The Story of the Guides

by G. J. Younghusband

Though this was no cavalry country, as may readily be judged, several troops of the Guides' cavalry, together with the 11th Bengal Cavalry, did useful service on more than one occasion, under the gallant leadership of Colonel Dighton Probyn,[1] one of the brilliant band of cavalry soldiers who had earned undying fame in the great Mutiny. It is perhaps the memory of those old days of dangers and troubles passed through together, that keeps alive the kindly feeling which leads Sir Dighton Probyn to write a few words of brave encouragement when his old comrades of the Guides take their share of such fighting as still, from time to time, falls to their lot. On their side the Guides look on him, along with Lumsden and Jenkins and other old heroes, as one of their own sahibs.

[1] Later the Right Honourable Sir Dighton Probyn, V.C., G.C.B. G.C.S.I., G.C.V.O., P.C., etc. etc., Keeper of the Privy Purse.

The element of secrecy is absolutely essential to a successful surprise. This is a military truism all the world over, but applies with special force amongst the Pathan tribes on the North-West Frontier of India, as indeed it did amongst the Boers, and for probably a very similar reason. They were not always professional spies whom the Boers employed; nor is it always a Pathan spy who is on the spot. But both peoples without having any highly organised system have been exceedingly fortunate in the manner in which information of impending movements has somehow got reported in the nick of time in the most interesting quarter.

Due south from Mardan, and distant, as the crow flies, some thirty-five to forty miles, lies the village of Paia, which for high crimes and misdemeanours, including murder, rapine, and arson, it was considered necessary to punish. Now punishment in the days of Cavignari not unusually meant waking up some fine morning to find that before breakfast it was either necessary to meet the Guides in a pitched battle, or to submit quietly to the demands of Government, and expiate the crimes committed. The difficulty, from our point of view, was to place the troops in the desired position, at the desired moment, without previously informing the enemy of the proposal. Failing this, either an ambush would be prepared into which the troops might fall, thus reversing the tables; or the whole village, men, women, and children, flocks and herds, and all the chickens that could be caught on short notice, would migrate bodily for a few days, till the storm was overpast. Then they would quietly return and cheerfully resume the uneven tenor of their ways.

Now Paia was inhabited by Jowaki Afridis, and he that findeth an Afridi asleep, when he ought to be awake, is either a very astute or a very fortunate person. Cavignari was a very astute person and a match for the most wakeful Afridi. For instance, the British troops that lay nearest to Paia were those in garrison at Nowshera, and these, therefore, were the most obvious ones to use. Being the most obvious, it was at once decided that they were not the troops to use. Therefore Cavignari refrained from touching the Nowshera garrison, and called on the Guides, who were sixteen miles further away, and watching quite another frontier, to undertake the business.

But here again a difficulty arose; the Guides on their way would have to pass through Nowshera, and as that place was doubtless full of spies, no better result could be hoped for than by using a Nowshera regiment direct. And there was yet another difficulty: it was the middle of the hot weather and a great many of the British officers of the Guides, including the Commanding Officer, were away on leave; to recall them was to make the ears prick up of every person, with a guilty conscience, within a fifty mile radius.

But after all, military difficulties are possibly only introduced by a beneficent Providence lest warlike operations should become too easy; at any rate these were in due course overcome, though it required considerable ingenuity to do so. In the first place the Guides were marched off, without a notion what they were required for, or whither they were going. All they knew was that they were plodding along the Nowshera road on a very hot evening in August. When well on their way, like a man-of-war at sea they opened their sealed orders, and learnt that in the vicinity of Nowshera they would find a fleet of boats on the Kabul River. Embarking on these they were to drop down that river, now in flood, to its confluence with the Indus at Attock. Here the flotilla was to be concealed while one or two intelligent men were sent ashore to a place of tryst, whither Major R.B. Campbell, the Commanding Officer, and the other officers on leave, had been ordered to arrive by a certain hour. Then, complete in officers, the flotilla was to slip anchor again and drop down the roaring flood of the Indus for another twenty-eight miles to Shadipore, the local Gretna Green, to judge from its name. It speaks highly for the skill with which the operation was planned, and the exactitude with which it was executed, to record that it was carried out without a hitch. The Guides by a seventy-eight mile circuit now found themselves south-east, instead of north, of the objective, and the enemy were consequently taken from a totally unexpected quarter.

Another of Cavignari's coups may perhaps be given as illustrating not only his policy of smiting hard, instead of palavering, but also the necessity for strict secrecy. In 1878 when the Swat River Canal, which has turned the desert plain of Yusufzai into one great wheat-field, was under construction, the more pestilential class of mullah, always on the look-out for a cause to inflame Mahomedan fanaticism against the English unbeliever, stirred up the tribesmen to interfere with the work. A raid was consequently made by them, and a lot of harmless coolies murdered. The village of Sapri, just across the border, was chiefly implicated in this outrage, and Cavignari immediately demanded the surrender of the murderers, as well as a heavy fine in money wherewith to pension the families of the victims. Secure in their fastness the men of Sapri sent replies, varying from the evasive to the impertinent.