The March to Kandahar- Roberts in Afghanistan Read online

  The driving force was Lytton, even if Colley was his chief advisor. A few months into the war, a young officer from England, Lord Melgund, later as Lord Minto to be Viceroy, wrote:

  The entire plan of the campaign, and the carrying out of it, comes from the Viceroy, he is in fact Commander-in-Chief, of course guided by his military advisers, amongst whom Colonel Colley and Colonel Baker [Military Secretary] must have of course great influence. I fancy Sir F. Haines has very little to do with the management of the campaign, and that [Government House] is actually the Head Quarters Office, and that any important change of operations would come from here.22

  When the war broke out, Roberts, as Chief Commissioner-designate of the new Frontier Province, had already undertaken a tour of frontier stations, returning to Simla in May 1878. At the end of September, with the British massing their forces, and against the wishes of the Indian Commander-in-Chief, Haines, Lytton secured Roberts’s appointment as commander of the Kurram Column, the smallest of the three forces to invade Afghanistan. Roberts’s diary in August shows him closely in touch with Lytton, dining at the Viceroy’s house, playing whist with the Lyttons, and meeting Colley to discuss negotiations with the Afghans. On 9 September 1878, when Roberts was told by Lytton he was to command the Kurram Column, he wrote in his journal: ‘It is all too splendid.’23 That Lytton, not Roberts, originated this line and educated his subordinate is all too clear from a letter of the Viceroy’s: ‘he [Roberts] was my own particular selection, and I had been personally coaching him in my own notions about that line of advance ... for more than a year before he got his command there.’24

  Roberts, a happy husband and father, recorded on 13 September the children’s health, on the 26th he sadly bade ‘the dear children’ farewell, and the next day ‘Parted from my own darling wife at 8 am.’ He had already had a farewell lunch with the Viceroy and the Commander-in-Chief and said goodbye to his many army friends. In October he was very busy preparing the column, but found time on 5 November to drink a bottle of champagne with Brigadier Hugh Gough ‘to our wives’ health’, and then, as he saw Gough again on the 6th, they consumed a second. All three columns were having trouble gathering supplies and transport, so perhaps it was as well that the operations were postponed until 20 November, giving Sher Ali every chance of making an apology. Roberts had his hands full assembling stores and transport animals, and obtaining an additional three battalions to strengthen his force. This was his first independent command, a proud but anxious moment, conscious as he was of the weaknesses of his column, with Muslim soldiers not keen to march against fellow Muslims, his English regiment young and sickly.25

  Chapter 4

  Into Battle:

  the Peiwar Kotal

  You’ll be cut to pieces before you’re fifty miles across the border. You have to travel through Afghanistan ... It’s one mass of mountains and peaks and glaciers, and no Englishman has been through it. The people are utter brutes.

  Rudyard Kipling, The Man Who Would be King

  Roberts had no experience of command, and his constitutional daring and his contempt for an uncivilized foe predisposed him to rash resolves and hasty action.

  Colonel Henry Hanna

  The strategy of advancing in three columns was a compromise between Lytton and Haines, following violent disagreement; at Haines’s insistence the Kandahar and Peshawar forces were strengthened. Lytton and Colley wished to launch only a small offensive, relying on speed, superior firepower and the element of surprise, attacking in winter. They had planned two columns, a southern force under Major General Donald Stewart operating towards Kandahar through the Bolan Pass, and a northern force under Roberts threatening Kabul by way of the little-known Kurram Valley. Haines warned the Viceroy that the Kandahar column could run into 15,000 Afghan regulars armed with good artillery, and prevailed on Lytton to form a second column in the north under Lieutenant General Sam Browne, inventor of the famous belt, to advance up the Khyber Pass. The Khyber route was the only one that could be kept open all year. The three columns totalled 36,000 men and 148 guns, and was not a force to conquer Afghanistan – it was one, as Stewart told his wife in a letter of 31 October, to ensure that the Amir did not make friends with people who could threaten British India.1

  Sir George Colley’s studies led him to place enormous confidence in the firepower of modern breach-loading weapons. Lytton, relying on his advice, wisely chose a war of limited objectives, occupying Kandahar and the Kurram Valley to bring the Amir to heel. He had no intention of embarking on a full-scale invasion or even seizing Kabul; indeed it was unlikely the Indian Army’s transport and supply arrangements could cope with such an effort. The Indian famine had had disastrous effects on the country’s ability to support a war, although not on the Army directly. British and Indian troops generally enjoyed high morale, especially in Sikh, Gurkha and Highland battalions. The British infantry’s breach-loading, single-shot Martini-Henry rifle was reliable and hard hitting, reasonably accurate to 1,000 yards; the Indians’ Snider was not as good but better than earlier weapons. The cavalry carried a sword, lance and carbine. The artillery’s rifled cannon fired out to 5,000 yards; the screw guns carried on mule-back to 4,000. Telegraph and heliograph provided improved communications. Chief weaknesses were organizational and logistical. The division of the Indian Army into three Presidency armies – Bengal, Bombay and Madras -and with the Commander-in-Chief and the Military Member advising the Viceroy at the top made for slowness, inefficiency and rivalry, especially when the Viceroy and the Commander-in-Chief Haines did not trust one another. The introduction of short-service enlistments brought young soldiers to India who were not yet acclimatized. Medical care was improving, but conditions were still harsh, with many dying from cholera, pneumonia and typhoid. There were no proper ambulances; the sick had to be transported in two-wheeled carts (doolies). Indian Army commanders, promoted by seniority rather than merit, were mostly conventional and unimaginative, and several called from desk jobs did not have the flexibility of mind to cope with a quickly changing situation.

  Against an enemy hiding in rugged mountains and armed with the accurate, long-range jezail, regiments dispensed with traditional scarlet tunics and followed the dress of the elite Corps of Guides. A 14th Bengal Lancers officer noted: ‘blue, scarlet and gold [were discarded], and all were dressed from top to toe in Khakee, or mud colour.’ ‘The uniform is decidedly irregular/ wrote Major Le Mesurier of the Royal Engineers, ‘a suit of brown cloth and brown boots with canvas tops.’ Major George White of the Gordon Highlanders told his wife, ‘We are all fitted out in khaki, and won’t look in the least like the old 92nd; however, the men stick to their kilts ... We have discarded all our white belts and steel scabbards, and have our swords sharp and in leather scabbards ... I am fitted more as if going on a shooting excursion than on a campaign.’ Tea was often used to dye uniform serge.

  The Army’s dispersed cantonments meant that regiments had to be assembled at railheads at short notice. Once beyond the railways, the men marched on foot and horse, supported by bullock carts, mules and camels. An enormous number of animals had to be hired, and every column was accompanied by a host of camp followers responsible for watering and feeding the troops. Religious restrictions on certain foods complicated logistics. As war approached, both Roberts as Quartermaster General, and Haines as Commander-in-Chief, had submitted memoranda to Lytton pointing out the need for improvement in organization, transport and equipment before war started. Virtually nothing had been done. MacGregor’s gazetteer and its maps were not made available, and what little intelligence there was came from Indian police service reports. In a harsh and mountainous country, most supplies would come from India by pack train, mule and camel; the routes were long and passed through defiles which could be easily attacked. There were no metalled roads and wheeled transport was often unusable.2

  The Afghans were known to be ‘a race of Tigers’ who had already shown their teeth in 1838^2, a hard, warlike people
toughened by a harsh, dry, mountainous country, passionately nursing their independence, family loyalty, courage, and a highly developed sense of personal honour and hospitality, but conversely regarded by unwelcome visitors as ‘robbers and cutthroats’, ‘very interested in fire-arms’. A Russian estimate placed Afghan strength at nearly 50,000 regulars and 140,000 irregulars. The Amir depended upon force of personality and personal prestige to persuade and cajole the sirdars – local lords with political and military power – to lead out their local levies. To supplement the traditional long-barrelled jezail they had Enfield and Snider rifles, mostly given to the Amir by the British, and plenty of ammunition. Indeed, some British officers expected Afghans to enjoy an unlimited supply of rounds stolen from the Indian Army factory at Dum Dum. Uniform was the same as the Indian Army’s and drill was taught by Indian deserters. Afghan artillery was particularly good, one estimate giving the Afghans 379 guns, including thirty-four siege weapons, their fire so effective that British observers thought Russians must be manning them. After a first encounter, Roberts reported that there could be no comparison with the Afghan army of the previous war. ‘The men are now armed with excellent rifles, and provided with abundant ammunition ... Their shooting is good; their men are of large stature and great physical strength and courage, and are well clothed. The Afghan artillery is also well served and efficiently equipped.’ His report proved remarkably accurate, except that it ignored the ghazis, fanatical irregulars armed only with swords, who made up in religious fanaticism what they lacked in discipline.

  Afghans enjoyed great mobility, and could assemble and disperse with remarkable rapidity, making excellent use of the ground they knew. The countryside was wild and rugged, the valleys narrow, the defiles perfectly made for ambush, commanded by high rocky hills and mountains. Most of the country was thinly populated and in many places the houses were towers built as little fortifications, the doors being 10 to 15 feet above the ground and approached by means of a rope ladder which could be pulled up at a moment’s notice. A Russian observer thought every settlement was fortified to some degree. The climate was harsh, dry and hot in summer, bitterly cold in winter, and only in the valleys around places like Kandahar did green fields introduce a gentler element to the landscape.3

  The first action was a bungled attack by Lieutenant General Sir Sam Browne as he tried to seize the stronghold of Ali Masjid at the mouth of the Khyber Pass. More by luck than judgement, the encircling columns under Brigadiers MacPherson and Tytler seized the fortress from behind after a night’s freezing march in the wrong direction. Sher Ali, however, in an imaginative reversal of reality wrote to the Governor of Herat: ‘By the grace of God, a series of victories have been won by our lion-devouring warriors.’ Browne’s force went on to take Dakka at the west end of the Khyber and then Jalalabad, capital of the region, a dirty town, where the troops settled down to improve drainage and roads, and the 10th Hussars sent back for the regimental band and a supply of tennis balls. The southern column under Major General Donald Stewart, Roberts’s friend and a highly respected officer, made the advance through the Bolan Pass to Kandahar almost without serious opposition and with scarcely any human casualties. Among the baggage animals 12,000 camels died in the intense cold and biting winds. Captain Hoskyns of the Royal Engineers, with the column, felt that his chief’s achievement was afterwards neglected by public and press: ‘The English public, who know but little of military matters ... took but scant notice of the General who marched an army rapidly for hundreds of miles through bitter cold and dismal waste, and through his rapidity of movement alone, paralysed the enemy and won his goal without a fight.’ Many generals, thought Hoskyns, would not have reached Kandahar.4

  Of the three columns, Roberts’s saw the most action. He had worked strenuously from the time of his arrival at Kohat in early November to make good deficiencies in transport and equipment, and took particular care with medical arrangements, providing a static base hospital, a small hospital with each regiment for treatment of slight wounds and mild cases of sickness, and a divisional hospital for the reception of more serious cases. Roberts’s harshest critic, Colonel Hanna, praised his ‘energy, clear-headedness and practical knowledge displayed ... during those busy weeks of preparation.’5 It was typical of Hanna in his history to blame Roberts for the poor state of transport; in fact, Sam Browne, head of the Military Department before taking command of a column, had sold off ‘surplus transport’ in the summer of 1878. Roberts’s able staff and senior officers included Colonel Hugh Gough, whom he had met in the Mutiny, commanding the cavalry, Colonel Aenas Perkins, a classmate at Addiscombe as Chief Engineer, and the Revd J.W. Adams, chaplain, a veritable muscular Christian of remarkable courage and quick instincts in action. His reinforced column now had the 72nd and 92nd Highlanders, both seasoned regiments, and as native infantry Sikhs, Punjabis and Gurkhas, ‘the martial races’ of the north and veterans of the Frontier. Less good was the young 2nd Battalion of the 8th King’s Regiment, composed of soldiers who were ‘very sickly, very young, and scarcely fit for service’. And would his Muslims prove loyal to the British or favour their Afghan co-religionists? He had 5,500 fighting men, eighteen guns, 3,000 native followers and 2,000 transport animals. Roberts’s friendship with both Lytton and Colley ensured that he had full political powers and as few detailed instructions as possible.6

  Ahead lay the Kurram Valley, 60 miles long, the road a rough track with magnificent wooded mountains on all sides. Of the local people, Major Collett of the Royal Engineers recorded that the Turis ‘were glad to see us, and that, smarting as they were then, under Sher Ali’s late exactions, they regarded General Roberts’s troops as deliverers from an oppressive government’.7 Less welcoming were the Managals and Wazirs, both exceptionally independent and aggressive, and the Zaimukhts and Ghilzais, notorious for their raids. His two chief difficulties were guarding lines of communication and maintaining transport 170 miles from his base.

  Promptly at 5.00 a.m. on 21 November, Roberts’s advanced guard at the head of his force crossed a trestle bridge, and moved forward to occupy Kurram fort on 25 November. Local inhabitants said that Afghan forces, numbering some 1,800 men and twelve guns, were withdrawing over a high wooded pass, the Peiwar Kotal. Early on the 28th, Roberts concentrated his main force and advanced. Receiving reports that the Afghans were retreating in disorder, abandoning their guns, he pushed on along the narrow and rocky track climbing steeply up the massive stone face of the ridge to the Kotal, a narrow depression or saddle, his men in single file. Contrary to reports, enemy troops and guns were strongly positioned, and the advancing infantry came under intense rifle and artillery fire from front and flanks. Roberts pulled his men back and encamped, but the Afghans brought forward mountain guns and succeeded in dropping shells into the British camp. Little damage was done, but the weary troops had to shift their tents a mile further back.

  Peiwar Kotal — 2 December 1878

  Wisely Roberts spent two days reconnoitring, sending forward Colonel Perkins and Major Collett. The position they scouted was an extraordinarily strong one. A later observer commented: ‘The Paiwar[sic] is a magnificent position, if properly held; no troops in the world could carry it. The approach is hemmed in by commanding spurs and the road to the Pass itself winds up the almost perpendicular hill-side.’8 It was strongly occupied by regular troops and artillery behind a breastwork of stones and pine logs. Collett proposed a night flank march round to the Spingawai, east of the enemy’s extreme left, from where successive ridges could be commanded by fire. Roberts adopted the idea, fixing on tactics that repeatedly served him well: feinting at the enemy’s front or one flank while striking round the other. To disguise his intentions, he arranged for gun positions to be laid out in full view of the Afghans and for reconnaissance parties to examine ostentatiously both sides of the main valley. He then marched with a flanking force of about 2,300 men at 10.00 p.m. on the night of 12/13 December, leaving his camp fires burning. The frontal div
ersion was carried out by Brigadier General Cobbe with 870 men, while Major Palmer with Turi levies would make a wide sweep round the right flank of the Afghans as a further diversion.

  The march up the Spingawi valley was extremely arduous, the troops scrambling over ridge upon ridge of loose rocks. As the sun rose, they could see the route lay over a pass 9,400 feet high surrounded by mountainous forests. Roberts’s suspicion that the march was being deliberately slowed down by Pathan sepoys of the 29th Bengal Native Infantry leading the column was confirmed when two shots were fired from their ranks to alert their Afghan fellow Muslims. It was a critical moment, for the majority of his force was Muslim. Roberts showed imperturbable sang-froid despite being isolated with a partly disloyal regiment. Fortunately his ADCs and the Revd Adams brought on the rest of the column, and he replaced the 29th with the 5th Gurkhas and pressed forward. He abandoned a plan to halt for an hour’s rest, because of the delay, and just before 6.00 a.m. the Gurkhas in the lead reached the foot of the Spingawi Kotal just below the Afghan defenders entrenched above them. Undetected until within 50 yards of the first barricade, the Gurkhas aided by the 72nd Highlanders charged forward in the face of heavy fire and seized the defences, and a heliograph signal was flashed back to the camp telling of success.