In the meantime the other columns that had hoped to join with that of General Baker heard with alarm the mutter of distant artillery, General Macpherson, who was in command, realising that this probably spelt disaster, pushed on with all speed and managed to come to where the Highlanders were fighting at Dehmazung. The British force was thus snatched from a catastrophe that would have raised every Afghan in the country.
After this unsatisfactory engagement Roberts decided that he would take up position in Sherpur, evacuating Kabul since the people there were not to be depended on, and it would be a difficult place to hold. The numbers of the enemy had increased so largely that although many points of vantage had been taken it was decided that concentration within the limits of Sherpur was inevitable. Though Roberts had ample funds of ammunition he could not reassure the Government that for the present any decisive advance could be made. Trenches were hastily thrown up and wire entanglements implanted, and shortly afterwards the attack upon Sherpur commenced. Before dawn the noise, “as if hosts of devils had been let loose,” came rolling out of the night, and through the darkness could be dimly seen dense masses of the Afghans rushing upon the British entrenchments, shouting again and again their frenzied battle-cry of “Allah-il-Allah!”
The Gordon Highlanders were one of the first regiments to open fire upon the immense force that threatened them. For three hours, despite the terrible slaughter amongst their ranks, the Afghans rushed again and again to the attack. At last it was evident that a counter-move would be necessary to break the enemy’s determination to take Sherpur at all costs. Moving out the cavalry with four guns, Roberts began to shell the outlying villages. Distracted by this manœuvre, the Afghans’ assault exhausted itself, and the moment for a counter-attack arrived. Suddenly the cavalry swept down on their crowded masses, and in a moment the enemy were in confused retreat. The end was come. Once in disorder they scattered far and wide, pursued by every available man and horse. By evening all the neighbouring country was perfectly silent, just as though no battle had ever raged. The Afghans had vanished like smoke.
Kabul had been wrecked and plundered by the enemy, but the next day Roberts re-entered the city, made General Hills Governor, and, as he himself said, “the present outlook was fairly satisfactory.” But although the natives in the immediate vicinity of the capital were crushed, the tribes at Kandahar were in revolt. General Burrows was forced to retreat to Kushk-i-Nakud, while against him were marching 12,000 men. The result of this engagement was the loss of the guns at Maiwand. It was essential that this disaster should be wiped out, and shortly afterwards Roberts, accompanied by the Seaforths and the Gordon Highlanders, set out on the famous march to Kandahar. The news from Kandahar could not have been worse. The Afghans had completely defeated General Burrows’s brigade, and were now besieging the English force under General Primrose in Kandahar. It was imperative that Roberts should relieve Primrose at once, and on the 8th the memorable march commenced. The English force numbered some 10,000 men, selected from regiments of stamina and proved courage.
Only a military genius could have undertaken a march without communication lines, without heavy baggage, and with a hostile army at the end of it. The prospect was not favourable. They were faced by three hundred miles of the enemy’s country, the inhabitants of which would be only too ready to fall upon them should an opportunity present itself, and disaster would almost surely turn to annihilation. It would take too long to deal with that eventful march, and there was little of actual conflict throughout. On the 26th of August there was a sharp engagement, the Afghans being thrown back; on the 31st the British came in sight of Kandahar, where the Afghan leader was strongly posted. They had arrived just in time. To the beleaguered garrison they were like an army dropped from heaven.
On September 1 the action began, and the Seaforths and Gordons were sent forward to expel the enemy from the village in which they were entrenched. A fierce hand-to-hand engagement ensued, and facing the thousands of the enemy Major White shouted to the 92nd: “Highlanders, will you follow me?” “Joyfully and with alacrity the Highlanders responded to the call of their favourite leader, and without pausing to recover breath, drove the enemy from their entrenchments at the point of the bayonet.” This was the heaviest piece of hard fighting, and shortly after the enemy wavered and finally broke, being quickly dispersed by the cavalry. An undisciplined army can seldom retire in good order; once broken it is instantly confused, and in a few minutes the Afghan troops were streaming away towards the hills. Roberts, worn out by fever and the anxieties and fatigues of the last few weeks, did not spare himself during that critical day, and when it was over he thanked each regiment personally for their services. Right well had the Highlanders supported him. He had left India for a country seething with revolution, and had carried the Peiwar Kotal. There had followed the murder of Cavagnari, the quick descent upon Kabul, those anxious days when the British forces were besieged outside the city, victory only to be followed by the memorable march to Kandahar, and, last of all, after the frightful fatigues and endurance, this decisive action.
Roberts, in addressing the troops, reminded them of the glory they had won. “You beat them at Kabul,” he said, “and you have beaten them at Kandahar, and now as you are about to leave the country you may be assured that the very last troops the Afghans ever want to meet in the field are Scottish Highlanders and Goorkhas.”
The Seaforths at Candahar
“Never,” he wrote afterwards, “had commander been better served, and I shall never forget the feeling of sadness with which I said good-bye to my men who had done so much for me. I looked upon them all, native as well as British, as my valued friends. Riding through the Bolan Pass, I overtook men of the regiments of the Kabul-Kandahar Field Force, marching towards Sibi, thence to disperse to their respective destinations. As I parted with each corps in turn, its band played ‘Auld Lang Syne,’ and I have never since heard the memory-stirring air without its bringing before my eye the last view I had of the Kabul-Kandahar Field Force. I fancy myself crossing, and recrossing, the river which winds through the Pass, I hear the martial beat of the drums, and the plaintive music of the pipes; and I see Riflemen and Goorkhas, Highlanders and Sikhs, guns and horses, camels and mules, with all the endless following of an Indian army, winding through the narrow gorges or over the interminable boulders.”