Red squares, with the dust boiling round them, and shot screaming overhead or ploughing through with a clap like thunder; men were falling, sometimes singly, sometimes hurtled aside as a shot tore into the ranks; I saw a great swathe, six files wide, cut by grape at the corner of the 9th's square, and the air filled with red spray. Before me a horse gun suddenly stood up on end, its muzzle split like a stalk of celery, and then it crashed down in a hellish tangle of fallen men and stricken horses. It was as though a gale of iron rain was sweeping the ranks, coming God knew whence, for the dust and smoke enveloped us—and Mad Charley was hauling at my bridle, urging me through it.
There's never a time when pain and fear don't matter, but sometimes shock is so bewildering that you don't think of them. One such time is when you wake up to find that good artillery has got your range and is pounding you to pieces; there's nothing to be done, no time even to hope you won't be hit, and you can't hurl yourself to the ground and lie there squealing—not when you find you're alongside Paddy Gough himself, and he's pulling off his bandana and telling you to wrap it round your fin and pay attention.
"Put your finger on the knot, man! There, now—look ahead and take close note of what ye see!"
He yanked the bandage tight, and pointed, and through tears of anguish and terror I looked beyond the clouds of settling dust.
A bare half-mile away the plain was alive with horsemen. The artillery teams who'd been shelling us, light camel swivels and heavier field pieces, were wheeling away through the advancing ranks of a great tide of cavalry cantering towards us knee to knee. It must have been five hundred yards from wing to wing, with lancer regiments on the flanks, and in the centre the heavy squadrons in tunics of white and red, tulwars at the shoulder, the low sun gleaming on polished helms from which stiff plumes stood up like scarlet combs—and only when I remembered those same plumes at Maian Mir did I realise the full horror of what I was seeing. These were Sikh line cavalry, and dazed and barely half-awake as I was, I knew that could mean only one thing, even if it was impossible: we were facing the army of Tej Singh, the cream of the Khalsa thirty thousand strong, who should have been miles away in futile watch on Ferozepore. Now they were here—beyond the approaching storm of horsemen I could see the massed ranks of infantry, regiment on regiment, with the great elephant guns before them. And we were a bare ten thousand, dropping with exhaustion after three battles which had decimated us, and out of food, water, and shot.
Historians say that on that one moment, as the Khalsa's spearhead was rushing at our throat, rested the three centuries of British India. Perhaps. It was surely the moment in which Gough's battered little army stared certain death and destruction in the face, and whatever may have settled our fate later, one man turned the hinge then and there. Without him, we (aye, and perhaps all India) would have been swept away in bloody ruin. I'll wager you've never heard of him, the forgotten brigadier, Mickey White.
It happened in split seconds. Even as I dashed the sweat from my eyes and stared again, the bugles blared along those surging lines of Khalsa horsemen, the tulwars rose in a wave of steel and the great forest of lance-points dipped as the canter became a gallop. Gough was roaring to our men to hold their fire, and I heard Huthwaite yelling that the guns were at the last round, and the muskets of the infantry squares came to the present in a ragged fence of bayonets that must be ridden under as that magnificent sea of men and horses engulfed us. I never saw the like in my life, I who watched the great charge against Campbell's Highlanders at Balaclava—but those were only Russians, while these were the fathers of the Guides and Probyn's and the Bengal Lancers, and the only thing to stop them at full tilt was a horse soldier as good as themselves.
He was there, and he chose his time. A few more seconds and the gallop would have been a charge—but now a trumpet sounded on the right, and wheeling out before our squares came the remnant of our own mounted division, the blue tunics and sabres of the 3rd Lights and the black fezzes and lances of the Native Cavalry, with White at their head, launching themselves at the charge against the enemy's flank. They didn't have the numbers, I hey didn't have the weight, and they were spent, man and beast—but they had the time and the place to perfection, and in a twinkling the Khalsa charge was a struggling confusion of rearing beasts and falling riders and flashing steel as the Lights tore into its heart and the sowar lancers raked across its front.36
My female and civilian readers may wonder how this could be—that a small force of horsemen could confound one far greater. Well, that's the beauty of the flank attack think of six hearty chaps racing forward in line, and one artful dodger barges into the end man, from the side. They're thrown out of kilter, tumbling into one another, and though they're six to one, five of 'em can't come at their attacker. At its best a good flank movement can "roll up" the enemy like a window blind, and while White's charge didn't do that, it threw them quite off course, and when that happens to cavalry in formation their momentum's gone, and good loose riders can play the devil with them.
So what happened under our noses was a deuce of a scrimmage, and though White's horse went down, he was here and there like a wild-cat on foot, with the Lights closing round him, the sabres swinging, and Gough up in his stirrups shouting: "You'll do, Mick! That's your sort, my boy! And who," he roars at me, "are those fellows, will ye tell me?"
I shouted that they were Khalsa regulars, not gorracharra—Mouton's and Foulkes's regiments, for certain, and Gordon's, too, though I couldn't be sure.
"That's the pick of 'em, then!" snaps he. "Well, White's put a flea in their ear, so he has! Now, take you this glass, and tell me about their infantry! West, note it down!"
So while the cavalry rumpus petered out, with the Khalsa horsemen drawing off, and our own fellows, half of them dismounted, limping back to reform, I surveyed that mass of infantry with a sinking heart, calling them off by name—Allard's, Court's, Avitabile's, Delust's, Alvarine's, and the rest of the divisions. The standards were easy to read, and so were those grim bearded faces, sharp in my glass—I could even make out the silver buckles on the black cross-belts, the aigrets in the turbans, and the buttons on the tunics, white and red and blue and green, just as I'd seen them on Maian Mir. How the devil came they here had Tej's colonels lost patience and made him march to the sound of the guns? That must be it, and now that White had played our last card, we could only wait for them to advance and swallow us. The victory of Ferozeshah had become a death-trap—and I remembered Gardner's words: "They reckon they can whip John Company." And now John Company could barely stand up in his shot-torn squares, his pouches and magazines empty, his guns silent, his cavalry lame, and only his bayonets left.
Across the plain spurts of flame flickered along the Khalsa batteries like an electric storm, followed by the thunder of the discharge, the howl of shot overhead, and a hideous crashing and screaming as it burst open our squares. They were making sure, the bastards, pounding us to death at leisure before sending in their foot regiments to cut up the remains; again the dust boiled up as the grape and roundshot tore through the entrenchments; we could stand or we could run. John Company chose to stand, God knows why. In my case, he stood as close behind Gough as might be, too scared even to pray—and a bad choice of position it was, too. For as the bombardment reached its height, and the squares vanished in the rolling red clouds, and our army died by inches, with men going down like skittles and the blood running under our hooves, and some heroic ass bawling: "Die hard, Queen's Own!", and Flashy wondering if he dared cut out under the eye of his Chief, and knowing I hadn't the game for it, and even my wound forgotten as the deadly hail swept through us—suddenly Gough wheeled his horse, looking right and left at the wreck of his army, and the old fellow was absolutely weeping! Then he flung away his hat, and I heard him growclass="underline"