In England regiments were marching through London Town, and the traffic was being held back at the crossings, while the housemaids threw open the upper windows and waved handkerchiefs; but by October crowds were silent, having grown weary of cheering the new warlike pageant of their thronged streets. In the hearts of the watching wives, and in the hearts of the British officers, the thoughts were of that hour at home, and not a little of the verdict which the people of those busy streets would pass on these Indian soldiers marching out of Dera Ismail Khan: men of strange faiths, men of diverse tongues, men of no education save for that stern schooling of war decreed by David the soldier poet—‘Thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things.’ Doran had raised this clan in 1857 at the urgent bidding of Lawrence, and it had crossed the seas in turn to China, Burma, and Somaliland, but never with so ill a wind, blowing no man aught of good, as is brewed to-day in Germany’s poisonous cauldrons. It had fought its way to Kabul, and been taken out of victorious action by a subaltern at Ali Masjid, but no mine nor shell had laid its young men low. It had nursed a British regiment that was sick unto death with cholera, and knew no white man by name, or sight, who would slay women, children, and the wounded. Long ago, in November 1858, it had passed from the service of stout John Company to the great service of the Crown, and for fifty-three years it served Empress and Emperors before it laid eyes on the person of its Sovereign, what time each Hindu officer and sepoy, among the millions of Calcutta folk, accounted that sacred privilege of beholding King George more favourable to the soul than three pilgrimages piously performed. In all its history only one man had set foot in England, an Afridi subadar, who attended the Coronation and returned full of mighty tales of the fabulous amount of milk given by our cows, of the work of scavengers done by Jews only, and many things hard to credit. But it was familiar with things strange to the far-off British Isles, this Indian regiment; earthquakes had tossed the villages of the Dogras to rubbish heaps in the spring of 1905, and for weary years plague had stricken the homes of Sikhs and Punjabi Mahomedans, while the neighbours of the Khattaks and Afridis ever held finger to rifle trigger. Neither pestilence, famine, battle, murder, nor sudden death were unknown to the men whose footsteps the knot of watchers by the Ghat could hear approaching, though months of sunless skies and sodden ground, bitter poverty of European slums, flowers tossed to the man of the East by white women, vast lands without mosque or temple or breath of the thronged bazaar, were things outside their experience, and beyond their imagination, on that October noonday.
The lay mind may fear or favour a regiment’s violence, but it is extraordinarily prone to lose sight of a regiment’s vocation. Now it had been brought home to one of the Englishwomen watching that regiment go forth to war that its strength was dedicated; for on a cold November morning in the Punjab she had seen a line of recruits drawn up opposite the battalion, and had heard the oath and affirmation taken in the vernacular which appointed each recruit a soldier and not a mere public executioner. Roughly translated, this is what she had heard,—‘I do swear,’ the Hindu youngster vowed; ‘I do swear by the holy Granth,’ declared the Sikh stripling; ‘I do solemnly affirm in the presence of Almighty God,’ the youthful Punjabi Mahomedan and Pathan said;—‘that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to His Majesty the King Emperor, his heirs, and successors, and that I will as in duty bound honestly and faithfully serve in His Majesty’s Indian Forces, and go wherever I am ordered by land or by sea. And that I will observe and obey all commands of any officer set over me, even to the peril of my life.’ Thus, all the lusty yeomen of the northern plains and hills, among whom the Hindus added, ‘So help me God.’ Whereupon, very impressively, the battalion paid its highest honour, and gave its most profound welcome, to its sworn men by presenting arms to them. Moreover, in this matter of vocation, the handful of British officers, who, from the day of the regiment’s birth, had guided it in the way it should go through succeeding generations, held a mandate that invoked supreme authority:
‘By the Grace of God ... Defender of the Faith ... to our trusty and well beloved ... Gentleman, greeting. We, reposing special trust and confidence in your loyalty, courage, and good conduct, do by these presents constitute and appoint you to be an Officer ... and you are at all times to exercise and well discipline in arms, both the inferior officers and men serving under you, and use your best endeavours to keep them in good order and discipline. And We do hereby command them to obey you as their superior officer, and you to observe and follow such orders and directions, as from time to time you shall receive from Us or any your Superior Officer, according to the rules and discipline of war in pursuance of the trust hereby reposed in you.’
And so when, across the shadeless parade ground where only the clouds threw shadows, the shouting ranks approached the Ghat, it was plain that each soldier felt with the Israelites of old that it is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in princes or in man, for the Dogras were calling on Kali, the Sikhs on their Gurus, and the Mahomedans on Allah the God of Battles.
Only a bugler was given to frivolity. Some weeks before, in the pride of his schooling, he had questioned a Memsahib eagerly, ‘Can the Presence read? Can the Presence write?’ and was crestfallen at meeting his match. Yet a professional hope remained. ‘Can the Presence beegle?’[10] he challenged, and established complete superiority. His mother had stood by his side that day; a tall, dignified, strictly secluded woman of the purdah, but neither she, nor any Indian wife or mother of the sepoy folk, stood watching the regiment depart. Only the Englishwomen bade all God speed, while the happy little bugler went forth to war and cheered his own performance.
The British officers wheeled their chargers up to the group of their countrywomen; and the Indian officers left the shouting companies to step aside, salute, and shake hands. Then all passed on. The Sikh band struck up ‘For Auld Lang Syne,’ and many thought of the gallant comrade who would never be forgotten by his regiment, now leaving his lonely grave behind. It was a strangely dramatic chance that turned this regiment of all regiments away from the hills of the Mahsuds, for scarce six months were gone since that day when, with reversed arms, it had laid to rest the great Dodd, soldier, ruler, and friend of the frontier where he fell, foully murdered, amid the false peace of his own border garden. On the day of his burial the thunder roared from the treacherous hills, the Last Post bade him sleep well, the solemn volleys promised stern remembrance, and every officer and man of his regiment longed to avenge him according to the Rules of War. But the orders and directions ran otherwise, and so ‘Doran Sahib-ki-Paltan’ marched away from Waziristan, through Balu Ram’s Ghat, with all the officers of the brigade bearing it good company as far as the bridge of boats across the Indus, whence it set forth to a destination unknown, with the trusty and well-beloved Gentlemen leading.
That night the young bearer realised suddenly that his Sahib had gone, and, like a dog that misses his master and gives chase, he stood up and clamoured to the officer’s wife, ‘Huzur, get me an ekha that I may now drive to Darya Khan while there is yet time. Without doubt I must of necessity go with my Sahib.’ Half an hour later a scarecrow wrapped in a blanket stood at her door, and a syce’s voice insisted, ‘Memsahib! Memsahib! get me an ekha and I will go to the Sahib and Moti the mare. And give no money to my brother, Huzur, for he has taken all my clothes so that I should not go. But I go now very swiftly. There is four annas to pay to the khansamah, if the Presence will give it? Salaam!’
And over the dim desert, through the starless night, by the groping light of little crazy oil lamps, with endless joltings and bumpings, to where the sleeping regiment waited to entrain at dawn, there drove urgently Burgwan Das, bearer, and Bhagu, syce.
John Travers.