The Dark Defile by Diana Preston Read Free Book Online Page B

men—many again artisans—ran and rode from Kabul to aid the insurgents. Before long, the British were facing at least ten thousand men who occupied the village and surged up a neighboring hill separated by only a narrow gorge from the high ground occupied by Shelton. Meanwhile, on the plains below, “ swarms of their cavalry ” were deploying. As the Afghans opened a galling fire on his men, Shelton rejected the suggestion by some of his officers that the hundred engineers who had accompanied the force for this purpose should throw up a sangar —or stone breastwork—to provide protection and firing positions. Instead he ordered his infantry to stand and to form two squares, two hundred yards apart and with the cavalry between them but slightly to their rear. Eyre thought that forming squares—a tactic by which the British army had successfully repelled Napoleon’s cavalry—was wholly inappropriate against “the distant fire of infantry” with their long-range muskets. The British troops simply presented “a solid mass against the aim of perhaps the best marksmen in the world.”
    By nine A.M. Shelton’s single artillery piece had become too hot from repeated firing to be operated. Unless the gunners could cover the touch hole—or “serve the vent,” as it was known—with their thumb as they rammed the charge home down the barrel, the backdraft they created was likely to ignite smoldering particles from previous firings and cause a premature discharge. With the metal red-hot, serving the vent was impossible. In any case, ammunition was short, and the gunners were exhausted.
    The Afghans had by now advanced so close to the British troops that one of them defiantly planted a flag in the ground a mere thirty yards from the front square. Shelton offered one hundred rupees to any man who could seize it, but no one moved. Seeing the straits the British were in, the attackers, whose ranks included fearless and fanatical ghazis (holy warriors), rushed, yelling wildly, toward the British gun and seized it despite the fierce resistance of the artillerymen. Shelton ordered his cavalry to charge them, but the demoralized troopers would not follow their officers. Also, the infantrymen in the first square began falling back without orders on the second square, and it took all their officers’ forcefulness to rally them.
    But at this critical moment, the Afghan onrush suddenly faltered as news spread through their ranks that Macnaghten’s bête noire, the Achakzai leader Abdullah Khan, had been wounded. Some began to fall back in great confusion, abandoning the British gun, though others had already made off with the horses and limber. This precipitate and unexpected retreat heartened the British, who recaptured their gun. By now it had cooled sufficiently for them to load it with fresh ammunition that had arrived from the cantonments and begin firing once more. Down in the cantonments, Macnaghten and Elphinstone had observed the sudden flight of the Afghans, and the envoy was eager to profit from it. Lady Sale overheard him ask Elphinstone to send troops to pursue the enemy, but the general dismissed the idea as “a wild scheme and not feasible.”
    In the hills the British seemed paralyzed. The cavalry still refused the orders of the officers to advance, while the infantry seemed too exhausted to move forward. Noting that the British were not following up their advantage, the Afghans paused in their flight and rallied. The consequence, as Eyre described, was that “not only did the whole force of the enemy come on with renewed vigour and spirits, maintaining at the same time the fatal jezail fire which had already so grievously thinned our ranks, but fresh numbers poured out of the city, and from the surrounding villages, until the hill occupied by them scarcely afforded room for them to stand.” Before long, the front ranks of the first British square “had been literally mowed down,” and a few minutes later