General Gatacre Part 14

"The enemy on this occasion did not show the bold front of previous days, but retired as the infantry advanced; and though the guns were sent forward about 1,000 yards to hasten their retreat, the loss of the enemy was not great. Throughout the action the troops were well handled by Brigadier-General Gatacre, D.S.O.

"The same afternoon Brigadier-General Gatacre with the Buffs, the 4th Goorkhas, half of No. 4 Company Bengal Sappers and Miners, No. 2 Derajat Mountain Battery, and the Maxim guns of the Devonshire Regiment pushed on to Barwa, _en route_ for Dir and Chitral, with twenty days'

supplies.

"On the afternoon of April 20 Brigadier-General Gatacre sent a message back to me that Major Deane, chief political officer, had received news that the garrison of Chitral was reduced to great straits, and that the mines of the enemy had reached to within ten yards of the fort, and he suggested that he should advance rapidly with a small body of five hundred men.

"To this I consented, as being the only way of pa.s.sing quickly through the intricate country we were now traversing, and the only chance of rescuing the garrison."[2]

[2] See Sir Robert Low's _Despatch_, April 19, 1895.

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[Sidenote: The Flying Column]

The excitement and joyful antic.i.p.ation amongst those who were to compose the Flying Column were intense. One of them writes:

"We had intended pushing on over the Lowari Pa.s.s without baggage animals, the paths being unfit for even mules without much tedious and lengthy preparation. Every officer and man was to have carried ten days' supplies on his back, and I had already broken up the General's mess stores into suitable 40-lb. loads for hillmen to carry for us. In order to do this I only got to bed at our Janbatai camp at 1 a.m. and had to be up at 3 a.m.; so you can imagine it was impressed on my mind.

"The dear General was, I fancy, awake all night, partly on account of the painful abscess that had been lanced that evening; but in spite of this he marched with us all next day, standing in his stirrups, because of the pain of sitting; and indefatigably urged on our bridging and road-making parties. After our arrival at Dir, having marched twenty miles and made the road and bridged the streams _en route_, the General would not rest or dine till the last of the transport mules had been piloted with lamps over a very difficult and rocky part of the path, just outside Dir. I fancy we dined at about 9.30 p.m.; but this was no unusual thing, for the General always insisted on seeing to the comfort of his brigade before his own, and I hardly ever managed to induce him to sit down to dinner till some time between 9 and 10 p.m."

But much to the chagrin of the five hundred they were a flying column for twenty-four hours only, for on the 22nd news was received that the siege, which had lasted forty-six days, had {134} been raised. It was afterwards ascertained that Colonel Kelly had reached the fort at 2 p.m. on the 20th, and that Sher Afzul and his supporters had fled the previous day. The General says nothing of his personal disappointment in the letters of this date, but when he was in the fort a month later, he writes:

"I wish they had let me loose as I wished, when we reached the Swat River. I should have been in Chitral before Kelly, though he had only half the distance to go that I had. But G.O.C. wanted to move with a united force. Of course we all hold different views regarding the best way of doing these things, but had I had the doing of it, I would have moved by separate lines, one brigade in advance; one would have got on quicker, and more effectively. But this is only between you and me."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Goorkhas crossing the Lowari Pa.s.s]

The campaign now entered into the second phase; the fighting was over, but not so the work. The Government decided that the Third Brigade should proceed to Chitral. Having already reached Dir, they had covered nearly two-thirds of the distance according to the map, but the most difficult part of the journey was ahead of them. The Lowari Pa.s.s, 10,450 ft. high, was covered with deep snow, and the valleys leading up to it on both sides were known to present almost insurmountable obstacles to the pa.s.sage of a large body of men and animals.

The following extract from _Trans-frontier Wars_ (vol. i. p. 544) gives a good idea of the physical features of the country to be traversed.

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"Throughout its entire length from Dir to Ashreth, the road was a mere goat-track, offering extraordinary difficulties to the pa.s.sage of troops, and requiring extensive improvements before laden animals could follow it.

"The route to Gujar, at the foot of the pa.s.s, lay for eleven miles up the Dir Valley beside the tumbling snow-fed torrent that streams from the south side of the pa.s.s. The track was in general extremely difficult, frequently losing itself among the boulders that choked the bed of the stream, and rising steeply to traverse the face of a rocky bluff, only to fall again with equal abruptness on the other side.

This portion of the road had to be realigned and reconstructed throughout, the river had to be bridged in three or four places, and stone staircase ramps had to be built in the water at more than one point, to enable laden animals to pa.s.s where the stream washed the foot of a precipitous cliff. From Gujar, 8,450 ft., to the summit of the pa.s.s, a distance of three miles, the track lay over frozen and often treacherous snow, at first at a fairly easy gradient, but growing steeper and more slippery as the pa.s.s was approached. Beyond the crest a great snow cornice, 15 ft. in height, overhung the head of the glen, down which the track descended for about 1,000 yards at a gradient of one in three or four, over vast drifts of avalanche snow, in which great rocks and the uprooted trunks of gigantic trees lay deeply embedded. From the foot of this descent the route lay down a steep and rocky gorge, now following the tangled bed of the torrent, now winding through fine forests of pine and cedar, or traversing open gra.s.sy glades clogged with the drainage of melting snows."

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[Sidenote: The advance]

In such a struggle with the forces of nature Gatacre was at his best.

No difficulty dismayed him; his own pa.s.sionate belief in the power of goodwill and hard work to overcome every obstacle inspired the whole force. The men learnt to work hard because he expected it of them and seemed always present to appreciate their efforts. They learnt to endure every hardship because he endured physical discomforts as great as theirs. Some few men were attacked with frost-bite, and the General was amongst the number; it caught him across the knuckles, and put him to great inconvenience. They saw him daily riding up and down the road, ministering to their comfort and their safety; and they realised that as a master he was one whom all good workmen delight to serve, because he made himself their servant.

An officer who is now a Brevet-Colonel and has since served in Egypt, in East Africa, and in Natal, writes thus:

"I have seen a good deal of active service, but nowhere have I met any officer, either of high or low rank, who more completely gave himself up to ensure the comfort of the troops under his command than the dear General. Nothing escaped his eagle eye: at one moment we were arranging that some picket should protect itself better against the wind and rain; at the next the General was showing how a shelter should be run up over the tent of some sick officer, to protect him from the heat of the or describing how better troughs could be for watering horses or mules.

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"As to road-making, the General was unsurpa.s.sed. From the very commencement of the expedition he realised that good communications must be ensured; and made our brigade work as I have never seen any troops work, except Egyptian troops on the railway in the Soudan.

Morning, noon, and night did every available man slave away at bettering the wild mountain paths which were our only link with our supplies and civilisation. The country supplied absolutely nothing but a little hill gra.s.s obtainable in some districts, which meant that every grain of food had to be laboriously carried up."

It is evident that the care of 3,000 men in such a country was no light work; and Gatacre, who never took his work lightly even at home, certainly did not spare himself on service. His own letters give such a good idea of the routine of camp life, and of the spirit of genuine pleasure in it all that was so characteristic of him, that they shall tell their own tale.

"We are marching all day over the most impossible ground. Our food comes up at about 10 o'clock at night. Last night, owing to the badness of the track, it never came in at all, and this morning I hear it is still four miles off, the other side of the pa.s.s: this means another eight hours! Talk about roads, you never saw such a country!

You approach a range of hills 10,000 ft. high, you have to cut a road for the animals before you attempt to bring them up, and this means time. Every now and then they have to stop and clear away these creatures who stalk us and shoot from behind rocks. We have {138} been very fortunate in losing no men, though we have knocked over a good many of them."

"Yesterday we were soaked with rain twice, had difficulty about wood for cooking, all green and soaked with wet; but everybody got in by 10 p.m. except about fifty mules and a company of Goorkhas who were stopped by the road falling away and some mules falling through about 300 yards down the khud. This of course stopped the remainder there for the night, but we got them some food, and they had to bivouac the night there without fire or blankets. We got them on this morning.

"Is it not marvellous? Out of my whole force of four regiments, a battery, and a company of Sappers, I have no sick men; they march all day, making roads, constantly get wet through, often have to sleep at great elevations. We were 8,700 ft. the night before last, without blankets, and yet they are all quite fit: no sick officer or man. Of course we take all the care we can of them.

"Yesterday after pa.s.sing over the pa.s.s we found on the hills along which the road ran all English flowers--narcissus, iris, lilies (they plant them on their graves), may, hawthorn, hyacinths, tulips, in great profusion. The country is magnificent, soil very rich, would grow anything; we must take the country and improve it. It is another Kashmir."

"We had a thunderstorm with lightning last night, a grand sight. I was coming back from Ashreth after nightfall, and stopped several times to watch the lightning light the snow peaks--quite beautiful!

[Ill.u.s.tration: On the road to Chitral.]

"I had a hard day the day before yesterday. {139} My orderly officer and I had to go from Dir to Janbatai and back, about fifty-six miles over a difficult road; we started at 5 a.m. and did not get back till 1 a.m. yesterday. For we were delayed on the road so long inspecting that night overtook us, and we had to walk along a most impossible track leading our ponies; we literally had to feel our way with our feet. We all got falls over rocks and stones, but beyond breaking our skin and clothes we were none the worse. The river was running under us nearly all the way about 300 ft. straight down, so you may imagine we had to be careful. I lost my helmet, but fortunately it rolled down the track instead of over the khudside."

"Though I get up at daybreak and go to bed at 11 p.m. daily, I a.s.sure you that I never have a moment; it seems strange, but if you saw the country you would understand it. I have a long line of troops scattered over some forty miles of country connected by a single road along which only one man and one animal can pa.s.s at a time; sixteen bridges which may be washed away at any moment, causing many hours'

delay in replacement; a snow pa.s.s, in the centre exactly, over which every ounce of food has to come; a terrific road along river-beds at one moment, running nearly up to the sky the next; 4,000 mules and donkeys working in stages from place to place, with supplies, guards, escorts, regiments, all of which have to be carefully watched to see that they have food and that nothing goes wrong. All this takes time, for it is a country one cannot gallop in, hardly go off a walk, but we are improving the roads and cutting new ones."

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"Then the snow pa.s.s stops us; we have to carry all our loads and supplies over the pa.s.s by hand. This makes us slow, but it is very sure; now the snow is melting and avalanches falling in every direction. Such an interesting country, and so beautiful! I have never seen such scenery, such mountains, trees, and rivers--simply magnificent! The spot I am now encamped in is about 2,000 ft. below the top of the pa.s.s, covered with gigantic cedars and pine-trees, eight and nine feet in diameter; I have never seen such trees. It is impossible to imagine anything more beautiful. There are high snow mountains all around us, a snow torrent from the avalanches rushing some hundreds of feet below us, carrying trees, rocks, etc., along with it; one can hardly hear oneself speak. Below in the valley one finds every English flower almost, chiefly in blossom, white peonies, honeysuckle--all sorts.