Amongst the trophies and standards brought down by the Guides was a solid brass cannon of tremendous weight captured at Mundah. In a mountainous country where there are no roads, and for a weight far beyond the carrying capacity of a pack animal, there appeared to be no alternative to leaving the gun behind. But rather than do this the men volunteered to carry it themselves, and thus twenty men at a time carried the gun while their comrades carried a double load of arms and ammunition. The gun now stands at Mardan near the memorial to the officers and men who fell in defence of the Kabul Embassy, and on it is engraved in Persian the curious and bombastic inscription:—
It's mouth is open wide to eat.
What shall I call it? A gun or a serpent?
This gun is most heavy, and makes victory certain.
There is none like it in India or Kabul.
Made by Ghulam Rasul.
CHAPTER XIII
THE MALAKAND, 1897
As the officers of the Guides were sitting at dinner on the night of July 26th, 1897, a telegram was handed to Colonel Adams informing him that the Malakand position had been attacked by overwhelming numbers, that the garrison was with difficulty holding its own, and asking him to bring up his corps as speedily as possible to its succour.
Accustomed for decades to these sudden appeals, the Guides' cavalry, bag and baggage, supplies, transport, and all complete, were off in three hours, and the Guides' infantry followed them. The march was twenty-nine miles along the flat to Dargai, and then seven miles rise and two thousand feet climb to the summit of the Malakand Pass. For cavalry, considering the time of year, it was by no means a mean undertaking; for infantry it was one of the highest achievement. To march thirty-six miles under service conditions, in the most favourable circumstances of weather, temperature, and training, is a high test of endurance; but to do so when the muscles are enervated with heat, along a treeless, waterless road, during the fiercest term of the summer solstice, was a feat to secure the admiration of every soldier. The march was accomplished in sixteen hours, the first twenty-nine miles being covered without any regular halt, and the last seven miles up a mountain on which the blazing afternoon sun was beating its fiercest. Yet not a man fell out, and it is recorded by an eye-witness[1] that as the regiment passed the quarter-guards, the men came to attention, and answered the salute as smartly as if just returning from a parade march. The Guides of 1897 had borne themselves no wit less worthily than the Guides of 1857 or the Guides of 1879. To Lieutenant P. Eliott-Lockhart belongs the honour of commanding the Guides' infantry in this fine soldierly performance, and the Distinguished Service Order worthily decorated him for this and other gallant service. To arrive as a reinforcement is to be welcome enough; to arrive by exertions beyond the compass of calculation, in time to afford assistance at the critical moment, is the fortune of few. Yet thrice has this good fortune smiled on the efforts of the Guides, at Delhi, at Kabul, and at the Malakand.
[1] The Story of the Malakand Field Force; by Winston Spencer Churchill, Lieut. 4th Hussars. London, 1898.