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Roy Glashan's Library
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Adventure, August 1911, with "The Phantom Battery"
"This happened in a battle to a battery of the corps
That is first among the women, and amazing first in war."
THERE are two roads that lead from Multan in Northwestern India to Dera Ghazi Khan; one of them is a narrow winding road, deep-rutted from the wheels of bullock-carts, crossing the Jhelum River at a point some thirty miles above the proper ford, and two good days' march longer than the Government road. The longer road is the one the natives use. It runs roughly in a semicircle, wandering in and out among the hillocks and clumps of trees and scrub.
The Government road runs straight, almost as Roman roads were built. It is a good, broad, trunk road, built by "John Company" for the use of troops and guns in the days before the railway. The Honorable East India Company naturally enough considered trade and the means of trade before everything else. The trunk road leading to Dera Ghazi Khan is in perfect preservation; it runs straight from point to point; it crosses the unbridled Jhelum at a shallow and comfortable ford which is clearly staked off between the dangerous quick-sands that lie on either side of it; and yet not a native driver, or wandering fakir, priest, farmer or merchant will use it. The journey from Multan to Dera Ghazi Khan is more than a long day's march; one must halt at the ford at sunset; and it is at the hour of sunset that the natives of that part of India would rather not go near the ford.
They make no mystery about it, provided one is not too inquisitive. When asked, they give their reason readily, in all seriousness and evidently expecting to be believed. They are afraid of the Phantom Battery and its phantom sergeant-major. They will tell you it is not good to see the Phantom Battery—and that is all. If you press them, they will tell you that it is not good to talk about it; and although they tell the tale to one another, and especially to their children when the shadows fall at night, it is not easy for a white man to learn the story.
There is no official record of the happening, for there was nobody to take it down; only the natives know the truth of it, and they refused to talk; none of them witnessed it; their fathers said this and that, but what do they know? True, their fathers were honorable men, but memories are short, and—"Nay, but the sahib is joking! There is no Phantom Battery. The longer road toward the north is better for the bullocks, who love to eat the windswept grass; and men can make fires there in the open where no robbers can come on them unawares. True, there are police patrols who protect the Government road, but again the sahib must be joking, for are not the police themselves the worst robbers? Of a truth there is no Phantom Battery." It is not easy to extract a story from the natives of Hindustan.
But piece by piece, detail by detail, a man may arrive at the truth in course of time, if he has only the patience, and can wade through the sea of lies that veil the real India as gossamer veils the beauty of the nautch girls. Somewhere, not very deep below the surface, lies the truth, and it is always worth the seeking.
History is built up of incidents, and often enough it is the most trivial incidents that lead up to the most astounding history. The Indian mutiny is a case in point. The fuel was piled up for it by a long chain of trivialities such as issuing greased cartridges to the native troops, and any spark would have sufficed to set it alight when the hour arrived. No one was to blame for it but "John Company;" and it was made possible, and all but successful, by the careless handling of the Company's troops. As at the present day, there were both native and British troops in India at that time, though the native troops were much more numerous; the latter were well drilled, well armed, officered by Englishmen, and quite sufficient for all general purposes; but a certain number of British soldiers were recruited in England by the Company and shipped to India at vast expense to lend a stiffening to the natives, and in case of need to over-awe them.
Signs of the impending mutiny were plentiful enough, although the Company's officers chose to ignore them, and it was in keeping with the general scheme of carelessness and mismanagement that at the time when the mutiny broke out in the Spring of 1857 a battery of the famous Bengal Horse Artillery should be stationed at Dera Ghazi Khan, practically two days' march from the nearest support. In time of war unsupported artillery is the most hopelessly helpless thing imaginable; the officers of the East India Company knew that as well as anybody else, and no doubt, had they believed that trouble of any kind was really brewing, the battery would have remained in cantonments at Multan in spite of the men's behavior. But nobody believed there would be trouble.
THE men of B Battery had been misbehaving and the cantonments at Multan had become too hot to hold them. The battery "clink" had been invariably full to overflowing, and those of the men who happened to be temporarily out of cells had made it a steady rule to run amuck in the native bazaar. So Major Curtis had been ordered to take his battery under canvas to Dera Ghazi Khan, where the men would have less chance of getting into trouble, and where he could drill them into better behavior. The battery was in disgrace, undergoing well-deserved punishment and being out of sight was for the time being out of mind.
Major Curtis and his brother officers were not unlike the artillery officers of the present day. Their uniform was different in certain details, they swore more frequently and drank infinitely harder, but in all essential details they resembled the modern type. They were gallant and honorable gentlemen, fearless leaders of men, keen on their profession, and free from any taint of physical cowardice.
The men, though, were different. Let no one imagine that they were not good soldiers; they were first-class fighting men. The artillerymen especially were picked from the very best men enlisted in the Company's service. But they were as unlike the modern Tommy Atkins as one man can be unlike another. They were almost all of them illiterate, and many of them had served a term in jail prior to enlistment. All of them were, without exception, rum-swilling, foul-mouthed scoundrels, who had to be kept in order by the fiercest kind of discipline. They were underpaid, sometimes ill-treated, and not always too well fed; and the surroundings of the lines in which they were obliged to live were such as to obliterate any decent instincts any of them may once have had.
Men were recruited in those days anywhere where men were to be had, without regard to character or antecedents, and it was not at all unusual for a magistrate to give a convicted felon the alternative choice of a term in jail or enlistment in the army. Most of them were in the army because no other possible career was open to them. The few among them who had been decent fellows before they enlisted had soon grown accustomed to being regarded as scoundrels merely because they were soldiers, and before long began to vie with the rest in living up to the reputation that was given them.
In those days it was next to impossible for an enlisted man to have any self-respect, for any one of them was liable to be sentenced by court-martial to be tied to a gun-wheel and flogged; and as the authorities seemed to imagine that the worst blackguards made the best fighting material, it is scarcely to be wondered at that the morals of the soldiers in India were unspeakably bad, if indeed they can be said to have had any morals at all.
They could fight, and they did fight—in war for the honor of the regiment or battery, and in peace time with one another; and they were drunk whenever they could get the rum. They had no personal honor whatever, for no man could have any personal honor who had been flogged at a gun-wheel before a crowd of grinning natives or had seen his comrades so flogged; and it is therefore all the more to be wondered at that they held the honor of the battery so dear. It may have been atavism—some memory of the instinct that makes a wolf loyal to the pack, or it may have been some instinct more civilized than that; but the fact remains that had not the hard-bitten, shameless scoundrels who formed the rank and file of B Battery held the honor of their battery more dear than life itself, this story could never have been written. Eight guns would have fallen to the mutineers, and that would be all there would be to say about it—eight guns and their complement of ammunition on the wrong side of the scale at a critical moment.
THE Mutiny broke out on an ever-memorable Sunday in the month of May, 1857, and flamed through all the disaffected part of India with a suddenness that was unbelievable. Nobody has ever solved the mysterious riddle of how news travels in India among the natives; it travels, for the natives know the news; and although in these days modern systems of signalling give the Government an advantage over the native population, in '57 the position was reversed, and the native system of intelligence was very much faster than anything that the British had.
On the day following the outbreak of the Mutiny every native servant, groom, and camp-follower deserted from B Battery. They gave no sign, made no disturbance, and said nothing—they simply disappeared. The incident of course put Major Curtis and his brother officers on their guard, for a wholesale desertion of native supernumeraries must mean trouble of some kind; but they had not the very least suspicion that such a thing as a general mutiny and rebellion could be even possible. Like the rest of the British population of India, they believed that the native troops were absolutely loyal and that the rest of the inhabitants of the country had long ago been cowed into absolute submission.
The guards around the camp were doubled; non-commissioned officers and men were ordered to keep an extra sharp look-out; and certain of the rank and file were told off to do the work of the deserters. That was all. Nobody was particularly worried. A mounted gunner was sent in with despatches to Multan, to inform the commanding officer of the facts. The messenger never got there, but those in camp could not possibly know that. Drill went on as usual. Horses were groomed and fed; meals were eaten; men talked and smoked and drank much as usual—only the guards were told to keep very wide awake and to capture and bring in any suspicious-looking native who might show himself anywhere near the camp.
So it happened that, shortly before sunrise on the Wednesday morning following the outbreak, a native cavalryman, who had remained loyal to the British at what horrible risk to himself only such as he might guess, was taken prisoner as he galloped into the camp with tidings. He was thrown from his horse, disarmed, and sat on before he had time to explain his business, and then frog-marched, face downwards, to the major's tent, where he was kept waiting several minutes.
The man's message was hidden in the cuff of his tunic, where he could easily get at it to swallow it in case of capture. It was written on the thinnest paper procurable, and folded small. The messenger knew well enough that had he been captured he would have been searched thoroughly, and then cut open and searched inside as well, for there were many men among the mutineers who could read English well enough to decipher the meaning of a despatch; but he had counted on being able to chew the letter into pulp before swallowing it. An Indian who is loyal is loyal in everything, down to the smallest details, and it was such as he who saved India for England during one of the darkest periods in her whole history.
As the Major came grumbling from his tent, shivering with the early morning cold, and cursing the fever that racks everybody in turn in that part of the world, the Sikh straightened his turban hastily, saluted, plucked the letter from its hiding-place, and handed it to him without a word. The message gave every known detail of the calamity, and as he read it the Major's face fell.
It ordered him to abandon his camp and report at Multan without losing a minute. It was impossible, the message continued, to send him an escort of cavalry, and he must make the best of it and rely on the speed of his horses and the fear that the natives of the country were known to entertain for artillery. An attempt would be made to meet him on the Multan side of the river, and in any case he could count on every effort being made by the garrison to draw off the attention of the enemy from his battery as he approached Multan.
Above all he was to bear in mind the importance of not letting his guns or ammunition fall into the hands of the mutineers; it would be better to destroy them than that that should happen.
THE Sikh's face was as impassive as a rock as he watched the Major. It was not until the latter had finished reading the letter for the second time that the messenger spoke; when he did speak it was in English.
"And as I crossed the ford last evening, sahib, there was one there, a gunner of the sahib's battery, who was not yet dead. Him I slew."
"Why? What do you mean?"
"With many oaths such as white soldiers use he begged me to kill him, sahib. Thus, with my sword I slew him, severing the neck from his shoulders. Never before was gunner so glad to die."
"What was the matter with him?"
"The mutineers had made him prisoner, sahib, and nailed him after many tortures to the great tree that overlooks the ford on this side. It seems he had not yet crossed the river. He bade me report to you, sahib, that he had thrown your honor's despatches into the river where the mutineers could not get them."
The Major nodded. It is a good plan when dealing with the native races of India not to appear affected by news of any kind. A stiff chin is half the art of ruling. The Major turned to his orderly.
"Summon all the officers to my tent at once, and send the Sergeant-major here."
The Sergeant-major came running at the word, a big gray-haired veteran of thirty years' service and ten campaigns—the best hated and worst feared and wisest soldier in the battery. From time immemorial down to the present day its sergeant-majors have been the back-bone of the British army. Until the actual fighting begins and the officers take charge, the morale and general efficiency of the men depend almost solely on the sergeant-majors, and it is due to their efforts that the officers have a well-knit force to take charge of when the need arises.
This man Flannigan was a splendid specimen of the breed; a bully, for a bully was needed in those days; fearless, for a whole battery of fearless ruffians were afraid of him; untiring, resourceful, completely competent, and wise to the point of cunning in all the rules of war. It was he who had made the battery the most efficient fighting unit in the whole of India, but he had not grown popular in the process.
"Sergeant-major! Have the battery ready to start in ten minutes. Parade in full marching order with all spare ammunition, and abandon everything else. The men must go without breakfast, but tell the quartermaster-sergeant to serve out to each man whatever food he can to eat on the way. The horses are fed and watered already, I suppose?"
"Yes, sir."
"Very well. Be ready in ten minutes."
The Sergeant-major saluted and vanished. He knew his business. Part of it was not to ask questions, and another part of it was to say nothing that was not necessary. The battery had paraded before Major Curtis had finished explaining matters to his brother-officers. As the sun rose above the sky-line, shooting its pale gold beams of light into the purple of the early dawn, the advance guard rode out of camp at the trot, followed shortly after by the battery.
As the rear guard, less than three hundred yards behind, wheeled into line and followed them along the trunk road the camp went up in flames behind them. That was the first intimation that the men received of anything amiss. Since going under canvas they had grown quite accustomed to parading at dawn as part of their daily exercise; they had looked on this parade as part of a well-considered scheme to drill them until they were too tired for mischief. So they had been bad-tempered and sulky on parade—in that sullen mood that all commanders dread. But the sight of the burning camp changed their temper in a flash. Here was evidently what every soldier prayed for—"war, red war, north, south, east, and west," or at least the beginning of it; war, with its loot and the chances of loot, which are almost as good as loot itself! They became as cheerful and well-behaved as children going to a party, and a wave of animation ran through the ranks as a wave runs down the blade of a well-tempered sword when a strong man shakes it.
Major Curtis, eyeing his command, knew then that, heavy though the chances were against him, he was as well equipped to meet them as any commander could be who had an unescorted battery to take over sixty miles of hostile ground. Good horses, and well-drilled men spoiling for trouble—many a big stake has been won on that combination! He made up his mind to cross the ford that night. With his men in their present temper, his wisest plan was to take out of them every ounce he could, for men communicate their animation to the horses they ride, and more than anything he was depending on his horses. The following morning his men and horses would be hungry, and an empty stomach is a wondrous bad thing to fight on. If he was to be attacked he would rather it should happen on the Multan side of the ford, where he might hope for possible support from the town; he hardly expected to be attacked while actually on the march. Probably an effort would be made to surprise him when he halted to rest the horses; the most dangerous place was undoubtedly the ford, rather more than half way to Multan, and he resolved to place that ford behind him as soon as possible.
He grew more and more confident as the road lengthened out behind him. Like all Englishmen of those days, he found it almost impossible to believe that the natives of India would dare to attack picked white troops in the open, and when he halted the battery as the sun grew hot at eleven o'clock he was careful to choose open ground. The men were posted in a circle round about and the horses were given a chance to nibble what dry grass there was. There was no sign of any enemy, or of anything untoward. The men grew contemptuous, and wondered why "the old garron," as they called their Major, had not turned on the natives who had set fire to the camp and "ripped 'em up with grape."
BUT the lookout was as keen as ever when the march was resumed, and no one was taken by surprise when a ragged volley was heard in front, and a solitary gunner came galloping back to report that the enemy were ambuscaded in force in the reeds and long grass over by the river-bank, and between them and the ford.
"Battery, action front!" The command rang out loud and clear before the words were out of the gunner's mouth. "At point-blank range! With grape! By sections! Fire!"
Round after round of grape-shot tore through the cover, ripping the life out of anything that lay there, and effectually clearing the road toward the ford. But a howl and the rattle of fire-arms on every side of them told them that they were in the midst of an ambuscade. Half of the guns were turned about on the instant. The horses, untouched so far, were sheltered in a place where the road ran between two tree-topped hillocks. The battery, fighting in something resembling a hollow square, answered each ragged and ill-aimed volley with shrieking grape-shot that tore up the country-side and searched every scrap of natural cover.
It was a picnic for the men—"the real thing" at last after more than a weary year in cantonments. They blessed their luck, and worked their guns, and grinned as each charge of grape went on its scouring errand.
But the officers looked grim, and the Sergeant-major had one eye on his officers. Ammunition was short, and he and they knew it. The men might have known it too, had they stopped to think. But they had not been trained to think. It was their business to work their guns, and they did it, grinning—quickly, and with precision. They were happy, however their officers might feel; and as for the Sergeant-major, anything that made him look uncomfortable was a good thing; they hated him, and the less he liked a thing they better they felt about it. Meanwhile it was their business to work their guns, and they had nothing left to learn in that particular. Grape was the right dose for natives, and they served it out with a will.
But there was more even than the scarcity of ammunition to worry the officers and the gray old Sergeant-major. The ragged, ill-directed volleys had almost ceased, for the gun-fire had withered up every living thing within range; but a running independent fire, aimed by sharp-shooters from under cover that was artificial and most cunningly contrived, was making the position almost untenable. It was aimed solely at the officers, and two of them were down already, one of them dead, and one coughing out his life quietly among the horses where the men could not see him. He had dragged himself there the moment he was bit, for the sight of a wounded officer is likely to demoralize the steadiest men on occasion. The enemy evidently counted on having the battery at their mercy, once the officers were killed off, and the fire from a dozen rifles was aimed at each one of them persistently.
Then the ragged volleys commenced again. A fresh horde of fanatics was being urged on to destruction—Mohammedans, utterly regardless of death if only the guns might be taken by the survivors.
The steady, insistent sniping continued, and one by one the officers went down—so quietly that only the Sergeant-major noticed it. The enemy began to adopt rushing tactics now. They knew from the deserting orderlies how many rounds of ammunition were with the battery, and somebody had probably tried to count the rounds—and had miscounted them. The rush was timed too soon, and the charging fanatics were mowed down as they came.
The Sergeant-major found himself commanding a whole section, and his voice rose and fell steadily as he gave his orders. The men, accustomed to hearing him on parade, obeyed him naturally, without pausing to wonder why he should be directing their fire now; and the last round was slammed into the muzzle of a gun and rammed home before any of the men realized the state of affairs.
"Sergeant-major!"
He turned. It was Major Curtis, bleeding at the temple and from the mouth. He could scarcely speak, and a bullet-wound in the groin had made it almost impossible for him to stand.
"Quick! The river! Take the guns into the river! The enemy must—not—get—them! Not the ford—the quick-sand—they'll sink. Leave me, I'm dying."
The Sergeant-major saluted.
"Battery! Limber up!" he roared. Few of the men had been hit. There were plenty of them left to work the guns. It was done like lightning.
"Ride one of the guns, sir."
"No! Leave me. See here!"
The Major drew a pistol and placed the muzzle of it in his mouth. The Sergeant-major swung himself on to his horse.
"Battery! Left and right wheel! Charge! Now, ride, you devils! Into the river! Right in! Right incline, there! More to the right! That's it—now ride!"
A hail of bullets followed the retreating guns, but no one, man or horse, seemed to be hit. And there was a howl of rage and disappointment from the rebels as they realized what was happening. They rushed in to interfere—too late. The men had seen the empty limbers, and knew what it meant. They were untamed, unshriven scoundrels with the chance in front of them to die like gentlemen, and they took it with curses on their lips, unflinching. Their own lives, their hopes of loot in this world, and fire in the world to come were nothing. They were riding to save the guns and the honor of B Battery; and the guns jolted and swayed and rocked behind them to the tune of cracking whips and the rattle of empty limbers.
"Come hup! You brute!" The whip lash fell like a flail as the leading horses of Number One reared-up on end, their forelegs pawing the empty air above the river. The following horses, urged on by their driver, crashed into them. The rotten bank crumbled and collapsed. Horses and men and gun, in a swearing, screaming, thundering confusion, plunged into the river, where the boiling quicksand swallowed them. Gun after gun, horses and men and guns, crashed in after them.
And last came the Sergeant-major. He sat his horse calmly on the bank, watching the last limber go swaying up to the brink, turned once to where his dead Major lay face upward on the grass, drove in his spurs, and plunged, with a laugh and "Here goes the last of B Battery!"
Then the sun went down—as it always does go down in India, sliding under the horizon hurriedly, as though nothing ever happened on the earth worth shining on.
WHAT the natives tell their children is, that at sundown the ghosts of the men of B Battery, riding ghostly horses and dragging behind them the ghosts of guns, go charging nightly into the Jhelum River at a place a little above the ford. And for that reason that road is unfrequented, and the long winding trail that loops out many miles toward the north is worn into ruts that are hub-deep by the native bullock carts.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.