Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute - Theo F. Rodenbough (early readers TXT) 📗

its instruction and discipline is modelled after the British system. The artillery comprises well-instructed native organizations, but its principal experience has been with light field guns against irregular troops. The Achilles heel of the Indian army consists in this, that there are but eight European officers to each regiment, and of these but six would be available to lead in battle: the quartermaster and surgeon being at such a time otherwise engaged. The native officers, seldom having an opportunity to command in Peace, would be unreliable leaders in such an emergency. At the action of Ali Musjid, November 21, 1878, the day before the occupation of that fort, six British officers of a native battalion were placed hors de combat, so that on the first day after crossing the Afghan frontier there was but one European officer to manage the regiment.

Besides the regular establishment there are about 10,000 European volunteers (including 4,000 railway officials and employes) available for local defence.

The feudatory chiefs of India enjoy an aggregate revenue of some L15,000,000, equal to more than one third of the income of the British Government of India. They maintain forces aggregating 350,000 men with 4,000 guns to perform the duties of court ceremonial, garrison, military police, guards, and escorts, throughout territories aggregating nearly 600,000 square miles with 50,000,000 of inhabitants. These forces are unreservedly held at the disposal of the Crown by the native Princes.

Transport and Supply.—This essential feature of all wars will be briefly considered in the light of the Anglo-Afghan War of 1879-80. Large quantities of supplies were transported from the main base of operations on the Indus, and distributed to the troops in the field over four or five distinct lines of communication, and over roads, and mountain paths of varied degrees of ruggedness. The country on both sides of the Indo-Afghan frontier was severely taxed to furnish the necessary animals. Part of the transport was hired—and as in the case of the Brahuis camels—with the services of the owners, who were easily offended and likely to decamp with their property in a night. During the first year the system was under the direct control of the commissariat department; but as this proved unsatisfactory, in the subsequent campaign it was entirely reorganized and superintended by an officer of engineers, with a large number of officers from the Line to assist. This gave better satisfaction. Immense numbers of camels died from heat, [Footnote: Of a train of eighteen hundred unloaded camels on the road from Dadur to Jacobabad, for six days in June, six hundred died of exhaustion. In March, 1855 Col. Green, C.B., lost one hundred and seventeen horses out of four hundred, from the heat, during a march of thirty miles.] overwork, irregular food, and neglect. Owing to the dryness of the climate and intense heat of the summer the bullock-carts were perpetually falling to pieces. The mules, donkeys, and ponies gave the best results, but do not abound in sufficient quantities to enable an army in Afghanistan to dispense with camels. A successful experiment in rafting, from Jelalabad to Dakka, was tried. The rafts consisted of inflated skins lashed together with a light framework; between June 4-13, seven thousand skins were used, and, in all, 885 soldiers and one thousand tons of stores were transported forty miles down the Kabul River, the journey taking five hours. A great deal of road-making and repairing was done under the supervision of the transport corps. A system of “stages” or relays of pack-animals or carts was organized, by which a regular quantity of supplies was forwarded over the main lines, daily, with almost the regularity, if not the speed, of rail carriage. The great number of animals employed required a corresponding force of attendants, inspectors, and native doctors, all of whom served to make up that excessive army of “followers” for which Anglo-Indian expeditions are famous. Drivers were required at the following rate: one driver for each pair of bullocks, every four camels, every three mules and ponies, every six donkeys. [Footnote: The average carrying power of certain kinds of transport, in pounds, is as follows: bullock-carts (with two pairs), on fairly level ground, 1,400; on hilly ground, 1,000; (with one pair) on fairly level ground, 850; on hilly ground, 650; camels, 400; mules, 200; ponies, 175; men, 50.]

 

[Illustration: Khelat-i-Ghilzi, between Kandahar and Ghazni.]

 

The great obstacle to the satisfactory operation of the transport system was its novelty and experimental character, and that its organization had to be combined with its execution. Besides which, cholera broke out in June and swept away three hundred employes. Grazing camps were established in the neighborhood of the Bolan Pass for the bullocks, and aqueducts built for the conveyance of a water supply; one of these was of masonry, more than a mile in length, from Dozan down to the Bolan. It has been stated that grazing was scarce in the region of the Bolan: in 1879 more than four thousand bullocks were grazed there during the summer, and large quantities of forage were cut for winter use.

Any prolonged military operations in Afghanistan must, to a certain extent, utilize hired transport, although there are many objections urged.

Sir Richard Temple said (1879): “That the amount of transport required for active service, such as the late campaign in Afghanistan, is so great that to hire transport is synonymous to pressing it from the people of the district from which it is hired, and impressment of the means of transport must lead to impressment of drivers, who naturally (having no interest whatever in the campaign in which they are called upon to serve) render the most unwilling service and take the earliest opportunity of rendering their animals unserviceable in hopes of escaping a distasteful duty. This service is frequently so unpopular that, sooner than leave the boundaries of their native country, the impressed drivers desert, leaving their animals in the hands of the transport authorities or take them away with them… . For the above reasons I should recommend that all transport for a campaign should be the property of Government.”

In commenting on this subject, Lord Wolseley relates that when serving in China with Indian troops he “awoke one morning and found that all our drivers had bolted. Our transport consisted of carts supplied by the Chinese Government, by contractors, and by the country generally. I do not think that the carts had been carried away, but all the mules and men had disappeared except three drivers who belonged to me. I was very much astonished that these men had not bolted also. I had a small detachment of cavalry with me and a very excellent duffadar in charge of it. I asked him how he had managed to keep these drivers—having some time before said that unless he looked after them well he would never get to Pekin. He replied, with some hesitation: ‘I remember what you told me, and the fact is I tied the tails of those three men together, overnight, and then tied them to the tent pole, and put a man over them.’”

The Elephant, like the stage coach, finds his field of usefulness, as a means of transport, growing smaller by degrees. He is still a feature in India, and has been used for military purposes to some extent in the eastern part of Afghanistan. He will doubtless form part of the means of transportation employed by the British forces near their present base, and in rear of the Kabul-Kandahar line, and for that reason is noticed here. [Footnote: The use of elephants in transporting field guns in Afghanistan is emphatically discouraged by those who served with it last; very few flankers were employed to protect the Elephant artillery used in the Kuram valley, and its success can only be interpreted by supposing the direct interposition of Providence or the grossest stupidity to our feeble enemy.]

The Superintendent of the Government Elephant Kheddahs at Dakka has given us, in a recent paper, much information concerning the elephant in freedom and captivity. He does not claim a high order of intelligence, but rather of extraordinary obedience and docility for this animal Very large elephants are exceptional. Twice round the forefoot gives the height at the shoulder; few females attain the height of eight feet; “tuskers,” or male elephants, vary from eight to nine feet; the Maharajah of Nahur, Sirmoor, possesses one standing ten feet five and one half inches. The age varies from 80 to 150 years, according to the best authorities, and it is recorded that those familiar with the haunts of the wild elephant have never found the bones of an elephant that had died a natural death. In freedom they roam in herds of thirty to fifty, always led by a female; mature about twenty-five. In India the males only have tusks; in Ceylon only the females. They are fond of the water, swim well, [Footnote: Elephants have been known to swim a river three hundred yards wide with the hind legs tied together.] but can neither trot nor gallop; their only pace is a walk, which may be Increased to a shuffle of fifteen miles an hour for a very short distance; they cannot leap, and a ditch eight by eight feet would be impassable.

 

[Illustration: Elephant with Artillery; on the Road to Ali Musjid.]

 

In Bengal and Southern India elephants particularly abound, and seem to be increasing in numbers. In the Billigurungan Hills, a range of three hundred square miles on the borders of Mysore, they made their appearance about eighty years ago; yet prior to that time this region was under high cultivation, traces of orchards, orange groves, and iron-smelting furnaces remaining in what is now a howling wilderness. Elephants are caught in stockades or kraals. The Government employs hunting parties of 350 natives trained to the work, and more than 100 animals are sometimes secured in a single drive.

New elephants are trained by first rubbing them down with bamboo rods, and shouting at them, and by tying them with ropes; they are taught to kneel by taking them into streams about five feet deep, when the sun is hot, and prodding them on the back with sharp sticks.

The total number of elephants maintained is eight hundred, of which one half are used for military purposes. They consume about 400 pounds of green, or 250 pounds of dry fodder daily, and are also given unhusked rice. An elephant is expected to carry about 1,200 pounds with ease. In the Abyssinian Expedition elephants travelled many hundreds of miles, carrying from 1,500 to 1,800 pounds (including their gear), but out of forty-four, five died from exhaustion; they are capable of working from morning to night, or of remaining under their loads for twenty hours at a stretch. [Footnote: There is no “elephant gun-drill” laid down in the Imperial Regulations, but when the gun goes into action the elephant is made to kneel, and long “skids” are placed against the cradle upon which the gun rests, so as to form an inclined plane to the ground. The gun is then lifted off the cradle and down the skids by levers and tackle.]

An elephant’s gear consists of a gaddela, or quilted cloth, 1-1/2 inches thick, reaching half-way down his sides and from the neck to the croup. On this is placed the guddu, or pad, 6x5 feet and 9 inches thick, formed of stout sacking stuffed with dried grass. The whole is girthed with a long rope passed twice around the body, round the neck as a breast-strap, and under the tail as a crupper. The whole weighs 200 pounds. An improvement upon this has been made by our authority (Mr. Sanderson), which seems to bear the same relation to the old gear that the open McClellan saddle does to the ordinary British hunting saddle.