Return of a King: The Battle For Afghanistan (53 page)

The cold was so intense that it rendered the sepoy portion of the army next to useless . . . We were annoyed night and day by cannon fire. The enemy seemed to increase by thousands and their long matchlocks outranged our muskets. Although they could never withstand a regular charge, so long as they could find cover behind walls, houses etc, their fire was very distressing . . . The whole army was in a miserable plight . . . The price of food was perfectly absurd and everyone endured great hardship. I saw many sahibs shed tears of vexation, and they blamed their generals and leaders for their humiliation. They said their leaders were too old and virtually useless . . .
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On 9 November, in order to provide an alternative to Elphinstone, who between crippling gout and successive defeats had now sunk into a black hole of depression, Macnaghten decided to bring in Shelton from his post in the Bala Hisar. This was another error. Not only was Shelton every bit as passive as Elphinstone, he was if anything more convinced of the hopelessness of the British position. ‘He brought neither help nor comfort,’ wrote Colin Mackenzie, ‘openly talking of retreat.’ On his arrival, when Mackenzie cheerily asked how he was, Shelton replied, ‘Pretty well in body.’ ‘Well,’ said Mackenzie, ‘that’s always something in these hard times.’ ‘The Brigadier then turned to him with the most lugubrious countenance and uttered the words: “Dust to dust.”’
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Shelton’s arrival also acted to divide the British high command. Macnaghten believed it was the duty of the garrison ‘to retain our post at whatever risk’, while Shelton ‘strenuously advocated an immediate retreat to Jalalabad’. ‘This difference of opinion, on a question of such vital importance, was attended with unhappy results,’ recorded Vincent Eyre. ‘It deprived the General in his hour of need, of the strength which unanimity imparts.’
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Calling Shelton down to the cantonment meant abandoning the British position in the one really strong and well-supplied fortress in Kabul. The weakness of the position of the cantonment was obvious to everyone. A much better strategy would have been to abandon it and march the British troops into the Bala Hisar. ‘Though we were all starving and eating horse and camel we could have marched into Bala Hisar and held out a year,’ thought Mackenzie. ‘In a fortnight the tribes would have melted away. There was a strong fortress commanding the town, capable of receiving the whole force, yet nothing would induce the commanders to occupy it.’
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No one was more aware of the fundamental indefensibility of the cantonment than Lieutenant Sturt, who had designed it. From his sickbed, propped up in his pyjamas, ‘fretting himself half-mad at everything going wrong’, he sent repeated messages urging the commanders to move into, not out of, Shuja’s ancient fortress. ‘Were Sturt’s advice taken, we should nightly send ammunition there,’ recorded Lady Sale in her diary, ‘and, when a sufficiency is conveyed, all make one bold night march in very light marching order, just what we can carry on our horses. In there we can be lodged (not comfortably, I grant) in the houses of the inhabitants. They have laid in their stores for the winter, which would be bought at any price, and then we might defy all Afghanistan for any time.’
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But the reply to Sturt’s plan from the commanders was: ‘How can we abandon the cantonments when they have cost us so much money?’

After the departure of Shelton, Shuja was left alone in his fortress with what was left of the Shah’s Contingent and the handful of British officers attached to it. According to Lady Sale:

[he] took up his abode at the gate of the harem sarai, where he remained during the rest of the siege; and all day, seated at the window, commanding a fine view of the Cantonments, telescope in hand, watched anxiously the course of passing events in that place, sunk into a state of despondency. He put off for a time all the insignia of royalty, made the officers sit by him on chairs, and seemed for a time quite
gobrowed
,
an expressive Eastern term to be rendered something between dumbfounded and at one’s wits’ end.
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By the second week of November, with British positions in the Bala Hisar, the city and all the forts around the cantonment now lost or abandoned, the fighting began to centre instead around Bibi Mahru, which had become the last source of supplies for the increasingly desperate British. Here a series of inconclusive engagements took place around the forts dominating the village and overlooking the cantonment. On 10 November, the insurgents tightened the noose around the British by occupying the heights on either side and, ‘more numerous than ants or locusts’, seized a tower house on the crest of one hill directly opposite called the Rikab Bashee’s fort.
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Three days later, the rebels manhandled two captured field guns on to these heights. As before, Shelton declined to take action, citing the risks of defeat. ‘Brigadier,’ said an exasperated Macnaghten eventually, ‘if you will allow yourself to be bearded by the enemy, and will not advance and take these two guns by this evening, you must be prepared for any disgrace that may befall us.’
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The following morning at dawn Shelton finally made a major infantry sortie, only to be immediately attacked by a strong force of Afghan cavalry who rode straight down through his ranks. ‘The Afghans gathered their strength and charged downhill and mowed down hundreds of English soldiers like grass,’ recorded Mirza ‘Ata. ‘Bravery and death were to be seen on both sides.’
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Only after leaving eighty of their troops dead on the ground, and with nearly 200 wounded, did the British succeed in spiking one gun and dragging the other back within the cantonment walls.
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It was not a good precedent for the effectiveness of the terrified garrison against their increasingly confident and emboldened besiegers.

On 15 November, British morale received another blow when two ragged figures broke through the ring of besiegers to bring terrible news. Eldred Pottinger and John Haughton were apparently the only two survivors of the 750-strong garrison of Charikar.

After ten days of siege, driven mad by thirst, made anxious by the growing stream of desertions, and by the growing numbers of Tajiks and Safis massing to join the siege of the barracks, Pottinger had decided that the only hope was to try to make a dash for Kabul. ‘The corps was completely disorganised from the privations it had suffered, the utter inefficiency of the native officers who had no sort of control over their soldiers, the exhaustion of the men from constant duty, and the total want of water and provisions,’ he wrote later. ‘I therefore considered that our only chance of saving any portion of the Regiment was a retreat on Kabul and though that was abundantly perilous, I entertained a hope that the most active men who were not encumbered with wives and children might make it through in safety.’

But, as with Mackenzie’s night retreat from the commissariat fort, chaos reigned almost from the minute Pottinger’s troops dashed from the building. ‘I found it totally impossible to preserve any order after leaving the gate and in vain attempted leading the men,’ he confessed in his official report.
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The fleeing soldiers were shot down as they ran madly to try to find water. All 300 of the wounded who were left behind, as well as any of the sepoys or their wives captured alive, were distributed among the Tajik chiefs and immediately sold as slaves.
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While Pottinger and Haughton, who both had horses, eventually made it through to Kabul, riding by night far from the main road, along the western flank of the Koh Daman, and hiding by day, only a handful of their sepoys limped in after them. Among those captured and enslaved was Havildar Moti Ram, who uniquely left an account of his capture. Moti Ram made it further than most, and was captured when within sight of his destination. ‘At the time hostilities broke out,’ he wrote, ‘there were two Gurkha fakirs in the fort who were visiting on a pilgrimage the different Hindoo shrines of Afghanistan.’ These fakirs demanded arms and ammunition.

Our officers complied with their requests, and these sturdy and holy personages astonished by all their feats in action: there were none of us who fought the Afghans better than they did. We all marched together during the night without molestation, until we arrived at a village near Kara Bagh. Here opposition commenced, and we advanced skirmishing until about 3 o’clock A.M., by which time our movements became generally known, and our enemies were gathering around us in hopeless numbers every minute. The road ran through the middle of Kara Bagh with walls and vineyards on either side: these the Afghans lined, and from them poured a deadly and frequent fire upon us. Numbers were killed, we were totally vanquished. There was a gateway into a vineyard on one side of the road. I rushed through it; an Afghan laid hold of my clothes to detain me, but I shook him off and continued my flight, taking care to carry my musket with me, for which I had only five rounds remaining in my pouch.

Approaching the British cantonment at dawn, Moti Ram realised that he had wandered into the middle of the besieging Afghan troops. ‘I saw at once that all hope of further escape was gone. I had one hundred rupees in my kummerbund, which sum I had amassed in the Shah’s service. I took it out and buried it, placing a stone which I thought I could recognise over it, and sat down quietly to await what might happen. Shortly after, a party of horse, about 25 in number approached the spot where I was. Some seized me by the feet, some by the shoulders.’
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The Afghans tried to shoot Moti Ram with his own musket, but when it three times failed go off, the havildar told them he was a Muslim and that it was God’s will that he was not to be killed. He was asked to recite the Kalima, the Muslim profession of faith, and he did so.

The sabre was then removed from my throat and they carried me to [their chief] Baha-ud-Din, first depriving me of my coat, pantaloons, a silk handkerchief, a pistol, my shoes and some other articles, leaving me only a pair of pyjamas. The people of the village continually threatened to put me to death, but Baha-ud-Din at length released me. I had proceeded a coss when a man ploughing on the roadside seized me, and threatened to kill me unless I worked his plough. Whilst I was with him, I suffered severely during the night time – the weather was bitter cold, and I had nothing to cover me but my chogah. I examined the roof of the house during the day, and it appeared to me that by removing a few of the bricks from the chimney I might get out unobserved. At night I did so, and effected my escape.

But not for long. ‘I had got five coss further down the road to Jalalabad when the son of a sirdar who was fighting at Kabul sent some horsemen to take and bring me to him. All the villagers, young and old, male and female, gathered around exclaiming, “a Kafir or Feringhee: kill him, kill him”; but the young chief protected me from violence, and told me to groom his horse.’ Added Moti Ram: ‘This young man was continually looking in the direction of Kabul, through a telescope which he said Sir A Burnes had given his father as a present.’
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On 20 November the rebels’ guns were suddenly stilled, and for the next three days there were no attacks on the cantonment. Only on the morning of the 23rd did it become clear that the days of quiet had been to allow the rebels to manufacture ammunition and powder. That morning, before dawn, the Kohistanis under Mir Masjidi massed in huge numbers on the heights above the cantonment, digging breastworks and trenches, and completely cutting off the British from their food supplies in Bibi Mahru. They then began to bombard the cantonment with their artillery. Shelton was soon sent out to try to clear the heights.

‘The sound of artillery fire rolled like thunder,’ wrote Mirza ‘Ata. ‘Abdullah Khan Achakzai Ghazi heard the sound of fierce fighting, and hastened to reinforce the jihadis at Bibi Mahru: they trampled the English soldiers under the hooves of their horses, they cut them down with their sharp swords, then captured the English gun, and shouting “Allah hu-akbar! God is great!” they charged the English.’

In order to defend himself against the cavalry, Shelton then formed his infantry into two squares at the summit of the hill, the standard British defence against mounted attack that had been so effective against Napoleon’s lancers at Waterloo. But it proved a disastrous tactic in Afghanistan. The Afghans simply pulled back, allowing the jezail marksmen to come forward and from behind the cover of stones and rocks fire into the densely packed British ranks while keeping well out of range of British muskets. The British were easy targets: a solid mass of scarlet uniforms standing completely still for hours on end silhouetted on a ridge. One hundred sappers had accompanied the force ‘for the express purpose of raising a
sangar
[shallow trenches and breastworks] behind which our troops would have been wholly protected from the fire of the jezails, and infused into our troops a sense of security . . . But no such defence was raised.’
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Instead, exposed on the brow of the hill, rank after rank fell where they stood, as Shelton remained rigid and unmoving under fire, astonishingly brave but fatally unimaginative, apparently unable to think of any response to the destruction of his regiment.