Читать книгу: «The Sepoy», страница 4

The pride went out of Nur Baz at this snub as the air out of a pricked bladder, and he was very shamefaced until his opportunity came. This was in the same attack in which Mir Dast fell. The regiment were burning a village, and the Afridi company had to clear the ridge behind which commanded it; they and another Pathan company were attacking up parallel spurs. Nur Baz, finding that his orderly work committed him to a secondary rôle in the operations, asked if he might join his section, which was to lead the attack. He obtained his officer's consent, and was soon scrambling up the hillside in the pursuit. When the leading section extended he found the advance too slow, so he squatted behind a boulder, waited until the wave had got on a few yards, then dived down to the bottom of the nullah, climbed up again under cover, and in a few minutes appeared on the edge of the spur some 250 yards in advance of the assault. A yell of rage went up from the Pathans behind when they found that Nur Baz had forestalled them and was going to be first in at the death. But Nur Baz was happy as he leapt from one great boulder to another, the ground spitting up under him, and stopped every moment to get in a shot at the men in the sangar in front. Just as he reached it a Martini bullet struck his rifle in the small of the butt and broke off the stock. He could not fire now, but he fixed his bayonet and charged the sangar with his broken weapon. There were three men in it when he clambered over the parapet. One was dead, another who had missed him with his muzzle-loader a second or two before was reloading, and the third was slipping away. Nur Baz bayoneted the man who was reloading just as he withdrew the rod with which he was ramming the charge home; then he picked up the dead man's rifle and shot the fugitive; thus he cleared his little bit of front alone.

His subaltern had watched this very spectacular bit of bahadri from the parallel spur; but he only discovered that the central figure of it was his orderly when Mir Dast in his stretcher remarked, "Nur Baz has done well, Sahib, hasn't he?" Afterwards Nur Baz appeared "with a jaw like a bulldog, grinning all over, and the three rifles slung to his shoulder," and received the congratulations of his Sahib.

"Sahib," he said, "will you honour me by taking one of these? Choose the one you like best."

The subaltern selected the muzzle-loader, but Nur Baz demurred.

"I must first see the Colonel Sahib," he said, "if you choose that one."

"And why?"

"It is loaded, and it is not permitted to fire off a round in the camp without the Colonel Sahib's permission."

Just then the Colonel arrived, and Nur Baz, having obtained permission, raised the rifle jauntily to his shoulder and with evident satisfaction loosed the bullet which ought to have cracked his brain pan into the empty air. Nur Baz and Mir Dast, though differing much in style, both had a great deal of the original Pathan in them.

One more story of an Afridi. It was in France. There had been an unsuccessful attack on the German lines. A sergeant of the Black Watch was lying dead in no-man's land, and the Hun sniper who had accounted for him lay somewhere in his near neighbourhood; he had lain there for hours taking toll of all who exposed themselves. It was getting dark when an officer of the 57th Rifles saw a Pathan, Sher Khan, pushing his way along the trench towards the spot. The man was wasting no time; he was evidently on some errand, only he carried no rifle. The officer called after him:

"Hello, Sher Khan, where are you off to?"

"I am going to get the sniper, Sahib, who shot the sergeant."

"But why haven't you got a rifle?"

"I am not going to dirty mine, Sahib. I'll take the sergeant's."

It was still light when he crawled over the parapet and wriggled his way down a furrow to where the sergeant lay. The sniper saw him, and missed him twice. Sher Khan did not reply to this fire. He lay quite still by the side of the Highlander and gently detached one of his spats. This he arranged so that in the half light it looked like a white face peeping over the man's body. Then he withdrew twenty yards to one side and waited. Soon the Hun's head appeared from his pit a few yards off and disappeared quickly. But Sher Khan bided his time. The sniper was evidently intrigued, and as it grew darker he exposed himself a little more each time he raised his head peering at the white face over the dead Highlander's shoulder. At last he knelt upright, reassured-the thing was so motionless; nevertheless he decided that another bullet in it would do no harm. He was taking steady aim when the Pathan fired. The range was too close for a miss even in that light, and the Hun rolled over. Half an hour afterwards Sher Khan returned with the Hun's rifle and the Highlander's under his arm; in his right hand he carried the Hun's helmet, a grisly sight, as his bullet had crashed through the man's brain.

It is his individual touch, his brilliancy in initiative and coolness and daring in execution that has earned the Afridi his high reputation among Pathans. The trans-frontier Pathan with his eternal blood-feuds would naturally have the advantage in this kind of work over the Pathan from our side of the border; his whole life from his boyhood up is a preparation for it. That is why some of the most brilliant soldiers in the Indian Army have been Afridis. On the other hand, collectively and in companies, the cis-frontier Yusafzais and Khattaks have maintained a higher aggregate of the military virtues, especially in the matter of steadiness and "sticking it out."

A strange thing about the Pathan, and inconsistent with his hard-grained, practical nature, is that he is given to visions and epileptic fits. He is visited by the fairies, to use his own expressive phrase. I knew a fine old subadar who believed that these visitations came to him because he had shot a pigeon on a mosque. He became a prey to remorse, and made ineffectual pilgrimages to various shrines to exorcise the spirit. How much of this subconscious side of the Pathan is responsible for his state of mind when he runs amok would be an interesting point for the psychologist. The man broods over some injury or wrong and he is not content until he has translated his vision into fact. Sometimes he goes to work like the Malay, killing in a hot, blind fury. But there is often method in the orgy. It is an orgy of blood, one glorious hour, perhaps, or a few rapturous seconds in which vengeance is attained and satisfaction demanded of collective humanity, and the price to be paid for it, the Pathan's own life, is perfectly well understood.

Take the case of Ashgar Ali. He learnt that a disparaging report as to the work of his brother had been sent in to the O.C. of the battalion by one Fazal-ud-din, a non-commissioned Pathan officer. Fazal-ud-din slept with him in the same tent, and Ashgar Ali lay brooding and sleepless all night. Before daybreak he had devised a plan. In the darkness he removed all the rifles from the tent and hid them outside. He waited till the moon rose. Then standing by the door he shot the betrayer through the head as he slept. He shot another Pathan by his side who leapt to his feet, awakened by the report. Then he slipped away stealthily to the little round knoll which he had marked out for the catastrophe of his drama. Here he kept up a steady fire at any human shape that came within range, a stern dispenser of justice in full measure making good the errors of a too-biased Providence. It was a calculated adjustment of right and wrong, and he kept a cool head as he counted up his tally. He saw his Colonel stalking him, an iron-grey head lifted cautiously from behind a hummock at fifty yards, an easy target. But Ashgar Ali called out, "Keep away, Sahib. I have no quarrel with you. My account is with the men. Keep away, or I must shoot." Snipers were firing at him at long range; a sepoy was creeping up behind, and almost as he spoke he rolled over and lay still.

A Pathan murder, as viewed by the assassin, generally stands for judgment and execution at the same time. There must be some such system among a people who have no Government or police. When a Pathan comes over the frontier and is arraigned by our code for a crime sanctioned by his own there is trouble. It is a tragic matter when law, especially if it is the Indian Penal Code, defeats the natural dispensations of justice. A splendid young Pathan, the pick of his battalion, was tried for shooting a man in his company. The act was deliberate, and to the Pathan mind justified by the provocation. The man who was put away meanly denied an obligation of honour. The Pathan shot him like a dog before a dozen witnesses, and no doubt felt the same generous thrill of satisfaction as he would have done in passing judgment in his own land. But to the disgust of the regiment, and more especially of the British officer, who understood the Pathan code, the upholder of honour, one of the best and straightest men they had, was hanged.

The great difference between the Pathan and the Sikh is that the Pathan is for himself. He has a certain amount of tribal, but no national, pride. His assurance is personal. Family pride depends on what the family has done within the memory of a generation; for there is little or no distinction in birth. The Pathan is genuinely a democrat, the Sikh only theoretically so. In strict accordance with his code the Sikh should be democratic, but whatever he may profess, he is aristocratic in spirit. His pride is in the community and in himself as one of the community. The prestige of the Khalsa is always in his mind. The Pathan's pride is there, but is latent. It leaps out quickly enough when challenged. But when the Pathan is boastful it is in a casual manner. Normally he does not bother his head about appearances. He is more like an Englishman in taking things as they come. But the Sikh is always acquisitive of honour. One cannot imagine Sikhs turning out old kit in order to save the new issue for handing in to the quartermaster when they "cut their name." Yet the Pathan, with his eye on the main chance, is quite content to go shabby if when he retires he can get more for his equipment on valuation. On one occasion on manœuvres, when a Pathan company had carried their economy in this respect a bit too far, their company commander got even with them in the kind of way they respect. Haversacks, water-bottles, coats, bandoliers, were laid on the ground for inspection. Then he sent them off to dig the perimeter. While they were digging some distance away, he went round quietly with an Indian officer and weeded out all the unserviceable kit. Then he sent for the men to come back. "I'm going to make a bonfire of these things," he said, "and what is more, you are going to dance round it." That young officer had the right way with the Pathan, who can enjoy a joke turned against himself better than most people. They danced round the fire, hugely amused, and no one resented it.

It must not be imagined that the Pathan is of a careful or saving disposition. He is out to enjoy himself, fond of all the good things of life, open-handed, and a born gambler. The money he would have saved on his new kit would probably have been gambled away a few days after he had "cut his name." I knew a regiment where some of the young Pathans on three and a half months' leave never went near their homes, but used to enlist in the coolie corps on the Bolan Pass simply for the fun of gambling! Gambling in the regiment, of course, was forbidden. But here they could have their fling and indulge a love of hazard. Wages were high and the place became a kind of tribal Monte Carlo. If they won, they threw up the work and had a good time; if they lost, it was all in the day's work. The Pathan is very much a bird of passage in a regiment. He is a restless adventurer, and he is always thinking of "cutting his name." He likes a scrap on the frontier, but soldiering in peace-time bores him after a little while. It is all "farz kerna," an Orakzai said, "make believe," like a field-day. "You take up one position and then another, and nothing comes of it. One gets tired." Raids and rifle-thieving over the frontier are much better fun. The Pathan had the reputation of being the most successful rifle-thief we had rubbed up against in a campaign until we met the Arab in Mesopotamia. The Arab, when he goes about at night, seems to be leagued with Djinns; but in stealth, coolness, invisibility, daring, the Pathan runs him close. A sergeant of the Black Watch told me a characteristic story of how a Pathan made good a rifle he had lost in France. There had grown up a kind of entente between the Black Watch and Vaughan's Rifles, who held the line alongside of them. It could not be otherwise with two fighting regiments of like traditions who have advanced and retired together, held the same trenches and watched each other closely for months.

The Black Watch had been at Peshawar; some of them could speak Hindustani, and one or two Pushtu. Their scout-sergeant, MacDonald, lost his rifle one night. He had stumbled with it into a ditch during a patrol, and left it caked with mud outside his dug-out when he turned in in the small hours. When he emerged it was gone, gathered in by the stretcher-bearers with the rifles of the dead and wounded, for MacDonald's dug-out was beside a first-aid station, and his rifle looked as if it belonged to a man who needed first aid.

He had to make a reconnaissance. There was a rumour that the enemy had taken down the barbed wire in the trenches opposite and were going to attack. It was the scout-sergeant's business to see. Luckily there was grass in no-man's-land knee-deep. But he wanted a rifle, and he turned to his good friends the Pathans as a matter of course.

"Ho, brothers!" he called out. "Where is the Pathan who cannot lay his hands on a rifle? I am in need of a rifle."

It was, of course, a point of honour with the 58th Rifles to deliver the goods. Shabaz Khan, a young Afridi spark, glided off in the direction from which the scout-sergeant had come. MacDonald had not to wait many minutes before he returned with a rifle.

A few minutes afterwards he was slipping down the communication trench when he heard an oath and an exclamation behind him.

"By – ! There was eight rifles against the wall ten minutes ago, and now there's only seven, and nobody's been here."

It was the stretcher-bearer sergeant. MacDonald examined his rifle and found the regimental mark on the stock. He went on his way smiling. The Black Watch were brigaded with the 58th Rifles at Peshawar. "I remember," Sergeant MacDonald told me, "when the Highland Brigade Sports were held there, one of our fellows was tossing the caber-it took about six coolies to lift the thing. I thought it would impress the Pathans, but not a bit of it. I asked the old Subadar what he thought of MacAndrew's performance, and he said, 'It is not wonderful that you Jokes'-'Joke' was as near as he could get to Jock-'should do this thing. Are you not Highlanders (Paharis) like us, after all?'"

There is a marked difference in temperament among the Pathan tribes. The Mahsud is more wild and primitive than most, and more inclined to fanaticism. There are the makings of the Ghazi in him. On the other hand, his blood-feuds are more easily settled, as he is not so fastidious in questions of honour. The Afridi is more dour than the other, and more on his dignity. He has not the openness and cheerfulness of the Usafzai or Khattak, who have a great deal of the Celt in them. The Afridi likes to saunter about with a catapult or pellet bow. He will condescend to kill things, even starlings, but he does not take kindly to games. He is a good stalker and quite happy with a rifle or a horse. He excels in tent-pegging. But hockey and football do not appeal to him as much as they do to other sepoys, though he is no mean performer when he can be induced to play. This applies in a measure to all Pathans. An outsider may learn a good deal about their character by watching the way they play games. One cannot picture the Afridi, for instance, taking kindly to cricket, but a company of them used to get some amusement out of net practice in a certain frontier regiment not long ago. An officer explained the theory of the game. The bat and ball did not impress the Pathan, but the gloves and pads pleased his eye with their suggestion of defence. Directly the elements of a man-to-man duel were recognized cricket became popular. They were out to hurt one another. They did not care to bat, they said, but wished to bowl, or rather shy. The Pathan likes throwing things, so he was allowed to shy. Needless to say the batsman was the mark and not the wicket. A good, low, stinging drive to the off got one of the men on the ankle. Shouts of applause. First blood to the Sahib. But soon it is the Pathan's turn to score. His quick eye designs a stratagem in attack. By tearing about the field he has collected three balls, and delivers them in rapid succession standing at the wicket. The first, a low full-pitch, goes out of the field; the second, aimed at the Sahib's knee, is neatly put into the slips, but the batsman has no time to guard the third, hurled with great violence at the same spot, and it is only the top of his pad that saves him from the casualty list.

The Pathan is more careless and happy-go-lucky than the Punjabi Mussalman, and not so amenable to discipline. It is his jaunty, careless, sporting attitude, his readiness to take on any new thing, that attracts the British soldier. That rifle-thief of the 58th was dear to Sergeant MacDonald. But it is difficult to generalize about the Pathan as a class. There is a sensible gulf fixed between the Khattak and the Afridi, and between the Afridi and the Mahsud. I think, if it were put to the vote among British officers in the Indian Army, the Khattak would be elected the pick of the crowd. A special chapter is devoted to him in this volume, and as his peculiar virtues are discoverable in some degree among other classes of Pathans, the Khattak chapter may be regarded as a continuation of the present one. There used to be an idea that the cis-frontier Pathan, by reason of his settled life and the security of the policeman and the magistrate round the corner, was not a match for the trans-frontier Pathan who adjusted his own differences at the end of a rifle. But the war has proved these generalizations unsafe. The Pathan is a hard man to beat whichever side of the border he hails from; but in a war like this he is all the better for being born a subject of the King.

THE DOGRA

Chance threw me among the Dogras after a battle, and I learnt more of these north-country Rajputs than I had ever done in times of peace. Everybody knows how they left Rajputana before the Muhammadans conquered the country and so never bowed to the yoke, how they fought their way north, cut out their own little kingdoms, and have held the land they gained centuries ago by the sword. I have travelled in the foothills where they live, both in Kangra and Jammu, and can appreciate what they owe to a proud origin and a poor soil. But one cannot hope to learn much of a people in a casual trek through their country. The Dogra is shy and does not unbosom himself to the stranger. Even with his British officer he is reserved, and one has to be a year or more with him in the regiment before he will talk freely of himself. But the confidence of the British officer in the Dogra is complete, and his affection for him equals that of the Gurkha officer for "the Gurkha." "He is such a Sahib," the subaltern explained. "You won't find another class of sepoy in the Indian army who is quite such a Sahib as the Dogra."

And here I must explain that I am only setting down what the subaltern told me, that I tapped him on the subject he loved best, and that I am making no invidious comparisons of my own. One seldom meets a good regimental officer who does not modify one's relative estimate of the different fighting stocks of the Indian Army. Still one can discriminate. What the subaltern told me about the gallantry of the Dogras I saw afterwards repeated in "Orders" by the General of the Division. There were other regiments which received the same praise, and if I had fallen among these I should have heard the same tale.

"The first thing we knew of that trench," the subaltern explained, "was when the Turkey-cock blazed off into us at three hundred yards. Thank heaven, our fellows were advance guard."

I smiled at the boy's delightful conceit in his own men. His company were sitting or lying down on the banks of a water-cut in the restful attitudes men fall into after strain. They were most of them young men, clean-shaven with neat moustaches, lightly built but compact and supple, of regular features, cast very much in a type. Some were smoking their chillums, the detached bowl of a huqah, which they hold in their two palms and draw in the smoke between the fingers through the aperture at the base. The Dogra is an inveterate smoker and will have his chillum out for a final puff two minutes before going into the attack. I was struck by their scrupulous neatness. The morning had been the third day of a battle. The enemy had decamped at dawn, but in the two previous days half the regiment had fallen. Yet they seemed to have put in a toilet somehow. Their turbans, low in the crown with the shell-like twist in front peculiar to the Dogra, were as spick and span as on parade. They looked a cool crowd, and it was of their coolness under the most terrible fire that the subaltern spoke. One of them was readjusting his pagri by a mirror improvised out of a tin he had picked up in the mud, and was tying it in neat folds.

"The Dogra is a bit fussy about his personal appearance," the subaltern explained. "He is a blood in his way. I have seen our fellows giving their turbans the correct twist when they are up to the neck in it during an advance.

"It was the devil of a position. The Turkey-cock lay doggo and held his fire. We didn't see a sign of him until he popped off at us at three hundred yards. Their trenches had no parapets and were almost flush with the ground. In places they had built in ammunition boxes which they had loopholed and plastered over with mud. They had dotted the ground in front with little mounds which they used as range-marks, and they had every small depression which offered any shelter covered with their machine-guns."

And he told me how the Dogras pressed on to the attack over this ground with a shout-not the "Ram Chandra ji ki jai" of route marches and manœuvres, but with a "Ha, aha, aha, aha, aha," a sound terrifying in volume, and probably the most breath-saving war cry there is.

A great many of the regiment were new to the game, mere boys of seventeen, and the old hands had piqued their vanity, reminding them that they had never been in battle and expressing a pious hope that they would stand their ground. The subaltern had to pull some of these striplings down who exposed themselves too recklessly. He pointed out to me one Teku Singh, "a top-hole fellow." In the trench a machine-gun jammed, Teku Singh clambered out to adjust it. The subaltern called to him to keep his head down. "What does dying matter, Sahib?" he answered, echoing at Sheikh Saad the spirit of Chitore. "The only fit place for a Rajput to die is on the field of battle." Teku Singh was modestly smoking his chillum on the bund.

The Dogra's is an unobtrusive gallantry. He is no thruster. He has not the Pathan's devil-may-care air, nor the Sikh's pleasing swagger. When a group of Indian officers are being introduced to an inspecting general or the ruler of a province, you will find it is the Dogra who hangs in the background. Yet he is intensely proud, conservative, aristocratic. The subaltern's description of Teku Singh at home reminded me of the hero of the "Bride of Lammermuir," that classic and lovable example of the impoverished aristocrat, whose material poverty is balanced by more honourable possessions. I have seen the land the Dogra cultivates. It is mostly retrieved from a stony wilderness. His cornfields are often mere sockets in the rock over which a thin layer of earth has gathered. His family traditions forbid him to work on the soil and compel him to keep a servant, though he has been known to plough secretly by night. Under-fed at home, he will not accept service save in the army. There are families who do nothing but soldiering. There is no difficulty about recruits. "When a man goes home on leave," the subaltern explained, "he brings back his pals. There is always a huge list of umedwars (candidates) to choose from. It is like waiting to get into the Travellers or the Senior Naval and Military."

Most of the men in the regiment were Katoch Dogras from the Kangra district, the most fastidious of all. They won't plough, and won't eat unless their food is cooked by a Katoch or a Brahmin. There are families who will only join the cavalry. The plough they disdain, as they boast that the only true weapon of a Rajput is the sword; when driven by hunger and poverty to cultivate their land themselves, they do it secretly, taking out their oxen by night and returning before daylight. The head of the house has his talwar, or curved Indian sword with a two-and-a-half-foot blade. It is passed down as an heirloom from father to son, and is carried on campaigns by the Dogra officer. I have seen them in camp here, though they are not worn in the trenches. The Dogra has a splendid heart, but his physique is often weakened by poverty. It is extraordinary how they fill out when they come into the regiment. It is the same, of course, with other sepoys, but there is more difference between the Dogra recruit and the seasoned man than in any other stock. The habit of thrift is so ingrained in them that it is difficult to prevent them stinting themselves in the regiment. The subaltern had a story of a recruit who left his rations behind on manœuvres. It was the General himself who discovered the delinquent. Asked for an explanation the lad thought awhile and then answered bashfully, "Sahib, when I am fighting I do not require food."

Every Dogra is shy and reserved and very sensitive about his private affairs. When his name is entered in the regimental sheet roll, the young recruit is asked who is his next of kin.

"Wife," he will say bashfully.

"What age?"

He is not quite certain, thinks she is about twelve.

"How high is she?"

"About so high." He stretches his hand four feet from the ground.

He is dreadfully bashful as he makes this gesture, afraid the other recruits should hear, just like a boy in the fourth form asked to describe his sister's complexion or hair.

Needless to say, the Dogra seldom, if ever, brings his wife into cantonments. Exile must be harder to him than to many as he is the most home-loving person. His only crime is that when he goes to his village he sometimes runs things too close, so that an accident by the way, a broken wheel or swollen stream, makes him overstay his leave.

"I wish I could show you Moti Chand," the subaltern continued. "He was a mere boy not turned seventeen. This show was the first time he had been under fire; he was one of the ammunition-carriers and had to go from the front trenches to the first-line transport and bring back his box. He made two journeys walking slowly and deliberately as they all do, very erect, balancing the ammunition-box on his head. When he came up the second time I told him to hurry up and get down into the trenches. 'No, Sahib,' he said, 'Ram Chand, who was coming up beside me, was killed. I must go back and bring in his box.' He brought in the box all right, but was shot in the jaw. I think he is doing well.

"I can tell you, you would like the Dogra if you knew him. He is difficult to know and his reserve might make you think him sulky at first, but there is nothing sulky or brooding about him. He never bears a grudge; he is rather a cheery fellow and has his own sense of humour. As a shikari-"

The subaltern sang the praises of Teku Singh and Moti-Chand in a way which was very pleasant to hear. He told me how their families received him in Kangra, every household insisting that he should drink tea, and he ended up by repeating that the true Dogra was the most perfect sahib he knew.

It was no new experience for me to hear the Dogra praised. Their fighting qualities are well known, and they have proved themselves in many a frontier campaign, more especially in the capture of Nilt (1891), and in the defence of Chitral and in the memorable march to the relief of the garrison. And one had heard of the Dogra officer, Jemadar Kapur Singh, in France, who held on until all but one wounded man had been put out of action, and then rather than surrender shot himself with his last cartridge. Besides the three Dogra class regiments, the 37th, 38th, and 41st, there are many Dogra companies in mixed-company battalions, and Dogra squadrons in cavalry regiments. They may not make up a large part of the Indian Army, but they contribute a much larger part in proportion to their numbers than any other stock.

When next I met the subaltern the regiment had been in action again and he had been slightly wounded. He took me into his tent and showed me with pride what the General had written about his Dogras. One of them, Lance-Naik Lala, had been recommended for the Victoria Cross; he was the second sepoy in Mesopotamia on whom the honour was conferred.

"You'll see I haven't been talking through my hat," he explained. "Lala was at it all day and most of the night, and earned his V.C. a dozen times. It seemed certain death to go out to – ; the enemy were only a hundred yards off."

"Lance-Naik Lala insisted on going out to his Adjutant," the recommendation ran, "and offered to crawl back with him on his back at once. When this was not permitted, he stripped off his own clothing to keep the wounded officer warmer, and stayed with him till just before dark when he returned to the shelter. After dark he carried the first wounded officer back to the main trenches, and then, returning with a stretcher, carried back his Adjutant."