"Act not so that the history of your family may be stained with the ink of disgrace and the blood of your Muhammadan brethren be shed for the attainment of the objects of unbelievers. We write this to you in compliance with the orders of God Almighty, the kind and also stern Avenger."
A hundred texts might be quoted, and have been quoted, from the Koran to show that it is obligatory for the Moslem soldier to fight against his King's enemies, whether they be of his own faith or no. But how many, after taking thought and counsel of expediency, are quite sure that black is not white after all! The deserter may not escape to the Hun lines and the pretended converts of Islam, whom instinct, stirring beneath the Jehadist's logic, must teach him to despise. And he is for the wall if he is caught, shamefully led out and bandaged and shot in the eyes of his brethren who have been true to their oath. None of us would hesitate to slip the trigger against a traitor of his kidney. The man's very memory is abhorred. Yet in dealing out summary execution one should remember the strong bias that deflected his mind. Out of the mud and poisoned gas of Flanders. Out of Mesopotamia. Out of the blood and fruitless sacrifice, the doom of celibacy, the monotony which is only broken by the variety it offers of different shapes of disease and death. Back to his tower and maize field if his kin have held them, and his wife if she has waited for him, and all in the name of honour and religion.
It may seem a mistake in writing of a brave people to take note of backsliders; but the instances in which the Pathan has been seduced from loyalty have been so discussed that it is better for the collective honour of the race to examine the psychological side of it frankly. It would be a great injustice to the Pathan if it were thought that any failed us through fear.
In courage and coolness the Pathan is the unquestioned equal of any man. Mir Dast, of Coke's Rifles F.F., attached to Wilde's Rifles F.F. in France, the first Indian officer to win the V.C., was a type of the best class of Afridi. No one who knew him was surprised to hear how, at the second battle of Ypres, after all his officers had fallen, he selected and consolidated a line with his small handful of men; how, though wounded and gassed himself, he held the ground he had hastily scratched up, walking fearlessly up and down encouraging his men; how, satisfied at last that the line was secure, he continued to carry in one disabled man after another, British and Indian, back to safety under heavy fire. Mir Dast had told the Colonel of the 55th, when he left the battalion in Bannu to join the regiment he was attached to in France, that he would not come back without the Victoria Cross. "Now that Indians may compete for this greatest of all bahadris," he said, "I shall return with it or remain on the field." And he did not say this in a boastful manner, but quietly as a matter of course, as though there were no other alternative; just as a boxer might tell you by way of assurance, repeating an understood thing, that he was going to fight on until the other man was knocked out. I met Mir Dast afterwards in hospital, and was struck with the extraordinary dignity and quiet reserve of the man; an impression of gallantry was conveyed in his brow and eyes, like a stamp on metal.
It was in the Mohmand campaign that Mir Dast won the I.O.M., in those days the nearest Indian equivalent to the V.C. An officer friend of mine and his who spoke to him in his stretcher after the fight, told me that he found Mir Dast beaming. "I am very pleased, Sahib," he said. "I've had a good fight, and I've killed the man that wounded me." And he held up his bayonet and pointed to a foot-long stain of blood. He had been shot through the thigh at three yards, but had lunged forward and got his man. On the same day another Afridi did a very Pathan-like thing. I will tell the story here, as it is typical of the impetuous, reckless daring of the breed, that sudden lust for honour which sweeps the Pathan off his feet, and carries him sometimes to the achievement of the impossible--an impulse, brilliant while it lasts, but not so admirable as the more enduring flame that is always trimmed and burns steadily without flaring.
Nur Baz was a younger man than Mir Dast, and one of the same Afridi company. It entered his head, just as it entered the head of Mir Dast when he left Bannu for France, that he must achieve something really remarkable. The young man was of the volatile, boastful sort, very different from the hero of Ypres, and to his quick imagination the conception of his bahadri was the same thing as the accomplishment of it, or the difference, if there were any, was only one of tense. So he began to talk about what he was going to do until he wearied the young officer to whom he was orderly. "Bring me your bahadri first, Nur Baz," the subaltern said a little impatiently, "then I shall congratulate you, but don't bukh so much about it."
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.