Death on a Pale Horse (7 page)

I am grateful to our late Prime Minister, Mr. David Lloyd George, who decided that after forty years had passed, the disclosure of reports from the field of Isandhlwana would no longer constitute a threat to national security nor embarrass the government of the day.

Sherlock Holmes had of course shown me his letter to Sir Melville Macnaghten at the time that he wrote it. However, I did not actually meet Holmes for almost two years after the catastrophe at Isandhlwana and my own arrival in India. I had qualified as a medical man at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in June 1878. Next month, I joined the Army Medical Department and undertook the customary short course in military training for medical officers, at Netley, near the Aldershot Garrison. I trusted that this additional qualification might one day transform me into a full regimental surgeon-major.

At the end of that year I was still a humble assistant with orders to join the 5th Northumberland Fusiliers, then stationed in India. All eyes were on India just then, for she was regarded as the jewel in our imperial crown. The voyage to the East had been shortened by the opening of the Suez Canal. Southern Africa remained important principally for the newly discovered riches of gold and diamonds, rather than as the principal route to Bombay.

If India was vital to our interests, Afghanistan was scarcely less so, at the time I left Netley for my military service. Under the leadership of Lord Beaconsfield, our rulers were convinced that Afghanistan was once again in peril from its Russian neighbour to the north. A British embassy had been refused entry to Kabul. However, a Russian mission was soon after received with honour. The Viceroy of India, Lord Lytton, warned the government at home that he would take independent military action if necessary, as the constitution entitled him to do. If he did not, we should wake up to find the Russian Bear on the North-West Frontier of India.

Before the year's end, I was among five hundred reinforcements of all ranks, marching through the streets of Portsmouth from the railway station to the docks. How popular we were! A regimental band was playing
The British Grenadiers
and
The Girl I Left Behind Me
. Crowds at either side were so dense that you might almost have walked over the heads of the people. As for patriotic shouts, it was all “Remember Old England depends on you!… Give them plenty of cold steel!… Keep your pecker up, old boy, and never say die!… We'll not forget you!”

As yet, there had been no fighting. What they thought we were going out there for, I do not know. We marched into the dockyard and, as the gates closed behind us, a thousand voices shouted “Farewell! God bless you!”

There was no speedy passage for us through the Suez Canal. We carried an infantry regiment to reinforce Lord Chelmsford at the Cape. The troopship
Clyde
, a decommissioned P & O liner which had seen better days, was our transport as far as Cape Town. Belowdecks, men slept in hammocks slung from the beams. Some preferred to huddle in blankets on the deck. Everywhere we breathed coal dust and hot oil, while the paddles beat their rhythm alongside the hull. The heart of the ship was the deep well of the engine-room. There was little to do but stare mesmerised at the massive and polished hammer-heads of three pistons driving forward and back, mile after mile, day after day, night after night.

We spent Christmas Day near the equator. Early in January we dropped anchor with white buildings and the mountain behind Cape Town on our port beam. There was not much talk ashore of Afghanistan, which was still an ocean away from us. A number of regiments, including my own Northumberland Fusiliers, were rumoured to have advanced from India through the mountain passes into Afghan territory—but whether that was true, who could say? At the Cape, all the talk was of an invasion of Natal by the Zulu tribes to the north of us, under their King Cetewayo.

The drums were beating for war on both sides in Natal, and the newspapers were full of it. Cetewayo had told Sir Henry Bowler, “While wishing to be friends with the English, I do not agree to have my people governed by their laws.” It was a delicate balance. If there was war with the Zulus, what would prevent the Dutch settlers of the prosperous Transvaal stabbing us in the back by declaring independence from British rule? With one war on our hands, our resources would not permit us to fight on a second front.

My greatest fear was that I might get conscripted for this war in southern Africa and never see the wonders of India or the regiment I had been assigned to. It was not the life I had joined the Army for.

Under this gathering cloud, I met a young Army captain whose acquaintance I had made on board ship. He was now attached to Lord Chelmsford's infantry column of some four thousand men which was about to confront Cetewayo.

“Hello, doc!” this young spark greeted me cheerily. “You coming to the picnic in Zululand with us?”

“Not if I know it!”

How fortunate I was. A few weeks later the bones of this poor young fellow and more than a thousand others were picked clean by vultures from the skies above Natal. I should almost certainly have been cut to pieces with Colonel Pulleine and the 24th Foot. As it was, I boarded the trooper
Londonderry
and reached Bombay before I heard of Isandhlwana.

On a hot and dusty morning, I reported to brigade headquarters in Bombay. There was utter confusion in the Movements Office as to what was going on in Afghanistan. I asked a transport officer how I might best catch up with the 5th Northumberland Fusiliers. I understood that they might already be garrisoned in Kandahar, on the far side of the Khyber Pass. This chair-bound Irish major looked at me irritably. He spoke as though the pandemonium in his office was all my fault.

“Has no one told you, mister? Your travel order should make it clear. The Northumberlands no longer require an assistant surgeon. It is the Berkshires who are in need. Assistant Surgeon Mackintosh has been invalided back to the depot at Peshawar with dysentery. You will exchange into the Berkshires at your earliest convenience. Draw travel warrants and your pay draft here. The railway does not run as far as Peshawar. Requisition a seat as far as Lahore on tomorrow's Delhi train. Make arrangements when you get there. Now, who's the next man?”

Such was my welcome to active service. I set out the following morning on the first stage of my journey in a saloon coach of the Bombay, Baroda and Central India Railway. This was one of several coaches reserved for British officers. With wide windows, easy chairs, and clubroom tables, it was the type of train which, in England, carries young swells with their picnic hampers and servants to a fashionable race meeting.

From the pages of the newspaper behind which I retired, I gathered that the situation in Afghanistan had deteriorated since the last news reached England. The rebel leader Ayub Khan had gained the upper hand, and our expeditionary force had been obliged to move forward with speed. A good many officers from all over India now filled the carriages of every train destined for the nearest junctions to the North-West Frontier. In those days, the line stopped short of the Khyber Pass. I should have to join a mounted column for the journey beyond Lahore. My imagination was full of the high snow-covered peaks of the pass and the white-walled city of my destination. Not so long ago, Kandahar had been the capital of Afghanistan.

As we travelled north, there was a curious interlude. I could not see that it concerned me at the time—so much the worse for me. At every stage of this northward journey, I was increasingly preoccupied by the petty discomforts which anyone who has travelled by military train in India will recognise. Black horsehair is used as upholstery in these saloon carriages because it is easily cleaned and hygienic. Unfortunately, in that heat, it becomes a refined torture after a very little while. The firm stuffing gradually feels more like compressed bramble thorns, and its effects upon the body grow more acute with every passing mile.

I was not alone in my restless discomfort. The train to Lahore was far too crowded with our troops for anyone to have a carriage to himself. I found myself sharing with a captain and two lieutenants from a regiment I shall not for the moment name. The lieutenants answered to the names of “Jock” and “Frank.” Both had come aboard in mufti. Their regimental blazers and white flannels equipped them better for a picnic on the banks of the Thames than an encounter with Ayub Khan's murderous Jezails. I should guess that they were no more than twenty-one years old: they could not have more than a couple of years service between them.

After my seven years spent walking the wards of St Bartholomew's Hospital, the gap in our age and experience made them seem frivolous and vexatious. They were like excited schoolboys on a holiday. The uniformed captain, whom they called by his surname, Sellon, was a little older and far more sober. He glanced at me from time to time, as though suspicious of who I might be and what I had come for.

Sleep helps to pass the time but I was soon glad of conversation to take my mind off the horsehair padding. The lieutenants and I exchanged small talk. From the first, it was evident that I was not their type but they regarded me with friendly curiosity. They were going no further than Peshawar but knew a good deal about the regiments there. When they asked me the name of my unit, I said that I thought it would be the Berkshires.

“Jock” and “Frank” made grimaces and sounds of approval. Jock went so far as to shake me by the hand. The Berkshires, he assured me, were as fine bunch of fellows as ever lived. It would be “rather a lark” fighting alongside them.

“I came out here straight from Cambridge,” Jock added with an ingratiating grin. “I was only up for a year. I can't say I did much work there and it seemed rather a waste of time. My father thought so as well—after all, the bills come pretty steep at Kings and he was footing them, poor old fellow. So here I am, as the poet says.”

Captain Sellon stared at these two without comment. They looked the sort of expensively educated young mutts whom Holmes once said could talk and could think but unfortunately could not do both at the same time. I thought it would do no harm to toss them a scrap of biography.

“I was posted out to the 109th Albion Fusiliers originally, then the Northumberlands, but it seems both are already suited.”

There was an exchange of looks between them, just as if I had made a bad joke. What on earth had I said? I waited for them to tell me. Jock and Sellon merely stared at me; but Frank, a rather slight youth with dark curly hair, smiled.

“Then I daresay you won't mind a change to the Berkshires. What? I should think anybody would. Eh?”

They spoke as if we were all sharing a secret. I had better know the truth of it.

“I'm sure the Berkshires will prove a fine regiment.”

“Rather,” said fair-haired Jock. Captain Sellon now turned and stared out through the window as if to avoid discussing the matter. But his two lieutenants had not an ounce of discretion between them. They were plainly itching to impart some scandal to see how I would take it.

“Whereas the 109th …” I began.

Sellon turned from the window.

“What do you know about the 109th? The Albion Fusiliers?”

“Nothing, in so many words.”

Frank and Jock began to laugh, whether at my curiosity or stupidity I cannot say.

“If you have not heard,” said Sellon, without a trace of a smile, “you must be the only man from Mitchni to Mooltan who has not. Perhaps that is for the best.”

“Heard what?”

Jock could not quite resist the chance. He gave a chuckle.

“The subalterns' court-martial in the 109th. That was a ripe one!”

For whatever reason, Captain Sellon favoured him with a full-faced glare. Jock was grinning too hard to notice.

“I have just come from regimental surgeon's training at Aldershot,” I said firmly. “All this is new to me. What on earth is a subalterns' court-martial?”

The two lieutenants jostled each other a little and smiled politely. Captain Sellon intervened accusingly, as if I should have known better.

“A wholesome way of teaching a fellow manners, sir. I cannot condone it, but it may sometimes be the only way to avoid a regimental scandal. It is a court made up of junior officers to try a defendant privately. Let us leave it there.”

I found it odd that Sellon should be so touchy while Jock and Frank could hardly contain themselves. They had no wish to leave it there!

“Privately?” I asked.

“Mess jackets and medals at midnight,” said Frank with a helpful grin.

Sellon waved him aside. He proved to be the authority, but I noticed that he blushed a little as he spoke.

“Several years ago, doctor, there was a new young fellow in my brigade who thought himself a bit above the other lieutenants. He liked to swank and insisted on wearing a medal ribbon given for native Indian service. Not a British decoration. One does not wear such a trinket at a formal mess dinner. You understand that, no doubt. They warned him twice, to no avail. The third time, his junior comrades constituted themselves a court-martial and tried him in the mess at three o'clock in the morning. They sentenced him to have the letter ‘S' for ‘swank' shaved on the top of his head. It was done then and there. Two or three of them sat on him and another did the shaving. The hair grew back in a few weeks and no harm done. But they took the bounce out of him and he turned into a decent enough fellow. I promise you, he learnt his lesson.”

Jock leant forward.

“Before we came out from England, I heard of a man in the Brigade of Guards, no less. He was seen walking down the Strand in a boater that a fishmonger might wear, rather than a proper top hat. They tried him in the mess. Then they stripped him and made him run a circuit of the dinner room under the gauntlet of their belts. There were two other new officers, sprogs they call them in the guards. They refused to enter for the regimental sports. The same thing happened to them.”