The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia (77 page)

Nor was that all. Unknown to Robertson, a small party of Kashmiri troops led by two British subalterns was on its way from Gilgit bringing him badly needed ammunition when it was ambushed by Chitralis. After losing a number of men, the party managed to reach the temporary safety of a cluster of stone houses. For several days they remained there under siege. Then, under a white flag, a messenger arrived claiming that he had been sent by Sher with orders to stop the fighting. He told the two British officers that, following a clash with Robertson’s troops at Chitral, amicable relations had now been restored, and that Sher guaranteed them a safe onward passage. A ceasefire was agreed, and a meeting took place between the senior of the two subalterns and the enemy commander at which the latter and other leading Chitralis solemnly assured him of the genuineness of the offer. As a gesture of apparent sincerity, they even supplied the defenders with much-needed food and water. Aware that they could not hold out indefinitely, and that help was unlikely to be forthcoming, the two British officers knew that they had little choice but to trust the Chitralis.

A bizarre piece of Central Asian treachery now ensued. The Chitrali commander announced that in order to celebrate the new-found accord his men would give a display of polo, their national game, on a piece of open ground before the British positions. The two officers were invited to watch this as guests of honour. Not wishing to risk offence, they agreed, but carefully placed themselves where their troops could cover them in the event of duplicity. The game took place without anything untoward happening. But the moment it was over, the Chitralis began to dance, as was their custom. For a few brief seconds some of them came between the two subalterns and the marksmen covering them, temporarily blocking the line of fire. It had been carefully planned. The two officers were seized and quickly bound hand and foot. Seeing what was happening, the Kashmiri troops opened fire, though too late. Dragging their two captives with them, the Chitralis dashed for cover behind a stone wall. Deprived of their officers, the Kashmiris were soon overrun and most of them slaughtered. There being no time to destroy the ammunition intended for Robertson, this now fell into the hands of the enemy. Before very long they would be putting it to alarming use.

Meanwhile in Chitral the situation was worsening. Robertson and his men now found themselves under heavy siege from a greatly superior force armed with modern rifles, though not, fortunately, with artillery. In addition to 5 British officers and nearly 400 native troops, Robertson had with him in the fortress more than 100 non-combatants, including servants, clerks and some Chitralis who had thrown in their lot with him. All had to be fed, and as there was only enough food to last a little more than a month, everyone was put on half rations. Furthermore, ammunition was short, there being barely 300 rounds per man. The fortress itself, eighty yards square, stood on the Chitral river, which ensured them a ready supply of water. Constructed from heavy blocks of stone, its walls were twenty-five feet high and eight feet thick. At each of its four corners rose a square tower, twenty feet higher than the walls. A fifth tower, built to protect those carrying water, jutted out towards the river, and a covered way was now built from this to the water’s edge, a distance of twenty paces.

Such were the fortress’s strengths. However, it also had a number of serious weaknesses. Surrounding it were clusters of tall trees from which snipers could easily fire down into its interior. Those manning the far walls were thus vulnerable to being shot in the back, and to protect them bullet-proof shelters had to be constructed from earth-filled boxes and thick wooden doors. There were also a number of mud-built outbuildings standing close to the fortress walls which both obstructed the defenders’ lines of fire and provided the attackers with cover. Nor had the fortress been planned with modern rifles in mind, for it was within easy range of the towering crags which overlooked it from across the river. Another weak point was the amount of timber used in its construction, making it extremely vulnerable to incendiary attacks. Fire pickets and patrols were organised among the non-combatants, and the men always slept with their filled water-skins beside them. To boost morale, and to signal the garrison’s defiance to the enemy, a makeshift Union Jack was stitched together and run up on one of the towers. In the meantime, amid great secrecy and at dead of night, trusted messengers were dispatched to alert the nearest British posts to the garrison’s plight.

Apart from continuous sniping, which took a number of lives, the enemy made no major assault on the fortress during the first month. At one stage, peace talks even took place, but with Sher demanding that the British evacuate Chitral under a guarantee of safe passage. Aware of the great numerical superiority of those surrounding them, and the weakness of their own position, Robertson played along with this, hoping thereby to give a relief force as long as possible to reach them. Furthermore he deliberately leaked it to the enemy that, although well supplied with ammunition, the defenders were growing seriously short of food. He hoped thus to persuade Sher and Umra Khan, who had by now joined forces at Chitral, that the fortress could fairly quickly be starved into surrender. But soon his purpose became apparent to the enemy, and contacts ceased abruptly. A number of determined attacks were now launched against the fortress, including several attempts to set it on fire. However, these were successfully beaten off by the defenders. Even so, all the time the Chitralis were gradually pushing forward their
sangars,
and getting closer and closer to the walls. By April 5 they were in possession of an old summer-house only fifty yards away, and on the following day constructed a
sangar
from heavy timber only forty yards from the main gate.

Then came the most serious threat so far to the fortress. On April 7, under cover of a diversionary attack on the covered way down to the river, and heavy fire from marksmen hidden in the trees, a small party of the enemy managed to creep up to the far wall unobserved. With them they bore incendiary materials. They chose their moment well, for there was a strong wind blowing. Within minutes the south-east tower was blazing fiercely, largely due to its timber joists. Robertson could see that if it were not extinguished quickly it would collapse, leaving a large gap in the wall which would be almost impossible to defend against such superior numbers. Directed personally by Robertson, every man who could be spared was brought in to fight the flames. A heavy concentration of fire was directed against them as they worked, killing two and wounding nine others, including Robertson himself, who was hit by a bullet in the shoulder. But after five hours the flames were out.

It had been a close shave, though an even closer one was to follow. Four nights later the defenders heard the sounds of revelry coming from the summer-house, now occupied by the enemy. The loud beating of drums and the cacophony of pipes was at intervals interrupted by screams of derision directed at those in the fortress. The clamour was repeated on each successive night, but it was some time before the defenders realised what the enemy’s game was. It was almost certainly intended to drown the tell-tale sounds of a tunnel being dug towards the nearest point of the wall. The besiegers had found a good use for the explosives captured from the British ammunition party. That night one of the sentries reported hearing the faint sounds of a pick being used underground. The officers were unable to hear anything, but by the following morning there was no mistaking it. The Chitrali miners were within twelve feet of the wall. Normally the threat would have been dealt with by means of a counter-mine, but the tunnel was now far too close for that. There was not a moment to lose lest the enemy realise that they had been detected and ignite the mine. There was only one thing to do. The summer-house would have to be stormed immediately, and the tunnel destroyed.

Forty Sikhs and sixty Kashmiris, led by a British subaltern, were chosen for the task. At four o’clock that afternoon the eastern gate of the fortress was opened swiftly and silently, and the assault party raced out, making straight for the summer-house. The enemy were caught by surprise, only managing to kill two of the attackers. Within seconds the assault party was inside the house, whose thirty or so occupants fled out of the back at the sight’ of the British bayonets. While some of the party positioned themselves to fight off any counter-attack, the officer and the others began frantically to search for the entrance to the tunnel. They soon found it, behind the garden wall, and from it no fewer than twenty-two Chitralis were dragged blinking into the daylight. There, one by one, they were bayoneted to death by the Sikhs. Two, however, were saved by the subaltern, for he had orders to bring back prisoners for interrogation. The explosive charges left by the enemy were then detonated, destroying the tunnel, the violence of the blast knocking over the officer and singeing the beards and turbans of several of the Sikhs.

Now came the most hazardous part of the operation – getting the party safely back to the fortress through murderous enemy fire. Miraculously, thanks to the covering fire maintained from the walls, this was achieved without further loss of life. In all the raid had cost the British eight lives, though undoubtedly it had saved many more, perhaps those of the entire garrison. As the men poured back through the gate, Robertson, who had observed the operation from one of the towers, hastened down to congratulate them. ‘The Sikhs,’ he wrote afterwards, ‘still raging with excitement, crowded forward to recite the numbers they had killed, and to exhibit their stained bayonets and splashed faces.’ They had, he noted, ‘the ecstatic look of religious fanatics’. By now the garrison had been under siege for forty-seven days. Not a word of what was going on outside had reached them, or even of whether any of their messengers had got through. Food, ammunition and morale were running dangerously low, and many of their rifles, far from new at the start, had ceased to function. Robertson and his officers knew that if help did not arrive soon they would be forced to surrender, or be overrun. However, with the destruction of the tunnel had come a slender ray of hope. Interrogation of the two prisoners revealed that there had been fighting of some kind on the road from Gilgit. Could this mean, everyone wondered, that a relief party was on its way at last? The answer was to come very shortly.

Although the defenders had no way of knowing it, two British forces were at that moment racing to get to Chitral, one from the south and the other from the east. When word of the garrison’s plight first reached India, preparations for an expedition to Swat and Chitral had been proceeding at a somewhat leisurely pace, for Robertson was not thought to be in any immediate danger. The enemy, moreover, had been given until April 1 to withdraw, which it was rather assumed they would. But as intelligence began to come in that Robertson and his small party were now under siege, and that the ammunition convoy from Gilgit had been ambushed, leaving two officers in Sher’s hands, this complacency turned to something little short of panic. The vision of a handful of British officers, with their loyal native troops, holding out against overwhelming odds in a remote and picturesque fortress, brought to mind the recent tragedy in the Sudan. ‘It is Khartoum all over again,’ declared
The Graphic.
Those with slightly longer memories remembered Burnes, Macnaghten, Cavagnari, Conolly, Stoddart and other victims of oriental treachery beyond India’s frontiers. With dread visions of the main relief party arriving too late, as had happened at Khartoum, the defence chiefs decided to send ahead a second, smaller column from Gilgit.

There were by now growing fears in Gilgit that the troubles might spread eastwards from Chitral. The only troops therefore who could be spared from garrison duties were 400 Sikh Pioneers. Although mainly used for road-building, these sturdy men were also trained soldiers who had shown themselves to be formidable fighters. Furthermore, they were commanded by an extremely able and experienced frontier soldier, Colonel James Kelly. Even so, despite the addition of forty Kashmiri sappers and two mountain guns, it was a pitifully small force for so crucial a mission. However, the day was saved by the unexpected offer of 900 irregulars by those erstwhile adversaries of Britain, Hunza and Nagar. ‘Splendid men,’ one of Kelly’s officers called them. ‘Hardy, thickset mountaineers, incapable of fatigue.’ The offer was gratefully accepted, and in Gilgit they were issued with modern rifles. So that they would not be mistaken for the enemy, each man was given a strip of red cloth to wrap around his cap. One hundred of them were attached to Kelly’s force, while the rest were deployed to guard the passes while British backs were turned.

Kelly had little or no time in which to prepare his force or make any plans. His orders were to leave at once, for if Robertson and his men were to avoid the fate of General Gordon, every day, perhaps every hour, was crucial. Ahead lay a forced march, often through deep snow and across some of the harshest terrain in the world, of more than 200 miles. Every man’s hand would be against them, and every pony-track and gorge commanded by sharpshooters from the heights above. Kelly’s force, which took no tents to enable it to travel at maximum possible speed, left Gilgit on March 23. One week later, the main relief column, 15,000 strong and commanded by Major-General Sir Robert Low, marched northwards from Peshawar. The race for Chitral was on.