Death on a Pale Horse - By Donald Thomas Page 0,30

afterwards.

My memory of what followed is intermittent, thanks to the administration of morphine to dull the grating of fractured bone. Without the use of it, the jolting progress of forty miles to Kandahar would have been too excruciating to bear. A bugle call sounded. I recognised it as a command for the baggage train to withdraw from the field of battle while the infantry remained to cover a general retreat. In my growing confusion, I felt two bearers pick up my stretcher and begin to run with it. They were shouting that the “ghazis” were upon us. Less fortunate invalids lay about on the ground, abandoned to the hands of our murderous enemy.

Armies in retreat are seldom disciplined or resolute. In the emergency of this evacuation, supplies and equipment were abandoned everywhere. The baggage animals were being unloaded and pressed into service to carry the injured. The ground was littered with their abandoned stores, unopened boxes of ammunition, mess supplies, cases of wine, kitchen utensils, and linen sheets. I saw wounded soldiers in rags and bandages sitting astride donkeys, mules, ponies, and in one case a camel. Ammunition wagons had become makeshift ambulances. A party of officers’ servants was drunk from stolen liquor. Yet there was valour among all this. On the escarpments, the Grenadiers and the riflemen covered our retreat, sometimes forming squares and fighting to the end with their bayonets. They paid with their lives for a shilling a day.

In the camp, it seemed to be every man for himself. I should have been left to my fate had it not been for Murray, my orderly. A pack horse had just been unloaded for use as a mount. This dear brave fellow heaved me across it. Then, with my revolver in his hand to deter looters or marauders, he led me through the confusion and joined the long, miserable column of refugees to Kandahar.

I shall not soon forget the vicissitudes of that night. Stories of prisoners in the bloody hands of Ayub Khan sufficed to keep us moving. My friend Lieutenant Maclaine of the Royal Horse Artillery was less fortunate. His remains were found close to the site of Ayub’s tent, where he had been butchered as the so-called Amir looked on.

We covered the remaining miles and arrived at Kandahar in safety during the evening of the next day. Fortunately, Ayub’s men had been dazzled and delayed by the abandoned treasures of our camp. Had our enemies put their minds to it, all of us in the retreat would have been dead.

For more than a month, the white walls of Kandahar were surrounded by Ayub’s men and it was impossible to evacuate the wounded to the Indian frontier. There was a curious lack of morale among our leaders, who acted as if our present position was lost. We might indeed have been overrun, but for Lord Roberts, winner of the Victoria Cross at Lucknow. Major-General Roberts, as he still was, formed up a column of ten thousand men, plus artillery. This column marched 313 miles in three weeks, over hostile terrain, to save us. Lord Roberts routed Ayub Khan in short order, secured the high passes, and opened the route to India.

So I took my place in an ambulance convoy which made its way south through the pass and at last to Peshawar. I really believed I was doing well at the base hospital, walking about the wards and reclining on the invalids’ veranda. I should be back with my regiment before the year was out. Yet my weakness from a bullet wound put a stop to all that.

I fell prey to enteric fever, which accounts for more British lives than all the jezail bullets. It came closer to killing me than the Afghans had ever done. No one who has endured this illness and survived will need to be reminded of the ordeal. My temperature rose to 107 and I was delirious. At that point, most of the fever victims die. The lucky patient’s temperature, on the other hand, drops a degree or so, and then a slow recovery begins. My temperature remained stubbornly where it was for several days, and I lived a half-life of sleeping and waking.

I have indistinct memories of being scalded in hot baths, my limbs being rubbed as the water cooled. I was taken out only to be lowered into another bath of heat that scorched the skin. Then the process was repeated. Peritonitis was spoken of, though not in my hearing,