I had watched them in the distance, black specks on the sand, but it was not until I went over the field with them the next day, and they fought the battle again, that I realised what they had done. As the Garhwalis charged over the open from Sheikh Faraja Ridge, the three guns in front of them, firing point-blank over their sights, poured in shrapnel, raking the ground, churning up the sand in a deadly spray. Halfway across there was a deep dry nullah, with steep banks and a few scattered palms on the other side. It was an ideal place to hold, but the enemy were slipping away. In a moment the Garhwalis were in the nullah, clambered up the opposite bank, and had their Lewis-gun trained on the gun teams at 400 yards. The Turkish gunners died game, and in the Garhwalis' last burst over the flat not a man fell. They rushed the palm-clump to the right of the guns and the guns, which were undefended with their dead all round. The three pieces were intact. The Turks had no time to damage them. The horses were all saddled up in the palms, with the ammunition limbers, officers' charges, mules and camels. Very quickly the Garhwalis dug a pothook trench round the guns and palm-clump, watched eagerly for the supports, and waited for the counter-attack which surely must come. The three assaulting companies were a bare hundred strong now, and behind the mud walls five hundred yards in front of them, though they did not know it, lay the Turkish General and 2000 of his men. But the silencing of the guns was the beginning of the collapse. The Turks knew the game was up. The iron ring we were drawing round them, their unsuccessful sortie against the cavalry in the night, had taken the heart out of them. No doubt they thought the Garhwalis the advance-guard of a mighty host.
White flags appeared on the mud wall in front. A small group of Turks came out unarmed. Eight men were sent to bring them in. Then a "crocodile" emerged from the nullah. "I've seen some crocodiles," a very junior subaltern said to me, "but I have never seen one which bucked me like that." The monster grew and swelled until it assumed enormous proportions. One could not see whence each new fold of the beast proceeded. It was like dragon seed conjured up out of invisibility in the desert by a djinn. But it was a very tame dragon and glad of its captivity. And there was really something of a miracle in it,--the kind of miracle that happens in a legend or at the end of a fairy tale, where the moral is pointed of the extraordinary rewards that befall all the young who are single-minded and unafraid. Half an hour after the crocodile had collected its folds Ahmed Bey, the Turkish General, was discovered in a neighbouring house, and surrendered to a young British officer of the company.
When they saw the Turkish General coming in, all the jiwans (young men) must have thought of the "charge-ki-din," the day of honour of which they had inherited the tradition but not the memory, and wished they had been there too.
THE KHATTAK
The Khattaks kept their spirits up all through the hot weather. They were too lively sometimes. There was one man who imitated a three-stringed guitar a few yards from my tent as an accompaniment to his friend's high treble. One night after a good feed, when the shamal began blowing, they broke out into one of their wild dances, after the Dervish fashion, swinging swords and leaping round the bonfire. You would think the Khattak would be up to any murder after this kind of show, but I am told the frenzy works the offending Adam out of him.
I was watching a fatigue party working at a bund on a particularly sultry afternoon. They were all a bit "tucked up," but as soon as the dhol (drum) and serinai (oboe) sounded, they started cat-calling and made the earth fly. The Khattak is as responsive to the serinai as the Highlander to the regimental slogan, but he is more demonstrative. It is a good thing to be by, when the ---- Rifles leave camp. At the first sound of the dhol and serinai the Khattak company breaks into a wild treble shriek, tailing off perhaps with the bal-bala, the Pathan imitation of the gurgling of the camel. The Sikh comes in with his "Wah Guru-ji-Ki-Khalsa, Wah Guru-ji-Ki-jai!" and the Punjabi Mussalman with his "Allah, Allah, Allah, Allah"; or he may borrow the Khattak's bal-bala, or the British "Hip, hip, hooray!"
The Khattak is impulsive, mercurial, easily excited, seldom dispirited, and if so, only for a short time. His élan is sometimes a positive danger during an attack. At Sheikh Saad, on the right bank on January 7th, it was difficult to hold the Khattak company back while the regiment on their left was coming up; they were all for going on ahead and breaking the line; and in the end it was a premature sortie of the Khattaks that precipitated the assault.
Shere Ali was among these. He and his father, Shahbaz Khan of the Bhangi Khel, were typical Khattaks. From these two one may gather a fair estimate of the breed. Shahbaz Khan, the father, I did not meet. Shere Ali I saw wounded on a barge at Sheikh Saad. He was introduced to me by his machine-gun officer, who was wounded at the same time.
Father and son both served in the Khattak double company of the ---- Rifles. Shahbaz Khan, retired subadar, died after eighteen months of the Great War without hearing a shot fired. It was very galling to the old man to be out of it, for his idea of bliss was a kind of glorified Armageddon. He had fought in Tochi and Waziristan, but these frontier scraps were unsatisfying. "It was only playing at war," he said. He longed for a padshah-ki-lerai, "a war of kingdoms," in the old Mahabharat style. "Sahib," he said, "I should like to be up to my knees in gore with thousands of dead all round me." But the old man was born fifteen years too soon. He would have been happy in the night attack upon Beit Aieesa, or even perhaps with Shere Ali on the right bank at Sheikh Saad, when the regiment rushed the Turkish trenches.