So soon as it was light they opened a heavy but badly aimed fire on the Guides, but showed no disposition to assault. At last, after some delay and evidently under the urgent haranguing of their priests and leaders, a mass of warriors some five thousand strong was collected under the shelter of the villages to make another effort. But so steady and accurate was the fire of the Guides, that even these brave fanatics feared to face the open, and the attack melted away. Sir Frederick Roberts, with the eye of the born general seizing the right moment, launched his cavalry and artillery in counterstroke and pursuit, till when the sun set that night fifty thousand of the chivalry of the Afghan nation had been swept from sight and hearing, and nothing but a vast solitude remained where teeming thousands stood lately.
Thus collect, and thus disappear, the great yeomen armies of Afghanistan. To-day they are not; to-morrow they are assembling in their thousands from the four quarters of the compass; a few days, and they have melted away like snow. The explanation is simple enough. The fiery crescent goes forth, summoning the faithful, every man with his arms and ammunition and carrying in his goatskin bag food enough to last him for a week. Commissariat or Ordnance Departments there are none; thus as each soldier finishes his food or his ammunition, or both, he hies him home again for a fresh supply; perhaps he returns, and perhaps he has had enough fighting for the present, and does not. And so is it with all the fifty thousand.
The Guides did not see any more serious fighting till April, when, together with a wing of the 92nd Highlanders under Major White,[1] and two guns of F.-A. Battery, Royal Horse Artillery, they fought a gallant little action with about five thousand of the enemy at Charasiab near Kabul. Jenkins, who was in command, heard shortly after midnight that about two thousand of the enemy were bivouacked within five miles of the camp, but that they had no immediate intention of attacking. An old soldier like the Commander of the Guides, however, takes nothing for granted, and orders were at once issued for the Guides' infantry to stand to their arms an hour before daylight, while the Guides' cavalry sent out patrols to feel for the enemy at crack of dawn. And well was it that these timely precautions were taken, for as day broke the enemy's masses were seen advancing to the attack. To give elbow-room, and also as a preparation for all eventualities, Jenkins struck his camp, and ordered the baggage to be stacked behind a convenient mound; then sending back word of how matters stood to Sir Frederick Roberts, he with his little force prepared to face the onslaught.
[1] Afterwards Field-Marshal Sir George White, V.C., G.C.B., &c., &c.
Seizing such knolls and points of vantage as existed, his battle-line took the form of a semicircle, with one company of the 92nd Highlanders and two companies of the Guides in reserve. The enemy, now increased to three thousand warriors, steadily advanced, and with great bravery planted their standards in some places within one hundred yards of the British line; but that last one hundred yards they could not, by all the eloquence of their leaders or the promises of Paradise from their priests, be induced to cross. Nor was it only the Afghans who felt the tightening strain; it was an anxious moment for the British, too, for given one slight slip, one weakhearted corner, and the whole thin line might have been swept away by the onslaught of those fierce masses.
It was then that Jenkins used a curious and expensive, but, as it proved, effective expedient. He ordered the Guides' cavalry to mount, and, exposed at close range to the enemy's fire, to patrol quietly from one end of the line to the other, as a sort of moving reserve; a demonstration, in fact, that even if the enemy managed to break through the thin line of the infantry at any point, it would only be to fall on the dreaded swords of the cavalry. The behaviour of the men during this trying ordeal was above all praise; and indeed it requires high qualities of nerve and courage to walk one's horse up and down for a couple of hours under a hail of bullets, without being able to return the compliment in any way.
The enemy's numbers had increased to five thousand, and still Jenkins's little force held on with dogged courage, and though it could not make an inch of way, it refused to concede one. It was now past one o'clock, and the strain lay heavy on our men after seven hours of this bull-dog business; when the twinkle of the cheerful heliograph from Kabul gave fresh heart to all, and almost immediately afterwards the advance skirmishers of General Macpherson's column came into view, and the situation was saved. Then, borne on the flood of the reinforcements, Highlanders and Guides sprang to their feet and dashed at the now flying enemy. The cavalry and artillery, too, at last relieved of their long and dangerous vigil, dashed off in pursuit, and for four long miles they fell with relentless fury on the scattered and demoralised foe.
This was the last fight which the Guides had in the Afghan War. When Roberts and his gallant ten thousand marched to Kandahar, they were sent back to their hard-earned rest, after two years of incessant warfare, with a casualty roll of two hundred and forty-eight of all ranks and one hundred and forty-two horses; and with five hundred recruits to redress the balance.