The casualties suffered by our troops in the various expeditions for which the battle honour "Punjab Frontier" was awarded to native regiments are tabulated on [p. 402]. It must be remembered that this distinction has not been conferred on the British regiments engaged.
Malakand, 1897.
This battle honour has been awarded to the undermentioned regiments of the Indian army by the Viceroy in Council, in recognition of the gallant services rendered in the defence of the Malakand Pass on the North-West Frontier of India at the outset of the great rising of the tribes in 1897:
11th K.E.O. Lancers (Probyn's Horse).
Q.O. Corps of Guides.
24th Punjabis.
31st Punjabis.
35th Sikhs.
38th Dogras.
The Chitral campaign of 1895 had taught us the necessity, not merely of constructing good gun-roads from our Punjab frontier stations to the remoter garrisons in the Upper Himalayas, but also of keeping garrisons on those roads in order to overawe the frontier tribes. The Malakand Pass lies some thirty miles beyond Hoti Mardan, the cantonment which for more than half a century has been the home of the Guides, the most famous of all our frontier regiments. The pass was held in strength. Its commander, Brigadier-General W. Meiklejohn, was a soldier who had a considerable experience of Frontier Wars, and who had received his early training under one of the most accomplished masters of the art of mountain warfare that the Indian army has ever produced—Field-Marshal Sir Charles Brownlow. Meiklejohn had with him some of the pick of the Indian army—a squadron of the 11th (Probyn's) Horse, the 24th and 31st Regiments of Punjab Infantry, and the 45th Sikhs. Within thirty-two miles were the Guides, and twenty-six miles farther south, at Nowshera, lay a brigade which comprised a battalion of British troops.
There had been ominous murmurings in the mountains to the north of Peshawar. As I have shown on [p. 397], a fanatical Moslem priest had been preaching a religious war, and this spirit of fanaticism had been fanned into a flame by exaggerated accounts of the success of the Turks over the Greeks in Thessaly. Although nominally at peace with his neighbours, Meiklejohn was not a man to take any risks. On more than one occasion frontier camps had been rushed by fanatics, and when on the evening of July 26, 1897, the Swatis of Malakand endeavoured to rush the camp on the Malakand Pass, they were met by men who had studied hill warfare in the best of all schools—that of the Punjab frontier. When dawn broke the little garrison had lost 50 killed and wounded, but this they knew was but the commencement of their troubles. A telegram had been got through to Hoti Mardan before sundown. It reached that place at half-past eight in the evening. It must be here remembered that this was the month of July, the leave season, and that the cry of "Wolf, wolf!" has so often been heard on the Punjab frontier that its repetition is never considered sufficient to stop leave. At that moment the temporary command of the Guides was in the hands of a Lieutenant, Lockhart. As I have said, he received the message at 8.30 p.m.; five hours later—at 1.30 a.m.—the Guides were on the march for Malakand; at half-past six the following evening they swung up the Pass, having covered thirty-two miles in the hottest season of the year in just seventeen hours, thus rivalling the marvellous march they made in the Mutiny from Mardan to Delhi. It is related by an officer who was present that so little affected were the Guides by this trying march that company after company, as it swung by the main guard of the Malakand Force, came to the shoulder with all the accuracy of a battalion of the Guards.
That night the garrison had to meet a second attack, in which the Guides fought with all their accustomed élan. The same day the Brigadier at Nowshera, in response to the messages from Malakand, despatched the headquarters and two squadrons of the 11th (Probyn's) Horse, two mountain batteries, and two battalions (the 35th Sikhs and 38th Dogras), to the relief of Malakand. Some idea of the severity of the weather may be gathered from the fact that the 35th Sikhs lost 21 men from heat apoplexy in that march from Nowshera to the foot of the Pass.
With the arrival of these reinforcements all danger had passed, but the attitude of the tribes made it abundantly clear that we were face to face with the greatest frontier upheaval since Sir Walter Gilbert had driven the Afghans through the Khyber Pass in the spring of 1849.
The first step was to chastise the tribes in the immediate vicinity of Malakand, and orders were at once issued for the mobilization of the following force, under the command of a distinguished officer of the Royal Engineers, Major-General Sir Bindon Blood, K.C.B., who had acted as Chief of the Staff to Sir Robert Low in the Chitral Expedition in 1895. This force was brigaded as follows:
First Brigade—Brigadier-General W. Meiklejohn, C.B., C.M.G.: 1st Battalion Royal West Kent, 24th Punjabis, 31st Punjabis, and 45th Sikhs.