Galbraith’s first care was to rid his flanks of the enemy. Covered by the fire of the guns and the steady and well-directed volleys of the Royal Irish, the 34th Pioneers drove the hillmen from the jungle on the left, while the 4th Punjab infantry scaled the precipitous heights on the right, pushing the foe before them in confusion. But the process took time, and it was not until 1 P.M. that the Royal Irish were allowed to move towards the enemy in the plain, where many flags showed that the tribesmen were assembled in large numbers. When the battalion had gained six hundred yards it was halted behind a low stone wall, and ordered to open upon the foe in front of them, while the guns shelled the defenders of the Kotkai ridge. By this time, the flanking detachments had done their work and were once more level with the troops in the centre, and Galbraith, considering that the hillmen were sufficiently shaken to warrant his assaulting their first position, ordered a general advance. With perfect steadiness the Royal Irish moved forward with sloped arms towards a clump of trees three or four hundred yards distant; the mountaineers who held this part of the line were beginning to fall back, when the word “Charge” was shouted by some unauthorised person whose identity has never been discovered; the call was sounded by a bugler, and with a wild yell the battalion dashed forward. They had covered some fifty yards of ground, when from a nullah about eighty yards off emerged a horde of swordsmen, Hindustani fanatics, each of whom had sworn to gain Heaven that day by slaying at least one of the Unbelievers. The suddenness of their appearance, their demoniacal yells and headlong rush might have startled any troops, but the Royal Irish were staunch; after an instant of surprised inaction the company commanders ordered their men to fire independently, and then to meet the rush with the bayonet. An officer thus described the affair in his diary: “We got the word to charge; the men went at them with a will, bayoneting or shooting every Ghazi within reach. The swordsmen then wheeled away as if they did not quite relish us, and went towards the 34th Pioneers, who fell back a bit at first but then pulled themselves together. Our men wheeled up of their own accord and followed the Ghazis, and I don’t think many got away. We killed or wounded about a hundred.[271] In the pursuit Gloster with one or two dare-devils of his company dashed after one of the enemy who was carrying a standard, shot him down, and brought back the flag in triumph.”[272]
After the main body of the enemy had been dispersed, several incidents occurred characteristic of warfare on the north-west frontier of India. When the fighting appeared to be over, a medical officer, seeing a sepoy lying hard hit on the plain, went off alone to dress his wounds, and suddenly found himself surrounded by five Ghazis; one he brought down with his revolver; the others circled round him, waiting their chance to dash in and hack him to pieces. The Royal Irish at that moment were re-forming their ranks; a patrol of an officer and four men hurried to the doctor’s rescue, and shot three of the fanatics; the fourth came on most pluckily, and was only ten yards from our men when one of them shot him, and then pinned him to the ground with his bayonet. These hillmen are wonderfully tenacious of life, and although the Ghazi had a Martini bullet through his chest and a bayonet wound in his stomach he strove up to his last gasp to kill his hated foes. A little later in the day General Galbraith was the hero of an adventure in which the good marksmanship of the battalion undoubtedly saved his life. While the Royal Irish were sitting on the ground in quarter-column, waiting for orders, the General on foot, unarmed, and with no escort but his aide-de-camp who was mounted, walked over the battlefield to ascertain from two friendly hillmen who accompanied him if any of the dead belonged to tribes which were nominally neutral.
“Suddenly [writes an officer] we heard some shots fired, and looking up we saw about two or three hundred yards off the General running as hard as he could towards us, closely followed by some Ghazis. The A.D.C.’s pony had became unmanageable so he could not fire, and the Ghazis were catching the General up; we accordingly ordered two or three picked shots to fire—risky work, for the fanatics were within a few yards of the General and he almost masked our fire. Still the risk had to be taken, and (luckily perhaps) as we fired, the General stumbled and fell, and the whole of the Ghazis were shot. We heard afterwards that when the General was examining the corpses, two of the supposed ‘deaders’ had jumped up and gone for him, and being unarmed, he could do nothing but run. The ‘friendlies,’ seeing the General’s plight, had gone for the Ghazis, and as they were all dressed alike, we were unable to tell friend from foe, and had shot all four of them.”
In the course of the afternoon a hospital was established in a clump of trees, among which stood a shrine packed with the furniture and other belongings of some of the tribesmen with whom we were at war. From one of these trees a Ghazi was dislodged by a bullet; the sound of the shot brought up a couple of our men who, suspecting that more fanatics were in hiding, began to rummage among the lumber in the shrine, where two more Ghazis were discovered to whom very short shrift was allowed. When the advance was resumed, half the battalion was ordered to keep down the fire from the sangars on the right bank of the river, while the other companies and part of the 29th Punjab infantry climbed the ridge and moved upon Kotkai. They entered it without opposition, for the enemy, already shaken by the shells of the mountain battery, retired before them to Kunhar, a village two or three miles higher up the river. By the time we were in possession of the Kotkai position the day was so far spent that pursuit had become impossible, and the wing of the Royal Irish was sent down to bivouac in the plain, while the native regiment remained to hold the village as an advanced post.
The next few days were full of varied occupations. The battalion marched with convoys of sick to Chamb, carried stores over rocks that the mules could not face, escorted the General up precipitous mountains when he visited tribes of doubtful loyalty to arrange the terms on which their neutrality was to be secured, and for more than one day carried on a long musketry fight with the hillmen, who had now flocked to the farther side of the river, whence they maintained a harassing fire upon our working parties. Under the steady shooting of the Royal Irish, the enemy gradually melted away, and when the British brought river craft up the Indus to replace the ferry-boats which had been destroyed, the mountaineers realised that the river was no longer an impassable barrier and disappeared, leaving the road-makers unmolested in their heavy task of converting mere goat-tracks on the side of a cliff into roads wide enough for the passage of heavily laden mules in single file. On the 11th the whole column reached Kunhar, though the road was still so rough that over the greater part of it the baggage had to be passed by hand. The 12th was spent in improving the path to Gazikot, a mile or two higher up the river; and on the 13th, Galbraith transported the Royal Irish and part of his native infantry across the river in boats, marched through various deserted villages, and blew up a hill fortress at Maidan. The tribesmen watched his proceedings from the neighbouring heights, and when he began to retire attacked his rear-guard, but were driven back, and the column regained the left bank without difficulty. After the destruction of Maidan the enemy began to lose heart, and though the troops in the fourth column made several raids into the mountains on each side of the Indus, occupying villages so filthy that the Europeans could not sleep in the houses and had to bivouac upon the roofs, they did not again come under hostile fire. On all these operations the Royal Irish were employed, and in their spare time Galbraith found plenty of occupation for them in the unexciting but very arduous work of improving the communications with the frontier of India.
While the fourth column was forcing its way up the Indus the other columns pushed eastwards from the Agror valley. They climbed mountains, made roads, destroyed watch-towers, and burned hostile villages with small loss, for they met with no opposition such as that which had awaited Galbraith at Kotkai, and their casualties were mainly caused by the “snipers” who harassed their bivouacs at night. Thus taken between two fires, the Hassanzais and Akazais learned that though slow to rouse, the Government of India when it begins to strike, does so with effect. Astonished to find that the fastnesses of the country could be reached by regular troops, dismayed at the loss of several hundred of their fighting men, and realising that the longer they deferred their submission, the heavier would be their punishment, these clans decided to surrender; paid the heavy fines imposed upon them, and promised amendment for the future. During the negotiations there was an episode in which Lieutenant Gloster played an amusing part, thus described by one of his brother officers—
“When the hillmen with whom we had been fighting came to the conclusion that for the time being they had had enough of it, they began to send Jirgahs or deputations of headmen to interview General Galbraith, who had very little knowledge of the manners and customs of the Border tribes. Presuming on his ignorance of frontier etiquette, they used to behave towards him with gross impertinence: they would walk into his hut and greet his Pathan orderlies, who acted as interpreters, with great respect, but take no notice of the General himself; then sit down without being asked, and finally spit on the floor—a particularly gross form of insult throughout the East. Gloster who since the engagement at Kotkai had been orderly officer to the General, was present at these interviews and used to boil with rage, but as his chief took no notice he had to swallow his wrath as best he could. But Gloster’s chance came when Colonel ——, an officer of long experience on the frontier, joined the column and took over the conduct of the negotiations for peace. On the morning after Colonel ——’s arrival the tribesmen walked into the new-comer’s hut with their usual swagger and went through their customary insulting performances—but not for long, as Colonel —— turned upon them, first with a volley of abuse in Hindustani and Pushtu, and then with his stick and boots. In amazement they made for the door, and then as each astonished Pathan passed out, he got a blow on the side of the head from a huge fist, followed by a hearty kick from a long and powerful leg. A very chastened and exceedingly polite deputation returned to make terms next day!”
As soon as the Hassanzais and Akazais had made their peace with the Indian government, a portion of General M‘Queen’s command moved northwards to punish other recalcitrant tribes; but as the fourth column played no part in these operations it is not necessary to describe them. As far as the Royal Irish are concerned, the only incident during the remainder of the Black Mountain campaign was the visit of the Commander-in-Chief in India, General Sir Frederick Roberts, who on the 28th of October inspected the second battalion at Palosi, and complimented all ranks on their behaviour during this little mountain war. Early in November the expedition had finished its work; the columns marched back across the British frontier, and the Royal Irish, passing through Durband, arrived at their old station of Nowshera on the 23rd of the month.[273]
General Galbraith in a farewell order thanked all ranks of the fourth column for the admirable manner in which they had performed their duties, adding that their exemplary behaviour and unvarying good discipline had not been less conspicuous than their conduct in the field. His official report on the operations of the river column mentioned Major R. K. Brereton and Lieutenant W. Gloster, Royal Irish regiment, and the Roman Catholic chaplain attached to the battalion, Father Francis Van Mansfeld, who during the fighting on October 4, distinguished himself by carrying water to the wounded under a heavy fire. The losses of the Hazara Field force during this short campaign were small: the total casualties, including two officers mortally wounded, were less than a hundred. In the second battalion of the Royal Irish two men were killed and three wounded in action, while two were fatally injured by falling down a precipice.[274] The Indian Medal with a clasp for “Hazara 1888” was granted to the troops who took part in this expedition.
Until December, 1889, the second battalion remained at Nowshera; then it was stationed for a short time at Peshawar, and in April, 1890, headquarters and four companies were moved to Cherat, where the medals for the Hazara campaign were presented on parade by Mrs Rogers, the wife of the officer who then commanded the battalion. The year 1890 was memorable in the sporting annals of the regiment. After having been in the final tie for the Infantry polo tournament for three years running, the officers of the second battalion won it at Umballa with a team composed of Captain Apthorp, Lieutenants Cullinan, Kellett, Wynne, and Garraway—the last mentioned taking the place of Wynne, who met with an accident during the game. The non-commissioned officers and men also had a triumph in winning the Calcutta football tournament. The month of December found the second battalion on the way to Lucknow, where they remained till November, 1894, when a five weeks’ march brought them to Jubbulpore, an excellent centre for big game shooting. The officers lost no opportunity of going after tiger, and Lieutenant J. B. S. Alderson had a very exciting adventure in which his life was saved by the coolness of Lieutenant-Colonel Lawrence, then in command of the battalion. In the Chitri jungle Alderson was following up a wounded tiger on foot, when the beast charged and seized him by the arm. Colonel Lawrence rushed to the rescue, and with three steady shots killed it, but not without much difficulty, for as the huge brute lay upon Alderson mauling his arm, the bullets had to be placed so that they would strike the animal without doing his victim any harm. When Alderson was brought into hospital, he was so weak from shock, fatigue, and loss of blood that it was pronounced unsafe to put him under chloroform, and it was nearly midnight before all his numerous wounds were dressed. Though suffering agonies he never uttered a word, except from time to time to ask one of his brother officers, who were standing round his bed, to fill and light the pipe, which he did not allow to go out during the operation. His right arm had been bitten through, but neither the bones nor arteries were injured, and he recovered—to meet a soldier’s death a few years later in the South African war.