The Story of the Malakand Field Force | Page 7

green and pleasant spot. Nor is there any place in the world where a
soldier might lie in braver company.
After Mardan the road becomes more dusty, and the surrounding
country barren and arid. [This description applies to the autumn season.
In the winter and spring the country for a time is green and the air cold.]
The mountains are approached, and as the tonga advances their shapes
and colours are more distinctly seen. A few knolls and ridges rising
from the level plain, mark the outposts of that great array of hills.
Crossing a shallow stream--a tributary of the Cabul River, Jalala, the
second stage is reached. In peace time a small mud fort is the only
indication, but this is expanded by the proximity of war to a
considerable camp, with an entrenchment around it. Stopping only to
change ponies, for it is a forsaken spot, the journey is resumed. The
avenue of trees on either side has ceased. The road is seen simply as a
white streak stretching towards the mountains. It is traversed in a

sweltering heat and choking dust. All around the country is red, sterile
and burnt up. In front the great wall of hills rises dark and ominous. At
length Dargai at the foot of the pass is reached. It is another mud fort,
swelled during the operations into an entrenched camp, and surrounded
by a network of barbed wire entanglement. The Malakand Pass can
now be seen--a great cleft in the line of mountains--and far up the gorge,
the outline of the fort that guards it, is distinguishable.
The graded road winds up, with many a turn, the long ascent from
Dargai to the top of the pass. The driver flogs the wretched,
sore-backed ponies tirelessly. At length the summit is neared. The view
is one worth stopping to look at. Behind and below, under the haze of
the heat, is the wide expanse of open country--smooth, level, stretching
away to the dim horizon. The tonga turns the corner and enters a new
world. A cooler breeze is blowing. A single step has led from peace to
war; from civilisation to savagery; from India to the mountains. On all
sides the landscape is wild and rugged. Ridge succeeds ridge. Valley
opens into valley. As far as the eye can reach in every direction are
ragged peaks and spurs. The country of the plains is left, and we have
entered a strange land, as tangled as the maze at Hampton Court, with
mountains instead of hedges. So broken and so confused is the ground,
that I despair of conveying a clear impression of it.
The Malakand is like a great cup, of which the rim is broken into
numerous clefts and jagged points. At the bottom of this cup is the
"crater" camp. The deepest cleft is the Malakand Pass. The highest of
the jagged points is Guides Hill, on a spur of which the fort stands. It
needs no technical knowledge to see, that to defend such a place, the
rim of the cup must be held. But in the Malakand, the bottom of the cup
is too small to contain the necessary garrison. The whole position is
therefore, from the military point of view, bad and indefensible. In the
revised and improved scheme of defence, arrangements have been
made, to command the available approaches, and to block such as
cannot be commanded with barbed wire entanglements and other
obstructions; and by a judicious system of works much of the rim is
now held. But even now I am told by competent judges that the place is
a bad one for defence; that the pass could be held by the fort alone, and

that the brigade stationed there would be safer and equally useful, if
withdrawn to Dargai. At the time this story opens the Malakand South
Camp was an impossible place to put troops in. It was easy of access. It
was cramped and commanded by neighbouring heights. [Under the
arrangements which have been made since the war, the Malakand
position and the works at Chakdara and Dargai will be held by two
battalions and some details. These will be supported by a flying column,
the exact location and composition of which are as yet undetermined.]
The small area of the camp on the Kotal necessitated the formation of a
second encampment in the plain of Khar. This was close under the
north outer edge of the cup. It was called for political reasons North
Malakand. As a military position it, also, was radically bad. It was
everywhere commanded, and surrounded by ravines and nullahs, which
made it easy for an enemy to get in, and difficult for troops to get out. It
was, of course, of no strategic value, and was merely