Chapter II: Part 2

The 48th Pioneers are recruited almost entirely from Labanas, a tribe whose history goes back to the beginning of time. There are Labanas, of course, who are not Sikhs. The Raja of the community is a Hindu and lives at Philibit, and there are Labana hillmen about Simla, farmers in the Punjab, traders in the Deccan and Bombay, and owners of ships; but I have no doubt that the pick of them are those that have enlisted in the Khalsa. The Labanas were soldiers at least two thousand years before Govind, and according to tradition formed the armed transport of the Pandavas and brought in the fuel (labanke--a kind of brushwood, hence the tribal name) for the heroes of the Mahabharata. I heard this story from a Labana Sikh one night on the upper reaches of the Euphrates near Khan Baghdadi, when we were miles ahead of our transport and had rounded up a whole army of Turks. He told it me with such impressment that I felt it must be true, though no doubt there are spoilers of romance who would unweave the web.

Theoretically Sikhism acknowledges no caste; but in practice the Sikh of Jat or Rajput descent will not eat or drink with Sikhs drawn from the menial classes, though the lowest in the social scale have been tried and proved on the field, and shown themselves possessed of military qualities which, apart from caste prejudice, should admit them to an equal place in the brotherhood of the faithful. The Mazbhis are a case in point. The first of this despised sweeper class to attain distinction were the three whom Guru Govind admitted into the Khalsa as a reward for their fidelity and devotion when they rescued the body of Tegh Bahodur, the murdered ninth Guru, from the fanatical Moslem mob at Delhi. When Sikhism was fighting for its life, these outcasts were caught up in the wave of chivalry and "gentled their condition;" but as soon as the Khalsa were dominant in the Punjab the Mazbhis found that the equality their religion promised them existed in theory rather than fact. They occupied much the same position among the Jat- and Khattri-descended Sikhs as their ancestors, the sweepers, enjoyed amongst the Hindus. They were debarred from all privileges, and were at one time even excluded from the army. It fell to the British to restore the status of the Mazbhi, or rather to give him the opening by which he was able to re-establish his honour and self-esteem. The occasion was in the Mutiny of 1857, when we were in great need of trained sappers for the siege-work at Delhi. A number of Mazbhis who were employed at the time in the canal works at Madhopur were offered military service and enlisted readily. On the march to Delhi these raw recruits fought like veterans. They were attacked by the rebels, beat them off, and saved the whole of the ammunition and treasure. During the siege Neville Chamberlain wrote of them that "their courage amounted to utter recklessness of life." Eight of them carried the powder-bags to blow up the Kashmir Gate, under Home and Salkeld. Their names are inscribed on the arch to-day and have become historical. John Lawrence wrote of the deed as one of "deliberate and sustained courage, as noble as any that ever graced the annals of war."

The Mazbhis are recruited for the Sikh Pioneer regiments, the 23rd, 32nd, and 34th, sister regiments of whom one, or more, has been engaged in nearly every frontier campaign from Waziristan in 1860 to the Abor expedition in 1911. It was the 32nd who carried the guns over the Shandur Pass in the snow, in the march from Gilgit, and relieved the British garrison in Chitral. The 34th were among the earliest Indian regiments engaged in France, and the Mazbhis gained distinction in October, 1914, when they were pushed up to relieve the French cavalry, and the Sikh officers carried on the defence for a day and a night under repeated attacks when their British officers had fallen. Great, too, was the gallantry of the Indian officers of the regiment at Festubert (November, 1914), and the spirit of the ranks. Yet the Mazbhis are still excluded from most privileges by the Khalsa. They are not eligible for the other Sikh class regiments. Nor are they acceptable in the cavalry or in other arms, for the aristocratic Jat Sikh, as a rule, refuses to serve with them. Yet you will find a sprinkling of Jat Sikhs in the Mazbhi Pioneer regiments--quick-witted, ambitious men usually, who are ready to make some sacrifice in the way of social prestige for the sake of more rapid promotion. The solid old Mazbhis, with all their sterling virtues, are not quick at picking up ideas. It is sometimes difficult to find men among them with the initiative to make good officers. Thus in a Mazbhi regiment the more subtle-minded Jat does not find it such a stiff climb out of the ranks.

It would be a mistake to think that the Jat Sikh is necessarily a better man in a scrap than the Mazbhi, though this is no doubt assumed as a matter of course by officers whose acquaintance with the Sikh is confined to the Jat. I shall never forget introducing a young captain in a Mazbhi regiment to a very senior Colonel on the Staff. The colonel in his early days had been a subaltern in the --th Sikhs, but had put in most of his life's work in "Q" Branch up at Simla, and did not know a great deal about the Sikh or any other sepoy. He turned to the young leader of Mazbhis, who is quite the keenest regimental officer I know, and said--

"Your men are Mazbhis, aren't they? But I suppose you have a stiffening of Jats."

The youngster's eyes glinted rage and he breathed fire.

"STIFFENING, sir? Stiffening of JATS! Our men are Mazbhis."

Stiffening was an unhappy word, and it stuck in the boy's gorge for weeks. To stiffen the Mazbhi;

"to gild refined gold,
To add another hue unto the rainbow,"

all come in the same catalogue of ridiculous excess. Stiffening! Why the man is solid concrete. It would take a stream of molten lava to make him budge. Or, as Atkins would say--

"He wants a crump on his blamed cokernut before he knows things is beginning to get a bit 'ot, and then he ain't sure."

It was to stiffen his men a bit, as they were all jiwans and likely to get a little flustered, that old Khattak Singh, Subadar of the 34th Sikh Pioneers, called "Left, right; right, left," as the regiment tramped into action at Dujaila; but the Mazbhi did not want stiffening. It is rather his part to contribute the inflexible element when there is fear of a bent or broken line. In the action at Jebel Hamrin, on March 25, 1917, when we tried to drive the Turks from a strong position in the hills, where they outnumbered us, the Mazbhis showed us how stiff they could be. They were divisional troops and for months they had been employed in wiring our line at night,--a wearing business, standing about for hours in the dark, under a blind but hot fire, casualties every night and never a shot at the Turk. So tired were they of being fired at without returning the enemy's fire that, when they got the chance at Jebel Hamrin and were rolling over visible Turks, for a long time they could not be induced to retire. The Turks were bringing off an enveloping movement which threatened our right. The order had been given for the retirement. But the Mazbhis did not, or would not, hear it. Somebody, I forget whether it was a British officer, or if it was an Indian officer after the British officers had all fallen, said that he would not retire without a written order. Ninety of them out of one hundred and fifty fell. Old Khattak Singh got back in the night, walked six miles to the hospital with seven wounds, one in his shoulder and two in his thigh, and said, "I had ninety rounds. I fired them all at the Turks and killed a few. Now I am happy and may as well lie up for a bit."

The Staff Colonel had a certain spice of humour, if little tact, and I think he rather liked the boy for his outburst in defence of his dear Mazbhis. To the outsider these little passages afford continual amusement. One has to mix with different regiments a long time before one can follow all the _nuances_, but it does not take long to realize to what extent the British officer is a partisan. Insensibly he suffers through his affections a kind of conversion. He comes to see many things as his men see them, even to adopt their own estimate of themselves in relation to other sepoys. And one would not have it otherwise. It speaks well for the qualities of the Indian soldier, for the courage, kindliness, loyalty, and faith with which he binds his British officer to his own community. It may be very narrow and wrong, but an Indian regiment is the better fighting unit for it. Better an enthusiasm that is sometimes ridiculous than a lukewarm attachment. The officer who does not think much of his jiwans will not go far with them. There are cases, of course, where pride runs riot and verges on snobbishness. I remember a subaltern who was shocked at the idea of his men playing hockey with a regiment recruited from a lower caste. And I once knew a field officer in a class regiment of Jat Sikhs who, I am sure, would have felt very uncomfortable if he had been asked to sit down at table with an officer who commanded Mazbhis. Yet, I am told, he was a fine soldier.

Fanatics of his kidney were happily rare. I use the past tense for they have gone with the best, and I am speaking generally of a school that has vanished. It may be resuscitated, but it will hardly be in our time. Too many of the old campaigners, transmitters of tradition, splendid fellows who lived for the regiment and swore by it, are dead or crippled, and the pick of the Indian Army Reserve has been reaped by the same scythe. The gaps have had to be filled so fast and from a material so unready that one meets officers now who know nothing about their sepoys, who do not understand their language and who are not even interested in them, youngsters intended for other walks of life who will never be impressed by the Indian soldier until they have first learnt to impress him.

THE PUNJABI MUSSALMAN

The "P. M.", or Punjabi Mussalman, is a difficult type to describe. Next to the Sikh, he makes up the greater part of the Indian Army. Yet, outside camps and messes, one hears little of him. The reason is that in appearance there is nothing very distinctive about him; in character he combines the traits of the various stocks from which he is sprung, and these are legion; also, as there are no P. M. class regiments, he is never collectively in the public eye.

Yet the P. M. has played a conspicuous part in nearly every action the Indian Army has fought in the war, and in every frontier campaign for generations; in gallantry, coolness, endurance, dependability, he is every bit as good as the best.

"Why don't you write about the P. M.?" a friend in the Nth asked me once. He was a major in a Punjabi regiment, and had grown grey in service with them.

We were standing on the platform of a flanking trench screened by sandbags from Turkish snipers, looking out over the marsh at Sannaiyat. Nothing had happened to write home about for six months, not since we delivered our third and bloodiest attack on the position on the 22nd April. The water had receded nearly a thousand yards since then. Our wire fences stood out high and dry on the alkaline soil. The blue lake seemed to stretch away into the interstices of the hills which in the haze looked a bare dozen miles away.

Two days before our last attack in April the water was clean across our front six inches deep, with another six inches of mud; on the 21st it was subsiding; on the 22nd the flooded ground was heavy, but it was decided that there was just a chance. So the assault was delivered. The Turkish front line was flooded; there was no one in it, and it was not until we had passed it that we were really in difficulties. The second line of trenches was neck deep in water; behind it there was a network of dug-outs and pits into which we floundered blindly. Beyond this, between the Turkish second and third lines, the mud was knee deep. The Highlanders, a composite battalion of the Black Watch and Seaforths, and the 92nd Punjabis, as they struggled grimly through, came under a terrific fire. It was here that their splendid gallantry was mocked by one of those circumstances which make one look darkly for the hand of God in war.

The breeches of their rifles had become choked and jammed with mud. The Jocks were tearing at them with their teeth, panting and sobbing, and choking for breath. They were almost at grips with the Turk, but could not return his fire.

The last action we fought for Kut was unsuccessful, but the gallantry of the men who poured into that narrow front through the marsh will become historic. The Highlanders hardly need praise. The constancy of these battalions has come to be regarded as a natural law. "The Jocks were magnificent," my friend said, "as they always are. So were the Indians."

And amongst the Indians were the P. Ms. There were other classes of sepoy who may have done as well, but the remnants of the three Indian battalions in this fight were mostly Punjabi Mussalmans. And here, as at Nasiriyeh, Ctesiphon and Kut-el-Amara, in Egypt and France, at Ypres, Festubert and Serapeum, the P. M. covered himself with glory. The Jock, that sparing critic of men, had nothing but good words for him.

"Yes! Why don't you write about the P. M.?" the Major asked. One of the reasons why I had not written about the P. M. is that he is a very difficult person to write about. There is nothing very salient or characteristic about him; or rather, he has the characteristics of most other sepoys. To write about the P. M. is to write about the Indian Army. And that is why, to my friend's intense annoyance, the man in the street, who speaks glibly of Gurkha, Sikh, and Pathan, has never heard of him.

"Here's the old P. M. sweating blood," he said, "all through the show, slogging away, sticking it out like a good 'un, and as modest as you make 'em. Never bukhs; never comes up after a show and tells you what he has done. You don't know unless you see him. Old Shere Khan, our bomb havildar, was hit through both jaws on the 22nd. He got two bullets in the arm. Then he was shot in the lungs. But it was only when he got his fifth wound in the leg that he ceased to lead his men and limped back to the first-aid post. All our B. O.'s were down, but a doctor man with the Highlanders happened to see the whole thing. So Shere Khan was promoted."

The Major was bound to his P. Ms. with hoops of steel. It was the rifles with fixed bayonets slung from pegs between the sandbags that recalled Polonius' metaphor. It seemed more apt at Sannaiyat.

He introduced me to the Jemadar, Ghulam Ali, a man with a mouth like a rat-trap and remarkable for a kind of dour smartness. The end of his pagri was drawn out into a jaunty little tuft by the side of his kula. His long hair, oiled, but uncurled, fell down to the nape of his neck. Ghulam Ali, though shot through the forearm himself, had built up a screen of earth round his Sahib when he was severely wounded at the Wadi, stayed with him till dusk, helped him back to better cover, and then returned to the firing line to bring in a lance-naik on his shoulders.

There were very few of the old crowd left in the trenches. "These youngsters are mostly recruits," the Major explained, "but they are a good lot. I wish you could have seen Subadar ----," and he mentioned a man who had practically run a district in East Africa all on his own when there was no white man by. A tremendous character. "And Subadar-Major Farman Ali Bahadar. He got the D.S.M. when he was with us in Egypt, led a handful of his men across the open at Touffoum, and turned the Turkish flank very neatly. He got an I.O.M. at Sheikh Saad. And he led the regiment back at Sannaiyat when all the British officers were down. He was a Khoreshi, by the way."

A Khoreshi is a member of the tribe of the Prophet. A good Khoreshi is a man to be sought for and honoured, for his influence is great; but a bad Khoreshi among the P. Ms. is as big a nuisance as a Mir among Pathans.

"A kind of ecclesiastical dignitary," the Major explained, "a sort of Rural Dean. You will find men who funk him for reasons which have nothing to do with discipline; and if he pulls the wrong way it is the very devil."

The P. Ms. in the trenches were varied in type. There was nothing distinctive or showy about them, only they all looked workman-like; Sikh, Jat, and Punjabi Mussalman are mostly of common stock, and they assimilate so much in feature that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between them. The P. Ms. ancestry may be Rajput, Jat, Gujar, Arab or Mogul. There are more than 400 tribes which he can derive from, and these are broken up into innumerable sects and sub-divisions. He does not pride himself on his class, but on his clan. The generic "izzat" of the P. M. is merged in the specific "izzat" of the Gakkar, Tiwana, Awan, or whatever he may be. "Punjabi Mussalman" is a purely official designation. And that is why the general public hears so little of him.

As a class he is a kind of Indian Everyman and comprises all. You will find among the P. Ms. every variety of type, from the big-boned Awan, stalwart of the Salt Range, to the thin-bearded little hillman of Poonch; from the Tiwanas, bloods of the Thai country who give us the pick of our cavalry and will not serve on foot, to the wiry Baluchi, who has forgotten the language and observances of his kinsmen over the border. You will find descendants of all the Muhammadan invaders of India, from the time of Mahmud of Ghazni in A.D. 1001, and of pre-Islamic invaders centuries before that, and of the converts of every considerable Moslem freebooter since. The recruiting officer encourages pride of race, which is generally accompanied with a soldierly bearing and pride in arms, though the oldest stock is not always the best. You will find among the P. Ms. Khoreshis and Sayads of the tribes of the Prophet and of Ali, Gakkars who will only give their daughters to Sayads, Ketwals who descended from Alexander the Great. The Bhatti are Pliny's Baternae. The Awans claim descent from the iconoclast Mahmud. At Sannaiyat I saw a Jungua of the Jhelum district who might have stood for a portrait of Disraeli. The true, or spurious, seed of the Moguls are scattered all over the Punjab, and there are scions of ancient Rajput stock like the Ghorewahas, who preserve their bards and are still half Hindus, and the Manj, who are too blue-blooded to follow the plough. But as a rule the P. M. has less frills than the Hindu of the same stock; he will lend a hand at any honest work, and falls easily into disciplinary ways.

What is it then that differentiates the Punjabi Mussalman? I put the case to my friend.

"Your P. M. comes from all stocks, has the same ancestor as the Jat, the Sikh, the Rajput, or the Pathan. Can you tell me exactly what being a P. M. does for him?"

The Major was unable to enlighten me fully. He told me what I had heard officers say of other classes of sepoy; only he left out all their faults.

"Personally, I think the P. M. is more human," he said. "He is not so proud as the ----, or so ambitious as the ----, or so mean as the ----, or so stupid as the ----. He is a cheery soul, and when he gets money he doesn't mind spending it. He is the most natural and direct of men, and there is no damned humbug about him. I remember old Fazal Khan pulling up a jiwan (youth) we had up, and who was being cross-examined in an inquiry about some lost ammunition. The youngster hedged, corrected himself, modified his statements, and generally betrayed his reluctance to come to the point. Fazal Khan's rebuke was characteristic. 'Judging distance ka mafik gawahi mut do!' he said ('Don't give your evidence as if you were judging distance at the range!'). He had a wholesome contempt for civilian ways. The regiment was giving a tamasha in the lines--an anniversary show--and one of our subalterns suggested putting up a row of flags all the way from the gate to the marquee. But Fazal Khan was not for it. 'No, sahib!' he said gravely, 'too civil ka mafik,' 'the sort of thing a civilian would do.' The old fellow is a soldier all through."

The Major's story gave me a glimmering of what it was that being a P. M. did for Fazal Khan and his brood. "There is no damned humbug about them,"--which was his way of saying that his friends neglect the arts of insinuation.

"There is something downright about the P. M. Even when he is mishandled, he is not mulish, only dispirited. And he'll do anything for the right kind of Sahib. Besides, look how he rolls up, recruiting is now better than ever--he is the backbone of the Indian Army."

A good "certifkit" and I think in the main true, though necessarily partial. But the Major was not literally accurate in saying that the P. M. is the backbone of the Indian Army. The Sikhs would have something to say to that, for 214 companies of infantry, including the class regiments, and forty squadrons of cavalry, are recruited entirely from the Khalsa, besides a large proportion of sappers and miners, and half the mountain batteries. The Gurkhas contribute twenty battalions of foot, but they serve only in the infantry. Taking infantry, cavalry, artillery and sappers, the P. M. in point of numbers is an easy second to the Sikh.[6]

There are, of course, Mussalman sepoys and sowars recruited from other provinces than the Punjab. Those from the United Provinces fall under the official designation of "Hindustani Mussalman," and need not be differentiated from the Muhammadans east of the Jumna. The same qualities may be discovered in any clan; the difference is only in degree; it is among the Punjabi Mussalmans that you will find the pick of Islam in the Indian Army.

Of quality it is difficult to speak. He is a bold man who would generalise upon the Indian Army, more especially upon the Punjab fighting stocks. The truth is that, if you pick the best of them and give them the same officers, there is nothing to choose between Sikh, Jat, and Punjabi Mussalman. Only you must be careful to choose your men from districts where they inherit the land and are not alien and browbeaten, but carry their heads high.

Why, then, if the P. M. is as good as the best, has he not been discovered by the man in the street? One reason I have suggested. You can shut your eyes in the Haymarket and conjure up an image of Gurkha, Sikh, or Pathan, but you cannot thus airily summon the P. M.--because he is Everyman, the type of all. Another source of his obscurity is the illogical nomenclature of the Indian Army. A class designation does not mean a class regiment. How many Baluchis proper are there in the so-called Baluchi regiments? Who gives a thought to the Dogras, P. Ms. and Pathans in the 51st, 52nd, 53rd, and 54th Sikhs, the Dekkani Mussalman in the Maharatta regiments, or the Dogras and P. Ms. in the 40th Pathans? Now the P. M. only exists in the composite battalions. He has no class regiment of his own. You may look in vain in the Army List for the 49th Gakkars, 50th Awans, or the 69th Punjabi Mussalmans. Hence it is that the P. M. swells the honour of others, while his own name is not increased.

Every boy in the street heard of the 40th Pathans at Ypres, but few knew that there were two companies of P. Ms. in the crowd--"as good as any of them," the Major said, "men who would stiffen any regiment in the Indian Army."

And when it is generally known that the ---- Sikhs were first into the Turkish trenches on the right bank at Sheikh Saad and captured the two mountain guns, nobody is likely to hear anything of the P. M. company who was with them, a composite part of the battalion.

The Major's men had been complimented for every action they had been in, and this was the scene of their most desperate struggle. But there was little to recall the Sannaiyat of April--only an occasional bullet whistling overhead, or cracking against the sandbags. Instead of mud a thin dust was flying and the peaceful birds stood by the edge of the lake.

I wished the P. M. could have his Homer. Happily he is not concerned with the newspaper paragraph. Were the Press to discover him it is doubtful if he would hear of it. He enlists freely. He is such an obvious fact, stands out so saliently wherever the Indian Army is doing anything, looms so large everywhere, that it has probably never entered his head that his light could be obscured. But his British officer takes the indifference of the profane crowd to heart. When he hears the Sikh, Gurkha, and Pathan spoken of collectively as synonymous with the Indian Army he is displeased; and his displeasure is natural, if not philosophic. If he were philosophic he would find consolation in the same sheets which annoy him, for it is better to be ignored than to be advertised in a foolish way. It is with a joy that has no roots in pride that the Indian Army officer reads of the Gurkha hurling his kukri at the foe, or blooding his virgin blade on the forearms of the self-devoting ladies of Marseilles, or of the grave, bearded Sikhs handing round the hubble-bubble with the blood still wet on their swords; or of the Bengali lancer dismounting and charging the serried ranks of the Hun with his spear. Hearing of these wonders, the Sahib who commands the Punjabi Mussalman, and loves his men, will discover comfort in obscurity.

THE PATHAN

One often hears British officers in the Indian Army say that the Pathan has more in common with the Englishman than other sepoys. This is because he is an individualist. Personality has more play on the border, and the tribesman is not bound by the complicated ritual that lays so many restrictions on the Indian soldier. His life is more free. He is more direct and outspoken, not so suspicious or self-conscious. He is a gambler and a sportsman, and a bit of an adventurer, restless by nature, and always ready to take on a new thing. He has a good deal of _joie de vivre_. His sense of humour approximates to that of Thomas Atkins, and is much more subtle than the Gurkha's, though he laughs at the same things. He will smoke a pipe with the Dublin Fusiliers and share his biscuits with the man of Cardiff or Kent. He is a Highlander, and so, like the Gurkhas, naturally attracted by the Scot. Yet behind all these superficial points of resemblance he has a code which in ultimate things cuts him off from the British soldier with as clean a line of demarcation as an unbridged crevasse.

The Pathan's code is very simple and distinct in primal and essential things. The laws of hospitality, retaliation, and the sanctuary of his hearth to the guest or fugitive are seldom violated. But acting within the code the Pathan can indulge his bloodthirstiness, treachery, and vindictiveness to an extent unsanctioned by the tables of the law prescribed by other races and creeds. It is a savage code, and the only saving grace about the business is that the Pathan is true to it, such as it is, and expects to be dealt with by others as he deals by them. The main fact in life across the border is the badi, or blood-feud. Few families or tribes are without their vendettas. Everything that matters hinges on them, and if an old feud is settled by mediation through the Jirgah, there are seeds of a new one ready to spring up in every contact of life. The favour of women, insults, injuries, murder, debt, inheritance, boundaries, water-rights,--all these disputes are taken up by the kin of the men concerned, and it is a point of honour to assassinate, openly or by stealth, any one connected by blood with the other side, however innocent he may be of the original provocation. Truces are arranged at times by mutual convenience for ploughing, sowing, or harvest; but as a rule it is very difficult for a man involved in a badi to leave his watch-tower, and still more difficult for him to return to it. It will be understood that the Pathan is an artist in taking cover. He probably has a communication trench of his own from his stronghold to his field, and no one better understands the uses of dead ground.

What makes these blood-feuds so endless and uncompromising is that quarrels begun in passion are continued in cold blood for good form. The Malik Din and Kambur Khil have been at war for nearly a century and nobody remembers how it all began. It is a point of honour to retaliate, however inconvenient the state of siege may be. The most ordinary routine of life may become impossible. The young Pathan may be itching to stroll out and lie on a bank and bask or fall asleep in the sun. But this would be to deliver himself into the hands of his enemy. There is no dishonour in creeping up and stabbing a man in the back when he is sleeping; but there is very great dishonour in failing to take an advantage of an adversary or neglecting to prosecute a blood feud to its finish. Such softness is a kind of moral leprosy in the eyes of the Pathan.

With so much at stake the Pathan cannot afford to be long away from home. In peacetime he frequently puts in for short leave. "Sahib," Sher Ali explains, "it is the most pressing matter." And the Sahib gathers that evil is likely to befall either Sher Ali's family or his neighbour Akbar Khan's during the next two weeks, and is bound by the brotherhood of arms to provide, so far as he is able, that it is not Sher Ali's. So the Pathan slips away from his regiment, anticipating the advertised date of his leave by consent, for there are men in his company connected by blood ties with the other party--men perhaps who are so far committed that they would lie up for Sher Ali themselves on a dark night if they were away on leave in their own country at the same time. But the code does not permit the prosecution of a vendetta in the regiment. A Pathan may find himself stretched beside his heart's abhorrence in a night picquet, the two of them alone together, alert, with finger on the trigger. They may have spent interminable long hours stalking each other in their own hills, but here they are safe as in sanctuary.

The trans-frontier Pathan would not wittingly have enlisted in the Indian Army if he could have foreseen the prospect of a three years' campaign in a foreign land. The security of his wife, his children, his cattle, his land, depend on his occasional appearance in his village. The interests of the Indian sepoy are protected by the magistrate and the police, but across the border the property of the man who goes away and fights may become the property of the man who stays at home. The exile is putting all the trump cards into his enemy's hands. The score will be mounting up against him. His name will become less, if not his kin; his womenkind may be dishonoured. In the event of his return the other party will have put up such a tally that it will take him all his time to pay off old scores. After a year of "the insane war" in which he has no real stake, and from which he can see no probable retreat, he is likely to take thought and brood. Government cannot protect his land and family; continued exile may mean the abandonment of all he has. In the tribal feud the man away on long service is likely to go under; the man on the spot has things all his own way.

Now the Pathan is a casuist. He is more strict in the observance of the letter of his code than in the observance of the spirit. An oath on the Koran is generally binding where there is no opening for equivocation, but it is not always respected if it can be evaded by a quibble. A Pathan informer was tempted by a police officer to give the names of a gang of dacoits.

"Sahib," he said, "I've sworn not to betray any son of man."

"You need not betray them," the officer suggested. "Don't tell me, tell the wall."

The Pathan was sorely tempted. He thought over the ethics. Then he smiled, and, like Pyramus, he addressed the wall:

"Oh! whited wall," he began, "their names are Mirza Yahya, Abdulla Khan...."

The code was not violated, as with a robust conscience the Pathan gave away the name of every man in the gang.

A tribesman who boasts that he would not injure a hair of an unclean swine which took sanctuary in his house, will conduct the guest with whom he has broken bread just beyond the limits of his property and shoot him. In a land dispute a mullah ordained that the two rival claimants should walk the boundary of the property in question on oath, each carrying a Koran on his head. They walked over the same ground, and each bore witness that he trod his paternal acres, and they did so without shame, for each had concealed a bit of his own undoubted soil in his shoe. When a round or two of ammunition are missing, the subadar of the company will raise a little heap of dust on the parade ground and make each man as he passes by plunge his clenched fist in it, and swear that he has not got the ammunition. The rounds are generally found in the dustheap, and nobody is perjured.

An officer in a Pathan militia regiment found a stumpy little tree stuck in the sand near the gate of the camp where trees do not grow. He was puzzled, and asked one Indian officer after another to explain. They all grinned rather sheepishly. "It is this way, Sahib," one of them said at last. "We lose a number of small things in the camp. Now when an object is lost the theft is announced, and each man as he passes the tree says, 'Allah curse the Budmash who stole the boots,' or the dish, or the turban, or whatever it may be. And so it will happen sometimes that the article will be found hanging in the fork of the tree in the morning when darkness gives place to light."

The Pathan cannot bear up under the weight of such commination, it spoils his sleep at night. Not that he has a sensitive conscience: theft, murder, and adultery are not crimes to him in the abstract, but only so far as they violate hospitality or loyalty to a bond. He has no sentiment, or inkling of chivalry; but he must save his face, avoid shame, follow the code, and prefer death to ridicule or dishonour. One of the axioms of his code is that he must be true to his salt. The trans-frontier Pathan is not a subject of the King as is the British Indian sepoy, but he has taken an oath. An oath is in the ordinary way binding, but if it can be shown that he has sworn unwittingly and against his religion--every text in the Koran is capable of a double interpretation--why, then the obligation is annulled. "Your religion comes first"--the argument is put to him by the Hun and the Turk. "No oath sworn to infidels can compel you to break your faith with Allah." The Pathan is not normally a religious fanatic any more than the Punjabi Mussalman. Had he been so he would not have ranged himself with us against an Islamic enemy, as he has done in every frontier campaign for the last half-century. But in this war Islam offered him the one decent retreat from an intolerable position.

There were one or two cases of desertion among the Pathans in France and Mesopotamia. The Pathan did not expect absolution if he fell into our hands afterwards, or if he were caught trying to slip away. Forgiveness is not in his nature. But think of the temptation, the easiness of self-persuasion. Remember how subtly the maggot of sophistry works even in the head of the Christian divine. Then listen to the burning words of the Jehad:--

"Act not so that the history of your family may be stained with the ink of disgrace and the blood of your Muhammadan brethren be shed for the attainment of the objects of unbelievers. We write this to you in compliance with the orders of God Almighty, the kind and also stern Avenger."

A hundred texts might be quoted, and have been quoted, from the Koran to show that it is obligatory for the Moslem soldier to fight against his King's enemies, whether they be of his own faith or no. But how many, after taking thought and counsel of expediency, are quite sure that black is not white after all! The deserter may not escape to the Hun lines and the pretended converts of Islam, whom instinct, stirring beneath the Jehadist's logic, must teach him to despise. And he is for the wall if he is caught, shamefully led out and bandaged and shot in the eyes of his brethren who have been true to their oath. None of us would hesitate to slip the trigger against a traitor of his kidney. The man's very memory is abhorred. Yet in dealing out summary execution one should remember the strong bias that deflected his mind. Out of the mud and poisoned gas of Flanders. Out of Mesopotamia. Out of the blood and fruitless sacrifice, the doom of celibacy, the monotony which is only broken by the variety it offers of different shapes of disease and death. Back to his tower and maize field if his kin have held them, and his wife if she has waited for him, and all in the name of honour and religion.

It may seem a mistake in writing of a brave people to take note of backsliders; but the instances in which the Pathan has been seduced from loyalty have been so discussed that it is better for the collective honour of the race to examine the psychological side of it frankly. It would be a great injustice to the Pathan if it were thought that any failed us through fear.

In courage and coolness the Pathan is the unquestioned equal of any man. Mir Dast, of Coke's Rifles F.F., attached to Wilde's Rifles F.F. in France, the first Indian officer to win the V.C., was a type of the best class of Afridi. No one who knew him was surprised to hear how, at the second battle of Ypres, after all his officers had fallen, he selected and consolidated a line with his small handful of men; how, though wounded and gassed himself, he held the ground he had hastily scratched up, walking fearlessly up and down encouraging his men; how, satisfied at last that the line was secure, he continued to carry in one disabled man after another, British and Indian, back to safety under heavy fire. Mir Dast had told the Colonel of the 55th, when he left the battalion in Bannu to join the regiment he was attached to in France, that he would not come back without the Victoria Cross. "Now that Indians may compete for this greatest of all bahadris," he said, "I shall return with it or remain on the field." And he did not say this in a boastful manner, but quietly as a matter of course, as though there were no other alternative; just as a boxer might tell you by way of assurance, repeating an understood thing, that he was going to fight on until the other man was knocked out. I met Mir Dast afterwards in hospital, and was struck with the extraordinary dignity and quiet reserve of the man; an impression of gallantry was conveyed in his brow and eyes, like a stamp on metal.

It was in the Mohmand campaign that Mir Dast won the I.O.M., in those days the nearest Indian equivalent to the V.C. An officer friend of mine and his who spoke to him in his stretcher after the fight, told me that he found Mir Dast beaming. "I am very pleased, Sahib," he said. "I've had a good fight, and I've killed the man that wounded me." And he held up his bayonet and pointed to a foot-long stain of blood. He had been shot through the thigh at three yards, but had lunged forward and got his man. On the same day another Afridi did a very Pathan-like thing. I will tell the story here, as it is typical of the impetuous, reckless daring of the breed, that sudden lust for honour which sweeps the Pathan off his feet, and carries him sometimes to the achievement of the impossible--an impulse, brilliant while it lasts, but not so admirable as the more enduring flame that is always trimmed and burns steadily without flaring.

Nur Baz was a younger man than Mir Dast, and one of the same Afridi company. It entered his head, just as it entered the head of Mir Dast when he left Bannu for France, that he must achieve something really remarkable. The young man was of the volatile, boastful sort, very different from the hero of Ypres, and to his quick imagination the conception of his bahadri was the same thing as the accomplishment of it, or the difference, if there were any, was only one of tense. So he began to talk about what he was going to do until he wearied the young officer to whom he was orderly. "Bring me your bahadri first, Nur Baz," the subaltern said a little impatiently, "then I shall congratulate you, but don't bukh so much about it."

The pride went out of Nur Baz at this snub as the air out of a pricked bladder, and he was very shamefaced until his opportunity came. This was in the same attack in which Mir Dast fell. The regiment were burning a village, and the Afridi company had to clear the ridge behind which commanded it; they and another Pathan company were attacking up parallel spurs. Nur Baz, finding that his orderly work committed him to a secondary _rôle_ in the operations, asked if he might join his section, which was to lead the attack. He obtained his officer's consent, and was soon scrambling up the hillside in the pursuit. When the leading section extended he found the advance too slow, so he squatted behind a boulder, waited until the wave had got on a few yards, then dived down to the bottom of the nullah, climbed up again under cover, and in a few minutes appeared on the edge of the spur some 250 yards in advance of the assault. A yell of rage went up from the Pathans behind when they found that Nur Baz had forestalled them and was going to be first in at the death. But Nur Baz was happy as he leapt from one great boulder to another, the ground spitting up under him, and stopped every moment to get in a shot at the men in the sangar in front. Just as he reached it a Martini bullet struck his rifle in the small of the butt and broke off the stock. He could not fire now, but he fixed his bayonet and charged the sangar with his broken weapon. There were three men in it when he clambered over the parapet. One was dead, another who had missed him with his muzzle-loader a second or two before was reloading, and the third was slipping away. Nur Baz bayoneted the man who was reloading just as he withdrew the rod with which he was ramming the charge home; then he picked up the dead man's rifle and shot the fugitive; thus he cleared his little bit of front alone.

His subaltern had watched this very spectacular bit of bahadri from the parallel spur; but he only discovered that the central figure of it was his orderly when Mir Dast in his stretcher remarked, "Nur Baz has done well, Sahib, hasn't he?" Afterwards Nur Baz appeared "with a jaw like a bulldog, grinning all over, and the three rifles slung to his shoulder," and received the congratulations of his Sahib.

"Sahib," he said, "will you honour me by taking one of these? Choose the one you like best."

The subaltern selected the muzzle-loader, but Nur Baz demurred.

"I must first see the Colonel Sahib," he said, "if you choose that one."

"And why?"

"It is loaded, and it is not permitted to fire off a round in the camp without the Colonel Sahib's permission."

Just then the Colonel arrived, and Nur Baz, having obtained permission, raised the rifle jauntily to his shoulder and with evident satisfaction loosed the bullet which ought to have cracked his brain pan into the empty air. Nur Baz and Mir Dast, though differing much in style, both had a great deal of the original Pathan in them.

One more story of an Afridi. It was in France. There had been an unsuccessful attack on the German lines. A sergeant of the Black Watch was lying dead in no-man's land, and the Hun sniper who had accounted for him lay somewhere in his near neighbourhood; he had lain there for hours taking toll of all who exposed themselves. It was getting dark when an officer of the 57th Rifles saw a Pathan, Sher Khan, pushing his way along the trench towards the spot. The man was wasting no time; he was evidently on some errand, only he carried no rifle. The officer called after him:

"Hello, Sher Khan, where are you off to?"

"I am going to get the sniper, Sahib, who shot the sergeant."

"But why haven't you got a rifle?"

"I am not going to dirty mine, Sahib. I'll take the sergeant's."

It was still light when he crawled over the parapet and wriggled his way down a furrow to where the sergeant lay. The sniper saw him, and missed him twice. Sher Khan did not reply to this fire. He lay quite still by the side of the Highlander and gently detached one of his spats. This he arranged so that in the half light it looked like a white face peeping over the man's body. Then he withdrew twenty yards to one side and waited. Soon the Hun's head appeared from his pit a few yards off and disappeared quickly. But Sher Khan bided his time. The sniper was evidently intrigued, and as it grew darker he exposed himself a little more each time he raised his head peering at the white face over the dead Highlander's shoulder. At last he knelt upright, reassured--the thing was so motionless; nevertheless he decided that another bullet in it would do no harm. He was taking steady aim when the Pathan fired. The range was too close for a miss even in that light, and the Hun rolled over. Half an hour afterwards Sher Khan returned with the Hun's rifle and the Highlander's under his arm; in his right hand he carried the Hun's helmet, a grisly sight, as his bullet had crashed through the man's brain.

It is his individual touch, his brilliancy in initiative and coolness and daring in execution that has earned the Afridi his high reputation among Pathans. The trans-frontier Pathan with his eternal blood-feuds would naturally have the advantage in this kind of work over the Pathan from our side of the border; his whole life from his boyhood up is a preparation for it. That is why some of the most brilliant soldiers in the Indian Army have been Afridis. On the other hand, collectively and in companies, the cis-frontier Yusafzais and Khattaks have maintained a higher aggregate of the military virtues, especially in the matter of steadiness and "sticking it out."

A strange thing about the Pathan, and inconsistent with his hard-grained, practical nature, is that he is given to visions and epileptic fits. He is visited by the fairies, to use his own expressive phrase. I knew a fine old subadar who believed that these visitations came to him because he had shot a pigeon on a mosque. He became a prey to remorse, and made ineffectual pilgrimages to various shrines to exorcise the spirit. How much of this subconscious side of the Pathan is responsible for his state of mind when he runs amok would be an interesting point for the psychologist. The man broods over some injury or wrong and he is not content until he has translated his vision into fact. Sometimes he goes to work like the Malay, killing in a hot, blind fury. But there is often method in the orgy. It is an orgy of blood, one glorious hour, perhaps, or a few rapturous seconds in which vengeance is attained and satisfaction demanded of collective humanity, and the price to be paid for it, the Pathan's own life, is perfectly well understood.

Take the case of Ashgar Ali. He learnt that a disparaging report as to the work of his brother had been sent in to the O.C. of the battalion by one Fazal-ud-din, a non-commissioned Pathan officer. Fazal-ud-din slept with him in the same tent, and Ashgar Ali lay brooding and sleepless all night. Before daybreak he had devised a plan. In the darkness he removed all the rifles from the tent and hid them outside. He waited till the moon rose. Then standing by the door he shot the betrayer through the head as he slept. He shot another Pathan by his side who leapt to his feet, awakened by the report. Then he slipped away stealthily to the little round knoll which he had marked out for the catastrophe of his drama. Here he kept up a steady fire at any human shape that came within range, a stern dispenser of justice in full measure making good the errors of a too-biased Providence. It was a calculated adjustment of right and wrong, and he kept a cool head as he counted up his tally. He saw his Colonel stalking him, an iron-grey head lifted cautiously from behind a hummock at fifty yards, an easy target. But Ashgar Ali called out, "Keep away, Sahib. I have no quarrel with you. My account is with the men. Keep away, or I must shoot." Snipers were firing at him at long range; a sepoy was creeping up behind, and almost as he spoke he rolled over and lay still.