Red Runs the Helmand. Patrick Mercer
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After the crashing noise all about him, Keenan noticed the sudden quiet. Odd shouts and NCOs’ brass-lung commands could still be heard on the cool air, but his first taste of action had been disappointingly ordinary.
‘Check ammunition, Daffadar sahib,’ Keenan ordered needlessly, for the experienced Miran was already overseeing his lance daffadars doing just that. But as the scene of military domesticity took shape around him, men reaching into pouches, oily rags being drawn over breeches and hammers, a strange sing-song shout echoed up from the low ground in front of them.
‘Dear God . . .’ said Reynolds, as every man in the squadron saw what he had seen. ‘Trumpeter, blow “horses forward, prepare to mount”.’ Less than half a mile to their front, a great swarm of tribesmen, dirty blue and brown turbans and kurtas, some armed with rifles, all with swords and miniature round shields, crowded out of a courtyard where they had been lying hidden and rushed towards the platoon of the 29th, who were distracted by the Afghans with whom they were already toe-to-toe.
‘How many of those bastards are there, Daffadar sahib?’ Keenan asked. He knew that the bugle call was as much about warning the commanding officer, who was at least a mile away, of Reynolds’s intentions as it was about getting the squadron ready to attack.
‘Bastards, sahib? Do you know these Duranis’ mothers?’ Keenan marvelled at the daffadar’s ability to joke at a time like this. ‘About five hundred – Reynolds sahib is going to charge them, is he not?’
His daffadar had obviously read the battle much better than he had, thought Keenan. A charge – the horse soldier’s raison d’être – in this his first taste of action? Yes, he could see it now. If his squadron was swift and sure-footed, and the commanding officer had the rest of the regiment trimmed and ready to support them, even sixty of them could cut up the tribesmen from a vantage-point like this. Scrambling over the dust and grit, Keenan was pleased to see his syce first at the rear of the little wood, holding his stirrup ready for him to mount even before the rest of the troop’s horses began to arrive.
‘Troop, form column,’ Keenan used the orders straight from the manual that he knew his men understood, as 1 and 3 Troops went through exactly the same evolutions on either side of his men. His command, ‘NCOs, dress them off,’ saw much snapping and biting from the two daffadars and Miran, but his troopers were almost ready to move before the squadron leader and his trumpeter had come trotting breathlessly through the brush.
Captain Reynolds nodded with approval at his three troops – his orders had been well anticipated. ‘Good; troop officers, lead your men to the front of the brush and take post on Rissaldar Singh – he’s your right marker. Be sharp now.’ Keenan was the only British troop officer, the other two being Indians. Now 1 Troop commander – at thirty-five Singh was the oldest man in the squadron – had been placed to guide the troops as they formed up ready for the attack.
With the minimum of fuss, Keenan’s troop followed him forward through the stand of trees before fanning out to the left of 3 Troop, Miran pushing and shoving the horses and their riders into two long, thin lines in the middle of the squadron.
‘Right, sahib,’ Miran said, which told Keenan that he should trot round to the front of his men and turn about to face them, his back to the enemy. He looked at twenty earnest young faces, every one adorned with a variety of moustache and beard – some full, some scrawny. They could be tricky in barracks, these Pathans of his, but now they looked no more than nervous boys, faces tense in the sun, pink tongues licking at dry lips. Keenan raised his hand to show that his troop was dressed and deployed to his satisfaction, the other two troop officers doing the same at either side of him.
‘Squadron, steady!’ came Reynolds’s word of command that brought the officers wheeling about in front of their troopers, allowing Keenan his first proper glimpse of the enemy. Two furlongs down the slope, a wedge of enemy infantry had charged hard into the rear and flanks of the 29th Bombay and was overwhelming them.
‘Drop your fodder, men.’ The squadron leader’s order caused every man to fiddle with the hay-net that made his saddle appear so swollen. In an instant the ground was littered with awkward balls of crop, while the horses looked instantly more warlike.
‘Carry . . . lances,’ Reynolds shouted, as the sun caught knife blades that were slicing and hacking at the Indian infantry men. Sixty or so long, slender bamboo poles, topped with red and white pennons, dipped and bobbed before coming to rest in their owners’ gauntleted hands. Keenan looked to either side of him: reins were being tightened, fingers flexing on weapons, every man intent on the target to their front.
‘They have not noticed us, yet, Daffadar sahib,’ Keenan said, as his sergeant rode up to him, fussing over the men as he came.
‘No, sahib, they have not. They’re too busy howling about the Prophet to realise they’re about to meet him. Look there, sahib: one of the officers is helping those monkeys to meet Allah.’ The daffadar pointed with his chin – as Keenan had noticed all natives did – towards a struggling scrum of men right on the edge of the fight. Among the swarthy faces a white one stood out. His helmet gone, a subaltern of the 29th was fighting for his life.
A strange, savage noise: grunting, sighing, the clash of steel on steel was coming from the throng. Then Keenan heard two revolver shots and saw the young officer hurl his pistol at the nearest Durani before dashing himself against five or more assailants, his sword blade outstretched. In an instant it was over. Two robed figures rolled in the dust before steel flashed and fell, knives stabbing, short swords slicing and cutting the young lieutenant’s fair skin.
‘Prepare to advance.’ Reynolds used just his voice rather than the bugle. ‘Walk march, forward!’ The squadron billowed down the hill, over-keen riders being pulled back into line with an NCO’s curse, the horses snorting with anticipation, ears pricked.
‘Trot march!’ The line gathered pace at the squadron commander’s next order, the men having to curb their mounts’ eagerness as the slope of the hill added to the speed.
‘Prepare to charge!’ Keenan had heard these words so many times before on exercise fields and the maidan, yet never had they thrilled him like this. ‘Charge!’ As Reynolds spoke, the front rank’s lances formed a hedge of wood tipped with steel, level in front of the soldiers’ faces, spurs urging the horses on, a snarl that Keenan had never heard before coming from the men’s lips.
Then the ecstasy of relief. Keenan found himself yelling inanely, his mount Kala’s ears twitching at her master’s unfamiliar noise. The soldiers became centaurs as the trot turned into a canter, Keenan only having to pull gently on the reins to check his mare and prevent her getting too close to the pounding hoofs of Reynolds and his trumpeter, who rode just in front of him.
‘Steady, lads, steady,’ shouted Keenan, pointlessly, as the enemy loomed hugely just paces in front of them. He could see that the Duranis had been intent upon their prey, crowding over the clutch of Bombay soldiers who had survived their first onslaught, but now they were shocked by the appearance of a charging squadron. Contorted faces, whose owners had tasted easy blood, turned in fright towards the hammering hoofs and flashing spear points.
‘Mark your targets, men.’ Another needless but self- reassuring order spilled from Keenan’s mouth, as Kala jinked hard to avoid one of the enemy who had dropped to the ground. The Afghan had realised, almost too late, that he’d caught the eye of at least three angry Scinde Horsemen. In the first wave Captain Reynolds had cut at him, doing nothing more than ripping his kurta. Next, Sowar Ram – the trumpeter – sliced the soft, sheepskin cap off his head, but left the man unharmed. Then it was Keenan’s turn. The young officer tried to reach low enough to spit his enemy on the ground, but the Durani had learnt more in the last sixty seconds than in a lifetime of swordplay. First he crouched. Then, as Keenan’s blade came close, he sprang like a cat, took the full force of his attacker’s steel on the boss of his shield and cut up hard with his long Khyber knife. Keenan was past his target, over-exposed, leaning down from the saddle, and had it not been for the lance daffadar riding close behind him, the knife would have taken him squarely