CANDAHAR, 20th September.
There is but one opinion here as to the unsoundness of the criticisms upon General Roberts’s action of the 1st; it is that the critics have jumped to conclusions on imperfect reports, having taken the first meagre telegrams as their guide. By an incessant study of small-scale maps they gained a superficial knowledge of the Argandab Valley, and were fully convinced that the proper mode of directing the attack would have been to throw an intercepting force 30 or 40 miles in rear of Mazra, and then to have attacked Ayub from Candahar—no doubt by way of the Pir Paimal village. They point their arguments by adding that our cavalry pursuit was really inoperative, as only 400 of the fugitives were killed, while the great mass escaped. Admitted that after we had rolled them back from Pir Paimal the great majority got off scot-free, this by no means proves that a weak brigade could have cut off their retreat; for it seems to be forgotten that not one, but many, roads were open to them, while the mountainous nature of the country on the higher reaches of the Argandab was all in favour of trained hill-men such as Afghans always are. Their cavalry and many thousands of footmen made straight for the Khakrez Valley, knowing well that once the range of hills, eight miles west and north-west of the Argandab, was reached, they were quite safe. There was no necessity at all for their retirement northwards up the Argandab—or rather north-eastwards—and it is quite an open question if any brigade we could have spared would have even seen many of the fugitives. General Roberts’s first and greatest duty was to induce Ayub Khan to give him battle, and not to cause a scare in his camp by premature strategical movements, 30 or 40 miles up the Argandab Valley. It may not be known, also, that when the infantry was encamped near Shar-i-Safa, one march from Robat, on August 27th the news from Candahar led us to believe that Ayub might possibly forsake Mazra and try to escape in the Ghazni direction by way of the Argandab stream. General Roberts at once recognized the necessity of barring any movement in force in this direction, and a column of about 2,000 men was told off to march by way of Bori, and Dala, and block the road up the Argandab. But when heliographic communication with Candahar was opened up later in the day, and Colonel St. John’s reports showed that Ayub was busy strengthening his position at Mazra, the order given for the column to move out was at once countermanded. It was known that the Afghan force was mainly composed of men from Zamindawar, Candahar, and Herat—the Cabuli element being very small, and the Kizilbashes and Kohistanis being already in treaty with Colonel St. John to desert at short notice. The main body of real fighting men, therefore, would seek safety in flight, after defeat, not northwards towards Khelat-i-Ghilzai, but to the west and north-west, where the hills offered them shelter until they could regain their homes. This line of flight was really taken; but as our cavalry brigade under General Hugh Gough could not reach the Kokaran Ford until Gundigan and the orchards about had been cleared by General Baker’s Infantry Brigade, Ayub Khan and his cavalry escort—leaving Mazra, it should be remembered, at 11.30 A.M.—had easily covered the seven or eight miles of ground between the river and the slopes of the hills bounding the Khakrez Valley on the south. Besides, the tactics of the fugitives were such as to neutralize any pursuit or the action of any intercepting force: hundreds took refuge in the villages, buried their arms, or hid them securely away, and came out to greet our troops in the guise of harmless peasants. If these had been slaughtered in cold blood the cavalry would have returned with the report that not 300 or 400, but 1,300 or 1,400 of the enemy had been killed. I do not make this statement on my own unsupported authority, but on the direct testimony of cavalry officers engaged in the pursuit. Thus the 9th Lancers gave chase to a large number of men evidently in full flight. On coming up with them, the Lancers found these fugitives without arms, and though there could be no reasonable doubt that they had hidden their weapons some little time before, Lieutenant Colonel Bushman ordered his men to spare their lives. The Lancers rode among them, and if any man had been detected with a knife or pistol he would probably have paid the forfeit of his life. In other instances small bands were hunted into villages, and when the cavalry rode up men appeared holding little children in their arms, and prayed for mercy. What was to be done to an enemy resorting to such manœuvres? Our cavalry could not take prisoners as they had to continue the pursuit: and these units of the Mazra army were shown that mercy which they refused to our men retreating from Maiwand!
Again, any intercepting force thrown into the Argandab Valley could not hope to co-operate with the force attacking from Candahar; they would have been a detached corps of observation, merely watching for Afghans fleeing into their arms. First of all they must have been sent completely away from our main body either at Shar-i-Safa or Robat in order to cross the hills by the only available kotal near Dala (between 30 and 40 miles above the Baba Wali Kotal); for the Murcha Kotal was held in force by Ayub. They could not approach to within 20 miles of Mazra, for a further advance would have been to court an attack by overwhelming numbers, while General Roberts was marching from Robat to Candahar. The safety of 2,000 men would have been endangered, while the only object they could have gained would have been the interception of a few hundred of Cabulis, who would probably have taken to the precipitous hills and escaped in the night. The Argandab Valley narrows greatly, 30 or 40 miles above Mazra, and cavalry would have been worse than useless with the intercepting (?) column. It cannot be urged with too much emphasis, that Ayub Khan’s line of retreat, if his army were defeated, was in the Khakrez direction, for his men, in their slack discipline[discipline], would make for their own villages and not rush off at a tangent towards Khelat-i-Ghilzai. All Afghan “armies,” so-called, and Ayub’s was perhaps more worthy of respect than any we have yet met, have a power of dispersion which is unrivalled. Organized pursuit against them is almost impossible: unless every mountain path and torrent bed within 50 miles could be searched at once.
General Roberts has had more experience in Afghan warfare than any other of our commanders; and his tactics were based on sounder principles than those advocated by critics unversed altogether even in the details of past actions. To say Pir Paimal could have been carried with fewer troops than those engaged is to beg the whole question. The action of Ahmed Khel proved that when fanaticism is at red-heat, 5,000 or 6,000 men may charge right into our ranks. Would it have been wise to have dispensed with General Macgregor’s brigade (some 2,000 strong) as a reserve in case of such another charge down from the Baba Wali Kotal upon General Macpherson’s right flank? And yet General Macgregor had about the number of men which would have been absorbed if the much-talked of “intercepting column” had been waiting, 30 or 40 miles up the Argandab Valley, ignorant of what was happening at Candahar. It may be urged that there were 4,000 men of the Candahar garrison at General Roberts’s disposal; but it would have been unwise to ask much of a garrison still suffering from the shock of the terrible disaster at Maiwand, and only half-realizing that they were no longer besieged within the walls of Candahar. That I am not exaggerating the depression prevailing in the Bombay Division, will be clear from the fact that General Primrose, on the evening of the 31st August, personally stopped a string of mules which were leaving the citadel with bread and barley for the Bengal troops. Our reconnaissance was returning, and there was certainly heavy rifle-fire beyond Karez hill, while the enemy’s guns on Baba Wali Kotal were also adding to the din. Our troops were holding Picquet Hill, and our camp was within 2,500 yards of the Eedgah Gate, out of which an officer in the Commissariat Department was conducting the little convoy. Between that convoy and “danger” were some 10,000 picked men, nearly all British, Sikhs, and Ghoorkas; but the “risk” of allowing the bread and grain to be carried a mile and a half was pronounced “too great” by General Primrose himself. The Commissariat officer, knowing food was needed in camp, managed to gain permission to take on the mules laden with bread, and he saw nothing to disturb him on the road. The ground between the north-western bastion and the nearest wall of cantonments (1,200 yards away) is as bare as the Sahara, and it was not likely the enemy’s cavalry picquet below the Baba Wali Kotal would have charged out a couple of miles to capture the mules, even if they had seen them. The story is told not to detract from General Primrose’s judgment and ability, but to illustrate the unhealthy feeling and want of tone in the garrison, in spite of the efforts of brave and resolute men to wipe out the recollection of Maiwand and Deh-i-Khwaja from the minds of their fellows.
I have tried to write without undue dogmatism: but I may have been betrayed into laying too great a stress upon “probabilities,” viz., that the enemy’s line of retreat would be towards Khakrez and not up the narrow Argandab Valley, and that Ayub’s irregulars might have furnished a band of desperate men led by ghazis to make a counter-attack from Baba Wali Kotal. I have carefully avoided any reference to the entrenched camp of Ayub at Mazra, which our spies assured us existed, and which General Macgregor’s Brigade, fresh and untouched by fire, were intended to storm if Generals Macpherson and Baker had been checked in their progress. I think these probabilities were justified fully so far as the retreat is concerned, while the knowledge that we had all our forces concentrated behind Karez and Picquet Hills may have prevented the masses of men about the Baba Wali Kotal (in the earlier part of the day) from making a counter-attack. If there is one part which criticism may fairly seize upon, and which our own Brigadiers would be the first to acknowledge, it is the want of cavalry with General Ross when the 72nd and 2nd Sikhs on the one hand, and the 92nd and 2nd Ghoorkas on the other, rolled back the enemy at the turning-point of the Pir Paimal spur. The basin leading towards Mazra and the open ground due west towards the Argandab was covered with men in full flight, and 500 sabres could have swept into them with terrific effect. It is, I believe, an axiom that no division shall now go into action without one regiment of cavalry attached to it, but all through the war we have brigaded all our cavalry, and on several occasions the want of 500 troops to follow up rapidly an infantry attack has been severely felt. Witness in particular the first action of Charasia, when the Afghans fled towards Indikee; and the storming of the ridge leading up to the Takht-i-Shah Peak when the open ground beyond Beni Hissar was black with fugitives. General Hugh Gough and his splendid cavalry brigade of 1,600 sabres and lances did all that men could do to gain the Kokaran Ford, and cut up such bodies of men as they could overtake; but if one regiment had been spared from that brigade to have followed up our infantry advance there would have been rare work for the troops about Pir Paimal. The answer, of course, to this is that the network of orchards and walled enclosures, with intersecting channels, seemed to shut out cavalry from participating in that part of the action; there was no one as usual to tell us of the grand open ground when the ridge was turned.
APPENDIX.
The following information is derived from trustworthy sources, and may be of some interest:—
Table of Heights above mean Sea-level.
| Feet. | |
| Cabul Plain | 5,840 |
| Luttabund Kotal | 7,400 |
| Kata Sung | 5,000 |
| Jugdulluck Kotal | 5,200 |
| Gundamak | 4,500 |
| Futtehabad | 3,095 |
| Jellalabad | 1,950 |