buzzing, so taken aback were they. ‘Do you really think that we could clear the mosques and other religious sites that teem just outside the walls?’ None of us replied. ‘Well, do you? You all seem to think that we can treat this place as we did Cawnpore or Peking twenty-odd years ago. But can’t you get it into your thick heads that this is a new kind of war where I’ve got newspapers and politicians looking over my shoulder . . .’ (I’d have loved to add, ‘and dictating our tactics and risking our men’s lives’, but he was vexed enough already) ‘. . . and that, no matter what’s happening elsewhere in the country, Kandahar is supposed to be the one place in which we’re succeeding? If we tear the scab off things here, then the government’s strategy to get us back to India without further bloodshed will be ruined.’

It was a shame that the little fellow had lost his rag for he’d just alienated the lot of us.

‘So, get back to your troops now, gentlemen, and let’s hear no more about ruining Kandahar. If the wali can’t deal with Ayoob Khan and we’re called upon to do the job, we’ll do it in the field as far from this town as we possibly can. That’s always supposing our intelligence gives us any warning at all.’ Primrose was speaking normally now, but he hadn’t grasped how much damage he had done to his standing in our eyes. He hadn’t even been able to resist that nasty little dig at McGucken, which I knew he would come to regret. I was on my feet and saluting almost as quickly as the other three, for none of us could bear the poisonous career-wallah for a second longer.

When Sam Keenan had moved up to Afghanistan with his regiment, he’d known that life wouldn’t all be gallant deeds and glory. He had vivid memories of Finn the groom yarning to Billy and himself back in the tack-room at home about India and the Sikh wars in the forties and much of that had revolved around heat and dust, flies and rotting food, good officers and bad. There had been little about blood and flame. Well, he thought, now it was his turn to experience the waiting and frustration of campaign life.

June was the hottest month in these latitudes and the temperature only made the smell of piss-damp straw all the more distinct. It wasn’t an aroma that any cavalryman could actually dislike, but in A Squadron’s horse lines, which had been established in an old Kandahari stable, it was almost overpowering. There were none of the drains and gutters to which the regiment had become used, and the windows were so narrow that a permanent gloom hung over the place. Now, as he waited for Rissaldar Singh to join him, he peered down the long line of feeding horses, the thin streams of sunlight thick with the dust that the hoofs of the tethered mounts threw up.

Almost eighty horses had been crushed into the stable, sixty or so the private property of each trooper, his pride and joy, and another twenty remounts provided by the government while on campaign. Keenan worried about this so-called sillidar system, which was the very definition of irregular cavalry. Each man would bring his own mount as a condition for enlistment – a very considerable investment for these mainly Pathani men who came from poor hilly country – and tend it. Horses became ill or were injured and had to be put down so they needed a cushion of extra animals. But now, as casualties had occurred, the men were being issued with whalers, like any common regular regiment, and Keenan was worried that they would not be cherished as much as a man’s own horse had been. The squadron leader had ordered extra veterinary inspections in the certain knowledge that the stabling and relatively little exercise might encourage certain maladies.

Now Keenan, who’d done his basic vet’s course at the cavalry school in Nasirabad, looked at his list of common diseases and symptoms as he waited for Singh by the wide doors of the building.

‘I’m sorry, sahib, am I late?’

Keenan looked up from his list towards the native officer as he stopped and saluted. ‘No, not at all, Rissaldar sahib. I’m early. I’ve been puzzling over these lists, I hope you know what we’re looking for,’ replied Keenan, deliberately flattering the man.

In the months that they’d been together in Afghanistan, the two had got to know each other as well as any native and British officer could. They’d ridden together in the Helmand valley last year and fought side by side at Khusk-i-Nakud, but still Keenan was uncomfortable with the relationship. Singh was over thirty, one of the new generation of native officers who had received a viceroy’s commission based on merit rather than age and length of service; he had a depth of experience far beyond the young Irishman’s. They wore the same badges of rank, were both addressed as ‘sahib’ and commanded troops of about twenty men. Yet they lived in different messes and Keenan was the senior, for he was a British officer, the most junior of whom was superior even to the rissaldar major, the most senior native officer in the regiment. His thoughts unaccountably flicked to his brother. Keenan smiled to himself and doubted that Billy would cope in his plodding, stiff old 66th with the extra layer of officers who were at the heart of the regiment yet weren’t really officers at all.

Singh spoke incomprehensibly to one of the four men on morning duty at the stables before turning to Keenan. ‘Butt Mohammed believes that one of the remounts may be developing surra, sahib, but we’ll soon see.’

Not only could Singh speak English a hundred times better than he could express himself in Pashto or Dari, Keenan marvelled, but he also had a practical knowledge of an ailment of which he himself had no experience whatsoever. But then, he supposed, that was what years in the 3rd Scinde Horse taught a man. As they walked briskly along the straw-strewn floor through the horsy fug, he consulted his Field Service Pocket Book (India) in its supposedly waterproof cover. ‘Isn’t that mainly a camel and donkey disease, sahib?’ he asked, freshly knowledgeable.

‘It is, sahib, but read on a bit further and you’ll see that it can affect horses too,’ answered Singh, with a smile.

With the trooper stroking the horse’s nose to calm it, both men looked for signs of ‘. . . repeated attacks of fever during which the animal is dull and off feed, gradually loses condition, gets swelling, spotted membranes, pot belly and finally dies’.

‘No, sahib, this is not surra. I have seen it before and it is dreadful. Horses cannot recover, and that is why the men are so worried about it, especially when their animals are around filthy camels and asses.’ Singh spoke again to Butt Mohammed before patting the horse gently on its admittedly bulbous belly. ‘I think it’s no more than a touch of colic.’ Keenan thought about that phrase and knew that he would be reduced to charades if he was trying to express such a thing to the men.

That was the only problem to worry any of the men, but the two officers continued their inspection, lifting mares’ tails to look for thrush, digging sawdust and muck out of hoofs to check for cracks and mud fever, peering up nostrils for a hint of glanders, and for sores around the saddle area that might indicate farcy.

‘What of Ayoob Khan, sahib?’ The rissaldar was smoothing down the hairs on a horse’s flank having examined an old ringworm site. ‘The soldiers say he is bound to march on Kandahar once the weather gets a little cooler.’

‘Perhaps, Rissaldar sahib. But I only know what the colonel sahib tells us and he tells you the same. Do any of the soldiers have any contact with Ayoob Khan’s people?’ Keenan asked.

‘Of course, sahib. Many are Pathans from the same tribes who soldier for Ayoob Khan and they have kinsmen here in Kandahar who travel far and wide. Indeed, a caravan arrived from Herat two days ago and brought family news to many of our jawans, and grand stories of the headman’s bragging about what he will do to any of “his” people who are taken in the service of the gora-log,’ answered Singh.

‘Does that worry them, sahib?’

‘No, Keenan sahib, they don’t give a donkey’s cock about such things. All that most want is a chance of more fighting and looting – you know our sowars,’ replied Singh, making Keenan wonder just how well he did know the men with whom he could hardly converse. ‘But, sahib, don’t run from this talk – you must know, for does your father, the general sahib, not tell you?’

‘No, of course not, Rissaldar sahib. He’s the chief and I’m nothing but a worm. Why should he tell me anything that he does not tell you?’ Keenan realised now that every last sowar must look at him as the receptacle of great knowledge and influence. If only that were true.

‘Because he is your father, sahib. He is a general, certainly, and that is why he has gathered both his sons about him to go to war and seek glory. Of course he will tell you and your brother his secrets,’ Singh answered evenly.

Keenan snorted with amusement at he idea of Billy and himself being summoned by his father for some sort of ramasammy. He had a picture of Father sitting cross-legged next to the wali, both men pulling at pipes while he and that pup Billy made deep salaams and prepared to advise the elders on what should happen next. But that was what Rissaldar Singh and all the others thought. He must seem horribly naïve in their eyes when he tried to grapple with their tribes, castes and religions.

‘And, why, sahib, does your father allow your poor brother to walk to war when he has given you horses and saddles and found you a place in a regiment like the Scinde Horse? Has your brother done something wrong? Has he displeased Morgan sahib yet still bears his name?’

Singh had never asked such questions before, thought Keenan. ‘No, Rissaldar sahib, my brother, my half-brother, can do no wrong in the general’s eyes and that is why he walks to war and I ride. You see, sahib, I have a horse or two, but that is all I will ever have from the general. I will never bear his name or inherit his house and fields . . . but enough of that! This creature has been rubbed a little by its heel rope, hasn’t it?’ The native officer had got quite close enough for now.

It’s always the way. Something happens or someone says something that causes a bit of heat at the time, but you soon forget it, only grasping its true significance later on. So it was with that conference two months ago – back in May. From that moment on neither the other two brigade commanders nor I had any faith in Primrose. True, he’d sent out the odd patrol, and we’d had some time to manoeuvre in the field – turned a lot of live ammunition into empty cases on the rifle range – and the guns had had some useful practice, but there had been no attempt to improve the town’s defences.

Worst of all, the distrust between Primrose and McGucken had become obvious to everyone. I was there four weeks ago in early June when the news reached divisional headquarters that the wali was so worried by intelligence he’d received that he was preparing to march out of Kandahar towards the fords on the Helmand. There the Wali, game old bugger that he was, intended to fight Ayoob Khan well forward, as far away from Kandahar and its skittish tribesmen as he could mange. Not surprisingly, he wanted some British troops to help him. Now, we’d all heard that Ayoob Khan had left Herat some weeks ago and was picking up volunteers from the tribes by the hatful as he headed our way, but Primrose seemed genuinely surprised by the sudden rush and fuss among the local troops as they prepared to take the field. It wasn’t as though it was difficult to see what was going to happen. A few days before the wali left, McGucken had given me a carefully translated copy of Ayoob’s proclamation, which was being distributed by his vanguard.

Then, after a month’s dithering by Primrose, we’d marched out of Kandahar in order to catch up with the Wali. Now, as I sat on Rainbow’s sweaty saddle, my brigade stretched about me in a fog of dust and grit, I got the proclamation out from my map case to reread it:

Soldiers of the true faith! We march to the conquest of our city of Kandahar, now in the possession of our bitter enemy the Feringhee, whom we will drive back with our steel and win back the capital of the south. The garrison is weak and we are strong; besides, we are fighting for our homes and native land and our foe is not prepared for us with either food or ammunition for a siege. The bazaars are full of British gold and this shall be the prize of the conquerors when we have chased away the invaders from our soil. Let us march on then, day by day, with the determination to conquer or to die.