General Macdonald was meanwhile making every preparation in Chumbi for supporting the Mission escort and eventually advancing to Lhasa; and he had many difficulties of his own to contend with, through an outbreak of cholera, and through the heavy rains causing many breaches in the road in Sikkim. Supplies, munitions, and transport, had to be laboriously collected, and progress was necessarily slow. But on May 24 strong reinforcements reached Gyantse, and were a most welcome addition to our strength, enabling Colonel Brander to assume a more active attitude. They consisted of two 10-pounder guns of the British mountain battery, under Lieutenant Easton, a company of native sappers and miners, 50 Sikhs, and 20 mounted infantry.
Our little garrison was strengthened, too, by the arrival of Captain Sheppard, Royal Engineers, who, of all the officers I saw during the Mission, struck me as being the most likely to rise to the very highest position in the service. His energy, his never-failing cheerfulness, his daring, and his general ability, were altogether exceptional. He was the champion racquet-player in the army, and he was already known on north-western frontier campaigns for his bravery. Here he added daily to his reputation, and he and Captain Ottley were the two whom I, as an onlooker—seeing a good deal, if not always most, of the game—singled out to myself as having in them the surest signs of military genius. In a military career so much depends on chance that these two may very possibly sink down to the usual humdrum respectable commander or staff officer. But I will stake my reputation as a prophet that, if the chance ever does come to either of them before routine and examinations have quenched their burning vitality, they will make a mark like Lord Roberts or like the daring Hodson of Hodson’s Horse.
Here I must in a brief parenthesis criticize some remarks I heard Mr. Roosevelt, for whom otherwise I have the greatest admiration, make to the Cambridge University Union Society. He said that in public life and in the army geniuses were not wanted, but that what was required were average men with the ordinary qualities developed by the men themselves to an extraordinary degree. In this I most profoundly disagree. It is not the ordinary average man, however much he may develop his mediocrity, that is most wanted. It is the exceptional man. It is the man with just that touch which we cannot possibly define, but which we all instinctively recognize as genius. There is a superabundance of ordinary men, and it must be admitted that they do ordinary work very much better than geniuses. But it is the genius alone who, when the occasion arises, will flash a ray through these masses of ordinary men, and make them do what they would never do with any amount of development of their ordinary plodding qualities. And it is of the highest importance to find out these exceptional men. But the way to do this is not by examinations—unless those who are least capable of passing them are chosen. It is by letting the best select the best, by letting the proved best select whom they think promise best.
All this, however, is by way of interlude, and is merely one of the many reflections I made while I was myself under enforced inactivity, and had nothing much else to do but watch the action of those others upon whom the responsibility for the time being rested.
With his reinforcements Colonel Brander now took the offensive in earnest, and on May 26 attacked the strongly-built village of Palla, which was only 1,100 yards, from our post, and which the Tibetans were holding in strength, and connecting with the jong by a wall. In the dead of night, in utter darkness, the attacking party assembled. All of us who were to remain behind went up to the roof to watch the result. The column moved noiselessly out from our post. A long silence followed. Then a few sharp rifle cracks rang out, and soon from the jong and from the Palla village there was a continuous crackle, with sharp spurts of flame lighting the darkness. Soon after a great explosion was heard, followed by a deadly silence. What had happened we heard afterwards. Captain Sheppard, accompanied by Captain O’Connor, had dashed up to the wall of one of the principal houses in the village, and after shooting two Tibetans with his revolver, placed a charge of gun-cotton, lighted a fuse, and dashed back again to cover. The explosion was the result, and a big breach had been made. Captain OO’CConnor had then, with his cake of gun-cotton, rushed into another house and successfully fired it. Lieutenant Garstin and Lieutenant Walker in another place tried to make a similar breach, but the fuse did not act, and in making a second attempt the former was killed, while Captain O’Connor also was severely wounded.
This blowing up of houses crammed full of armed men is indeed a desperate undertaking, but except by this method of deliberately rushing up and placing a charge under manned walls, and firing the charge, there was no means of getting in, and Sheppard, Garstin, Walker, and O’Connor deserve all the honour that is due to the bravest of military actions.
Breaches had been made, but the village had yet to be stormed, and Major Peterson, with his Sikh Pioneers, as soon as it was light, gallantly stormed house after house, while Colonel Brander supported him with the guns on the hillside a few hundred yards off. The Tibetans fought stubbornly, as they always did in these villages, but Major Peterson pressed steadily on, and by 1.30 the village was in Colonel Brander’s hands.
Our losses were, besides Lieutenant Garstin, Royal Engineers killed, Captain O’Connor, Lieutenant Mitchell, 32nd Pioneers, Lieutenant Walker, Royal Engineers, and nine men wounded. It was a heavy casualty list for our little garrison to sustain, but the capture of the village was a great shock to the Tibetans, who till then, according to a Chinaman whom Mr. Wilton met when accompanying one of our sorties, had become very truculent, and talked of first attacking us and cutting all our throats, and then murdering all Chinese.
The Palla village was occupied by our troops, and at 1.30 on the morning of May 30 the Tibetans, who had for long been trying to screw themselves up for an attack upon us, attacked both this and a Gurkha outpost we had established. It was a beautiful sight to watch, with the jong keeping up a heavy fire on us, and the houses at the foot of the jong firing away hard on the village. But the Tibetans were easily repulsed, for Colonel Brander had been careful to fortify the place well, and the Tibetans after this never ventured to take the offensive against us, and the tide now definitely began to turn.
I therefore now with less reluctance wrote letters to the Resident and Dalai Lama, saying that we were ready to negotiate at Gyantse up to June 25, but that unless by that date the Resident and competent negotiators had arrived, we would insist upon negotiations being carried on at Lhasa. The letters, together with a covering letter to the Tibetan commander in the jong, were sent by the hands of prisoners. Before undertaking their delivery, however, the bearers stipulated that they should be allowed to return to us as prisoners, which was a significant commentary on the method of enlistment of the Tibetan forces opposing us. The next morning the letters were returned by the Tibetan General, who said that it was not their custom to receive communications from the English.