Red Runs the Helmand. Patrick Mercer
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with his son, Yakoob Khan, in May ’79. They’d bought the wily old lad off for the knock-down price of sixty thousand quid, after he’d promised to behave himself and accepted our Resident, Sir Louis Cavagnari. And there we’d all thought it had ended. If only that had been the case.
While others were grabbing all the glory (like that odious little sod Bob Roberts), I was still in Karachi, thinking that, as a forty-nine-year-old colonel, I’d reached the end of the career road, when news reached us of Cavagnari’s murder last September. Before that, there had been some pretty vicious fighting and we had all thought that his being allowed into the capital had marked the end of things – at least for a while. I reckoned we’d done quite a good job right across Afghanistan, but then, as usual, the windbag politicians had failed to open their history books and sent all the wrong signals to the Afghans. Instead of reinforcing success and giving the tribesmen the chance to sample the delights of imperial rule for a few months more, Whitehall listened too closely to the lily-livered press, the Treasury began to do its sums – and the tribesmen soon grasped that we had no plans to stay in their country beyond the next Budget Day. And who paid for that? Poor Cavagnari and his Corps of Guides bodyguard: butchered to a man in the Residency in Kabul. It was all a little too much like the last débâcle back in ’42 for my liking.
Then, of course, the papers really took hold. The blood of English boys was being shed for no reason, while innocent women and children were being caught by ill-aimed shells, the Army’s finest were being made to look like monkeys by a crowd of hillmen armed with swords and muskets. There were echoes of our last attempt to paint the map of Afghanistan a British red, of MacNaughton and Dr Brydon again. Then, to my amazement, three weeks ago, the Whigs won the general election: Gladstone found himself wringing his hands and ‘saving’ fallen women all the way into Downing Street. Now, with a card-carrying Liberal in charge, we all suspected we would quit Afghanistan faster than somewhat and certainly before the next tax rise, leaving the job half done and with every expectation of having to repeat the medicine once the amir or his masters in St Petersburg got uppity again.
‘What on earth’s taking them so long, Heath? We haven’t interrupted salaah, have we?’ I knew enough about Mussulman troops to understand that their ritual cleansing and prayers, when the military situation allowed, were vitally important. ‘Well, have we, Heath?’ But my brigade major didn’t seem to know – he just looked blankly back at me. ‘We need to make damn sure that when we’re in garrison all the native regiments pray at the same time. Otherwise there’ll be bloody chaos. See to it, if you please.’
I’d found out as much as I could about the general situation while I was on my way up here to take command of a thrown-together brigade. In it I had some British guns, Her Majesty’s 66th Foot and two battalions of Bombay infantry, while the 3rd Scinde Horse was in the cavalry brigade next door. By some strange twist of fate, I had one son in the 66th under my direct command while my other boy was in the Scindis, just a stone’s throw away.
Mark you, I was bloody delighted and a bit surprised to find myself promoted to brigadier general – but I was an old enough campaigner to know that a scratch command of any size would need plenty of grip by me and bags of knocking into shape on the maidan before I’d dream of allowing it to trade lead with the enemy – particularly lads like the Afghans: they’d given our boys a thorough pasting last year. And what I was seeing of the units that I was to have under my command left me less than impressed. Anyway, it was as clear as gin that if hard knocks needed to be dished out, my divisional commander, General James Primrose, would choose either his cavalry brigadier – Nuttall – or my old friend Harry Brooke, the other infantry brigade commander, to do it, wouldn’t he? After all, while they were both junior to me, they’d been up-country much longer.
Talking of being less than impressed, this little mob was stoking up all my worst fears. ‘Come on, man, turn out the guard!’ I might as well have been talking Gaelic. The havildar just stood there at the salute, all beard and turban, trembling slightly as I roasted him, while his two sentries remained either side of the gate, rifles and bayonets rigidly at the ‘present’. Of the whole guard, a sergeant and twelve – who should have been kicking up the dust quick as lightning at the approach of a brigadier general – there was no sign at all. And Heath just continued to sit on his horse beside me, gawping.
‘Well, tell him, Heath – I don’t keep a dog to bark myself, you know!’ I wondered, sometimes, at these fellows they sent out to officer the native regiments. I’d picked out Heath from one of the battalions under my command, the Bombay Grenadiers – where he’d been adjutant – because he’d had more experience than most and because he was said to be fluent. But of initiative and a sense of urgency, there was bugger-all.
‘Sir . . . yes, of course . . .’ and the man at last let out a stream of bat that finally had the havildar trotting away inside the gate to get the rest of his people. It was quite a thing to guard, though. The walls of Kandahar were packed, dried mud, thirty foot high at the north end, faced with undressed stone to at least half that height and topped with a fire step and loop holes for sentries. The Shikapur Gate was a little lower than the surrounding walls. It was made up of a solid stone arch set with two massive wooden gates, through which traipsed a never-ending procession of camels, oxen and carts, carrying all the wonders of the Orient. Now, the dozen men came tumbling out of the hut inside the walls that passed for a guardroom, squeezing past mokes and hay-laden mules while pulling at belts, straps and pouches, their light grass-country shoes stamping together as the havildar and his naik got them into one straight line looking something like soldiers.
If I’d been in the boots of the subaltern who’d just turned up, though, I’d have steered well clear. I’d dismounted and was about to inspect the jawans when up skittered a pink-faced kid, who looked so young that I doubted the ink was yet dry on his commission. He halted in the grit and threw me a real drill sergeant’s salute – as if that might deflect my irritation.
‘Sir, orderly officer, Thirtieth Bombay Native Infantry, Jacob’s Rifles, sir!’ The boy was trembling almost as much as the NCO had done – God, I remembered how bloody terrifying brigadier generals were when I was a subaltern.
‘I can see you’re the orderly officer. What’s your name, boy?’ I knew how easy it was to petrify young officers; I knew how fierce I must have seemed to this griff and he was an easy target for the day’s frustrations – I wasn’t proud of myself.
‘Sir, Ensign Moore, sir.’ The boy could hardly speak.
‘No, lad, in proper regiments you give a senior officer your first name too – you’re not a transport wallah with dirty fingernails . . .’ I knew how stupidly pompous I was being ‘. . . so spit it out.’
‘Sir, Arthur Moore. Just joined from England, sir.’
But there was something about the youngster’s sheer desire to please that pricked my bubble of frustration. If I’d been him, I would have come nowhere near an angry brigadier general – I’d have found pressing duties elsewhere and let the havildar take the full bite of the great man’s anger. But no: young Arthur Moore straight out from England had known where his duty lay and come on like a good ’un.
‘You’re rare-plucked, ain’t you, Arthur Moore?’ I found myself smiling at his damp face, all the tension draining from my shoulders, all the pent-up irritation of a day with that scrub Heath gone. ‘Let’s have a look at these men’s weapons, shall we?’
Well, the sentries may have been a bit dozy and not warned the NCOs of my approach, and the havildar’s English may have been as bad as my Hindi, but Jacob’s rifles were bloody spotless. Pouches were full, water-bottles topped up and the whole lot of them in remarkably good order. It quite set me up.
‘Right, young Moore, a slow start but a good finish. Well done.’ I tried to continue sounding gruff and impossible to please, but after all the other nonsense of the day, this sub altern and his boys had won me over.
‘Shabash, Havildar sahib . . .’ It was the best I could manage as I settled myself back into the saddle.
‘Shabash, General sahib.’ The havildar’s creased,