By the end of June the casualties among the Rifles, Guides, and Gurkhas had been terrible, and the top room of the house had been turned into a Gurkha hospital, for the wounded Nepalese refused to leave their post. Their British comrades offered to carry them to the big hospital in the cantonments below, where comparative peace and quietness reigned, and where they might have the best medical aid, but the Gurkhas would have none of it. They preferred to stay by their comrades, to listen to the shot and shell whistling around, to hear the news each day—who had distinguished himself, and whether their beloved Major Reid and his officers were still unharmed. So Reid, with tears of pride in his eyes, yielded to the wish of his children, and there they stayed.
The troops had been reinforced, but no siege-train had arrived. At their various posts in the Punjab John Lawrence, Herbert Edwardes, and John Nicholson were recruiting the wild Sikhs and still wilder Pathans into regiments of irregular cavalry and infantry. Edwardes, Nicholson, and Brigadier Cotton, in command at Peshawur, the gate of India, had so impressed the tribes under their sway with the might of England, that these fierce men, though at first ready to join the rebels, had changed their tone, and now volunteered to fight against the sahibs’ enemy.
Old men, young men, and men of middle age brought their horses and weapons before these great Englishmen, and begged to be allowed to enlist. So week by week some Punjabi,[1] Sikh, or Pathan regiments of foot or horse would march proudly to the Delhi camp, sent down by command of John Lawrence, who himself could ill afford to spare them. The first reinforcements to arrive were the 1st and 2nd Punjab Infantry and the 4th Sikhs. The 1st P.N.I, were commanded by Major Coke, and were known as “Coke’s Rifles” or as “Cokeys”, and a gallant lot they proved, as did indeed their comrade corps.
[1] The Punjabi corps would consist chiefly of Mohammedan inhabitants of the Punjab, Sikhs, and Pathans, with some Jats and Dogras.
CHAPTER XVIII
Ted’s Hopes are raised and dashed to the Ground
“Have you seen the new arrivals, Ted?” asked Jim, as he came back from a visit to cantonments one day.
“No, who are they?”
“Hodson’s Horse, the ‘Flamingoes’ as they’ve been nicknamed, from the colour of their sashes. Go down and look at them; they’re worth seeing, and so is Hodson, their commandant.”