[5] See Appendix A.
CHAPTER III
START FOR LUCKNOW—SIR COLIN—THE DILKOOSHÁ—MARTINIÈRE—SECUNDRABÂGH
When proceeding on our march to Lucknow it was clear as noonday to the meanest capacity that we were now in an enemy's country. None of the villages along the route were inhabited, the only visible signs of life about them being a few mangy pariah dogs. The people had all fled on the first advance of Havelock, and had not returned; and it needed no great powers of observation to fully understand that the whole population of Oude was against us.
The deserted villages gave the country a miserable appearance. Not only were they forsaken, but we found, on reaching our first halting-ground, that the whole of the small bazaar of camp-followers, consisting of goat-herds, bread, milk, and butter-sellers, etc., which had accompanied us from Allahabad, had returned to Cawnpore, none daring to accompany the force into Oude. This was most disappointing for young soldiers with good appetites and sound digestions, who depended on bazaar chupatties,[6] with a chittack[7] of butter and a pint of goat's milk at the end of the march, to eke out the scanty commissariat allowance of rations. What made the privation the more keenly felt, was the custom of serving out at one time three days' biscuits, supposed to run four to the pound, but which, I fear, were often short weight. Speaking for myself, I did not control my appetite, but commenced to eat from my haversack on the march, the whole of my three days' biscuits usually disappearing before we reached the first halting-ground, and believe me, I ran no danger of a fit of indigestion. To demolish twelve ordinary-sized ship's biscuits, during a march of twenty to twenty-five miles, was no great tax on a young and healthy stomach.
I may here remark that my experience is that, after a forced march, it would be far more beneficial to the men if the general commanding were to serve out an extra ration of tea or coffee with a pound of bread or biscuit instead of extra grog. The latter was often issued during the forced marches of the Mutiny, but never an extra ration of food; and my experience is that a pint of good tea is far more refreshing than a dram of rum. Let me also note here most emphatically that regimental canteens and the fixed ration of rum in the field are the bane of the army. At the same time I am no teetotaller. In addition to the bazaar people, our cooks and dhobies[8] had also deserted. This was not such a serious matter for the Ninety-Third just fresh from the Crimea, as it was for the old Indian regiments. Men for cooking were at once told off for each of our tents; but the cooking-utensils had also gone with the cooks, or not come on; the rear-guard had seen nothing of them. There were, however, large copper water-cans attached to each tent, and these were soon brought into use for cooking, and plenty of earthen pots were to be found in the deserted houses of the villagers. Highlanders, and especially Highlanders who are old campaigners, are not lacking in resources where the preparation of food is concerned.
I will relate a rather amusing incident which happened to the men of the colour-sergeant's tent of my company,—Colour-Sergeant David Morton, a Fifeshire man, an old soldier of close on twenty years' service, one of the old "unlimited service" men, whose regimental number was 1100, if I remember rightly. A soldier's approximate service, I may here state, can almost always be told from his regimental number, as each man on enlisting takes the next consecutive number in the regiment, and as these numbers often range up to 8000 or even 10,000 before commencing again at No. 1, it is obvious that the earlier numbers indicate the oldest soldiers. The men in the Ninety-Third with numbers between 1000 and 2000 had been with the regiment in Canada before the Crimean war, so David Morton, it will be seen, was an old soldier; but he had never seen tobacco growing in the field, and in the search for fuel to cook a dinner, he had come across a small plot of luxuriant tobacco leaf. He came back with an armful of it for Duncan Mackenzie, who was the improvised cook for the men of his tent, and told us all that he had secured a rare treat for our soup, having fallen on a plot of "real Scotch curly kail!" The men were all hungry, and the tobacco leaves were soon chopped fine, washed, and put into the soup. But when that soup was cooked it was a "caution." I was the only non-smoker in the squad, and was the first to detect that instead of "real Scotch curly kail" we had got "death in the pot!" As before remarked we were all hungry, having marched over twenty miles since we had last tasted food. Although noticing that there was something wrong about the soup and the "curly kail," I had swallowed enough to act as a powerful emetic before I was aware of the full extent of the bitter taste. At first we feared it was a deadly poison, and so we were all much relieved when the bheestie, who picked up some of the rejected stalks, assured us that it was only green tobacco which had been cooked in the soup.
The desertion of our camp-followers was significant. An army in India is followed by another army whose general or commander-in-chief is the bazaar kotwal.[9] These people carry all their household goods and families with them, their only houses being their little tents. The elder men, at the time of which I write, could all talk of the victories of Lords Lake and Combermere, and the Caubul war of 1840-42, and the younger hands could tell us of the victories of Lords Gough and Hardinge in the Punjâb. The younger generations took up the handicrafts of their fathers, as barbers, cobblers, cooks, shoeblacks, and so forth, a motley hive bred in camps but unwarlike, always in the rear of the army. Most of these camp-followers were low-caste Hindoos, very few of them were Mahommedans, except the bheesties. I may remark that the bheesties and the dooly-bearers (the latter were under the hospital guard) were the only camp-followers who did not desert us when we crossed into Oude.[10] The natives fully believed that our column was doomed to extermination; there is no doubt that they knew of the powerful force collecting in our rear, consisting of the Gwalior Contingent, which had never yet been beaten and was supposed to be invincible; also of the Central India mutineers who were gathering for a fresh attack on Cawnpore under the leadership of Nânâ Sâhib, Kooer Sing, Tântia Topee, and other commanders. But we learned all this afterwards, when this army retook Cawnpore in our rear, which story I will relate in its proper place. For the present, we must resume our advance into Oude.