The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia (42 page)

‘This morning we moved through the Khoord-Cabool Pass with great loss of life and property,’ recorded Dr Brydon grimly in a diary reconstructed from memory on reaching Jalalabad. ‘The heights were in possession of the enemy, who poured down an incessant fire on our column. Great numbers were killed . . . and many more were wounded.’ As soon as the main body had reached the end of the pass, which involved crossing a partly frozen stream no fewer than thirteen times, the tribesmen descended from their positions and set about butchering the stragglers. Some 3,000 of the garrison, including many women and children, were left dead in the pass that day, their frozen corpses stripped of precious clothing by friend and foe alike. Although Brydon did not himself witness it, others claimed to have seen Akbar riding among the enemy urging them in Persian (a language known to many of the British officers) to ‘spare’ the British, but in Pushto (the language of the tribesmen) to ‘slay’ them. Despite this and other evidence of his treachery, Elphinstone decided the very next day, January 9, to trust him once more. Akbar this time proposed taking under his protection the wives and children of the British officers, promising to escort them by a safer road to Jalalabad. Where the husbands had survived, he offered to take them too, as well as a number of wounded officers. To this Elphinstone agreed. Nineteen of them – two men, eight women and nine children – were escorted away by Akbar’s men. It would be the last that would be seen of them, or of the political officers already being held, for many months.

Despite the surrender of the women and children, the attacks on the column soon resumed. Of the following day, Brydon wrote: ‘This was a terrible march – the fire of the enemy incessant, and numbers of officers and men, not knowing where they were going from snow-blindness, were cut up.’ Among those who perished were no fewer than three of Brydon’s fellow doctors, and at least seven other officers. The cold and continual exposure, he recounts, had rendered the ill-clothed’ Indian troops almost powerless to defend themselves against the incessant Afghan onslaughts, which came from all sides. By the end of the day, as darkness fell, Brydon tells us, ‘a mere handful’ of the sepoys remained alive. According to one estimate, all but 750 of the troops, British and Indian, who had left Kabul only five days earlier, were now dead, while some two-thirds of the 12,000 civilians accompanying them had also perished.

While the massacre continued, Akbar himself hovered just out of sight, insisting that he was doing everything he could to restrain the local tribesmen. This was proving difficult, he protested, as even their own chiefs had little control over them. There may have been some truth in this latter claim, but there is no real evidence that he ever tried to get the chiefs to stop their men from attacking the retreating columns. Even so, astonishingly, Elphinstone continued to accept his solemn assurances that he was doing all in his power to try to save them. Two days later, on January 12, he once again offered them safe passage. By now Elphinstone’s force was down to fewer than 200 troops, plus some 2,000 camp-followers. The general felt that if any of them were to survive he had no choice but to come to terms with Akbar. Accordingly, with his second-in-command and another officer, he rode over to Akbar’s camp. Once more, however, it proved to be a trick. For it soon became clear, even to Elphinstone, that Akbar was unable to protect them, even if he had wanted to. When the general asked to be allowed to return to his troops, Akbar refused, thus adding the British commander to his growing band of hostages. Nonetheless, Elphinstone managed to smuggle a secret message to the officer he had left in command of the surviving troops ordering him to press on immediately.

It was now dark and for once the British caught the Afghans off their guard, although not for long. The tribesmen had constructed a formidable barrier across the narrow gorge, intending to fire down on the redcoats as it forced them to a halt. But not expecting the British to move at night, they had left it unmanned. Yet even as the troops were trying to tear it down with their bare hands, the Afghans discovered what was happening and attacked them from the rear. ‘The confusion was now terrible,’ wrote Brydon, ‘all discipline was at an end.’ It was every man for himself. In the darkness he suddenly realised that he was surrounded. Before he could ride off he was dragged from his horse and felled by a savage cut from a long Afghan knife. Had he not by a miracle had a copy of
Blackwood’s Magazine
stuffed in his cap, it would undoubtedly have killed him. As it was, the knife removed a large piece of his skull. ‘I was nearly stunned,’ he wrote, ‘but I managed to get to my knees.’ Seeing a second blow coming, he managed to parry it with the edge of his sword, slicing off some of his assailant’s fingers. As the weapon fell to the ground, the man ran off into the darkness, leaving Brydon horseless and alone.

Despite his severe head wound, the doctor managed to clamber over the partly demolished barricade without attracting any further attention from the enemy, who seemed to have gone off in pursuit of the others. Stumbling weakly on over the piles of corpses, he came upon a mortally wounded cavalryman. The soldier, who had been shot through the chest and was bleeding profusely, begged him to take his pony before someone else did. Moments later he fell back dead. Profoundly grateful to his unknown benefactor, Brydon mounted the pony and rode hurriedly off into the darkness in search of his surviving comrades.

The handful of officers and men who had fought their way out of the gorge, leaving behind them many dead and dying, now found themselves divided into two groups, one mounted and the other on foot. The fifteen-strong former group, to which Brydon had attached himself, decided to ride on ahead in the hope of reaching Jalalabad before their pursuers could catch up with them. The second, far larger party, consisting of twenty officers and forty-five other ranks, fought their way to the village of Gandamak, less than thirty miles from Jalalabad. They knew that if they could survive one more day they would reach the safety of the British garrison. But they soon found their way blocked by the Afghans. Overwhelmingly outnumbered, they realised that they now stood little chance of reaching safety. Forming themselves into a square, and with only twenty muskets between them and two rounds of ammunition each, they prepared to sell their lives dearly in a last desperate stand.

The Afghans at first offered to negotiate, insisting that a ceasefire had been agreed at last, and that to be safe the British need only hand over their weapons. When they refused, suspecting another trap, the Afghans attempted to disarm them. Immediately hand-to-hand fighting broke out. With their ammunition all spent, the British fought on with bayonet and sword, one officer killing five Afghans before being cut down himself. Only four prisoners were taken by the Afghans, the rest of the group – most of them men of the 44th Regiment of Foot – being slaughtered to a man. In 1979, nearly a century and a half later, the British anthropologist Dr Andre Singer climbed to the top of the hill where they died. There, beneath the rocks of this grim and remote place, he found what were clearly the bones of those gallant men. Villagers told him that, long ago, visitors from British India occasionally made their way to the spot, where they stood in silent homage.

Meanwhile, twelve miles to the east, and unaware of the fate of their comrades, the mounted party pressed hastily on towards Jalalabad. The group consisted of Brydon, three captains, three subalterns, another doctor and half a dozen other ranks. At the village of Futtehabad, only fifteen miles from Jalalabad, they were offered food, and being desperately hungry they accepted, glad also of a rest while it was prepared. After all they had been through, the village seemed singularly peaceful and divorced from war. But it was an illusion, and while they rested a secret signal was given to those waiting in the hills nearby. The first the British knew of their danger was when suddenly they spotted scores of armed horsemen galloping towards the village from all sides. As they grabbed their weapons and dashed for their horses, villagers flung themselves on the small party, while others opened fire on those who managed to mount and ride off. Only five of them, including Brydon, got clear of the village. However, very soon the pursuing Afghans had disposed of all but Brydon, who by a miracle escaped. Even so, his trials were not yet over, for three more times during the fifteen-mile ride to Jalalabad he ran into hostile Afghans.

The first group, some twenty strong, threw stones at him and lunged at him with their knives. ‘I with difficulty put my pony into a gallop,’ he wrote, ‘and taking my bridle in my teeth, cut right and left with my sword as I went through them. They could not reach me with their knives and I was only hit by one or two stones.’ A mile or two further on he encountered a second group, one of whom was armed with a
jezail.
Jabbing his exhausted pony with the point of his sword, Brydon managed to force it again into a gallop. The Afghan with the
jezail
fired at him from close range, snapping short the blade of his sword and hitting his pony in the groin, but missing him. By the time the weapon could be reloaded he was out of range.

Finally, ahead of him on the plain, Brydon spotted a party of horsemen. Believing them to be a British cavalry patrol from Jalalabad, he rode eagerly towards them. Too late, he realised they were Afghans. As he quickly turned away they saw him and sent one of their number after him. Recognising him as an Englishman, the man slashed at him with his sword. Brydon managed to block the blow with his own broken weapon. His enemy now turned and rode at him again. ‘This time, just as he was striking, I threw the handle of my sword at his head,’ wrote Brydon. Swerving to avoid it, the Afghan missed his aim, instead cutting the doctor’s left hand, in which he held his bridle. Feeling it go numb, he reached for the bridle with his other hand. ‘I suppose my foe thought it was for a pistol,’ Brydon recounts, ‘for he turned at once and made off as quick as he could.’

But his pistol, Brydon discovered to his dismay, had fallen from its holster, and he was now totally unarmed. His pony, bleeding badly from the wound in its groin, seemed unlikely to carry him much further. His own wounds, together with his hunger and exhaustion, had begun to take their toll. For the first time in those eight nightmarish days the doctor’s strength began to fail him. ‘All energy seemed to forsake me,’ he wrote, and he feared that he would fall from the saddle from sheer exhaustion. Any moment he expected to be attacked by Afghans, and this time he knew he was unlikely to survive. ‘I became nervous and frightened at shadows,’ he recounts. But he was closer to Jalalabad than he realised. It was at that moment that the sharp-eyed look-out on the ramparts spotted him and his pony as they struggled painfully across the plain.

Dr Brydon was the only one of the 16,000 souls who had left Kabul to complete the terrible course and reach Jalalabad in safety – and the first, on that fateful thirteenth day of January, 1842, to break the news of the disaster which had overtaken Elphinstone’s army to a horrified nation. But, as we shall see, he was not the sole survivor of the Kabul garrison. Besides the hostages held by Akbar, a number of sepoys and other Indians who had somehow escaped death by hiding in caves managed, during the ensuing months, to make their way home across the passes. Although Brydon himself recovered fully from his wounds to become the subject of one of the most celebrated paintings of Victorian times – Lady Butler’s
Remnants of an Army
– sad to relate his gallant pony, also depicted in the work, died from its wounds. ‘The poor pony, directly it was put in a stable, lay down and never rose again,’ wrote the doctor.

Neither Brydon nor the garrison then knew of the fate which had befallen the men of the 44th Regiment of Foot at Gandamak. For many nights afterwards a large fire was kept blazing at Jalalabad’s Kabul Gate, lights were placed on the ramparts and bugles were sounded regularly to guide in any stragglers trying to cross the exposed plain and reach the city under cover of darkness. But none ever came.

·21·
The Last Hours of Conolly and Stoddart

The dreadful tidings borne by Dr Brydon – the Messenger of Death, as he was to become known – reached Lord Auckland, the retiring Governor-General, in Calcutta, a fortnight later. The shock, his sister Emily noted, was to age him by ten years. Things had gone wrong so terribly fast. Only a few weeks earlier Sir William Macnaghten had written from Kabul assuring him that everything was firmly under control. And now his entire policy in Central Asia was in ruins. Far from establishing a friendly rule in Afghanistan to buttress India against Russian encroachments, it had led instead to one of the worst disasters ever to overtake a British army. A mob of mere heathen savages, armed with home-made weapons, had succeeded in routing the greatest power on earth. It was a devastating blow to British pride and prestige. The ignominy suffered by St Petersburg following the Khivan debacle was nothing compared to this. To the bemused Auckland, who had been reluctant to use British troops to unseat Dost Mohammed in the first place, it was ‘as inexplicable as it was appalling’. And now, with Akbar’s forces beginning to hammer at the gates of the two remaining British garrisons in Afghanistan, Jalalabad and Kandahar, fears arose that the warlike Afghans, flushed by victory, might pour down through the passes into northern India, as they had done more than once in the past.