'Let the guns continue to advance, and pound the nearest hill where these fellows with the standards are,' said Major White, adding proudly and confidently, 'With my Highlanders alone I shall sweep the enemy from those hills on our right.'
Parry then advanced his guns to within fifteen hundred yards, and again opened fire. His cavalry escort was commanded by Major Mitford, who says, 'We had thus leisure to watch the advance of the 92nd, which was a splendid sight. The dark green kilts went up the steep rocky hillside at a fine rate, though one would occasionally drop, and roll several feet down the slope, showing that the rattling fire kept up by the enemy was not all display. Both sides took advantage of every atom of cover, but still the gallant kilts pressed on and up, and it was altogether as pretty a piece of light infantry drill as could be seen.'
Meanwhile Parry's guns were sending shell after shell with beautiful precision to the crest of the hill he was ordered 'to pound.' They exploded with dreadful effect whenever and wherever the enemy could be seen preparing to charge. The Ghazis and Ghilzies lay over each other in heaps, torn, mangled, and disembowelled, and the white robes of the former were seen to be splashed and stained with blood; but still the living yelled and brandished their swords and standards, and by four p.m., Parry's guns had completely silenced the four that had been thundering in the echoing pass.
And now it was that the gallant commander of 'the Gay Gordons,' who were still advancing, won his Victoria Cross, as he stormed the crowded hills in person. 'Advancing with two companies of his regiment,' says the London Gazette, 'he came upon a body of the enemy, strongly posted, and outnumbering his force by eighteen to one. His men being much exhausted, and immediate action necessary, Major White took a rifle, and going on by himself, shot the leader of the enemy.'
The fall of this personage, who was deemed invulnerable, so intimidated the enemy that they fled down the mountain side, while the Highlanders crowned its crest with a ringing cheer, and then, plunging with their bayonets into the dark defile of the Sung-i-Navishta, they captured the four mountain guns, the horses of which lay disembowelled, dead, or dying in the limber traces. So swift was the rush of the Gordon Highlanders that they had only nine casualties at this point.
With the Albany Highlanders in the van, General Baker pushed along the road towards Chardeh, the 5th Ghoorkas, 5th Punjaubees, and 23rd Pioneers following them, till the whole were opposed on strong and precipitous ground by four thousand Afghans ranged under six large and brightly-coloured standards.
Upward and onward went our troops under a withering rifle fire, the echoes of which reverberated a hundredfold among the hills, as they were tossed back from peak to peak. For two hours the fight went on, our troops loading and firing with great coolness and deliberation; and then was seen the fearful triumph of the breechloading weapon of precision when properly sighted, for each successive row of swarthy men, as they crowned the ridges of rock, was mown down by a deadly fire, as wheat goes prone to the earth before the scythe of the mower, till after a time it seemed that scarcely a man stood up alive after the delivery of these thundering tempests of lead.
The deadly Gatling guns (the pepper castors, as the soldiers named them) proved of little use, owing to the acute angle of elevation; but at last the heights were taken in rear by a flank movement of the Gordon Highlanders, who, with colours flying and all their pipes playing, came storming up the steep slopes, and, crowning the summits, swept the enemy away, or all that remained of them.
By four o'clock the Afghans were everywhere in full flight to Cabul, with the loss of many colours, twenty pieces of cannon, and a host of killed and wounded.
Strong pickets were posted for the night, as the Ghilzies and Mahmoud Shah's Ghazis were hovering about. The troops bivouacked, as the tents and baggage were all packed for the advance to Cabul on the morrow.