THE CALL OF THE WEST. A SKETCH OF AN INDIAN REGIMENT.

Through the ‘Kutcha’[7] of the Derajat runs the Indus: it is a shifting river and its tremendous sword of water carves now this channel, now that, on its way to the sea. In 1914 many acres of trees fell before its silver blade in the wood of Turton’s Folly that skirts the approach to the cantonment of Dera Ismail Khan. The road to the railhead at Darya Khan ever shifts with the river’s whims, and is but a track across the drifting sand dunes of the desert. The Indus is a mighty traveller, and the bridge of boats is flung across her in a new place every autumn so that the road travels far from the obliterated line of the previous year. The folk whom one meets upon the road are nomads, or those persistent travellers the Powindahs, who pass over the desert and river in their thousands to leave no more trace than the clouds that travel with the wind. The history of the region is the history of hawk-like travellers; of Alexander the Great who came down the grim passes, horse, foot, and man; of raiders who travel right swiftly and of cavalry that pursues, to this very day. Only the city and the mountains speak of permanence, for the cantonment with its lines and its bungalows is but a halting ground for the soldier folk, who have no abiding place, but travel always like the shifting river and the sands and the winds of the Derajat.

In August 1914 every Sahib gripped his sword when he thought of home, but in the Derajat Brigade the declaration of war did little more than recall its officers from leave, and they came back many hundreds of miles to look at the mountains, whose tribesmen only respect a frontier that is held against them by armed men, as frowning follies that kept them back from real war. September saw a Punjab regiment marching towards those dark hills to take over the Gumal outposts, and another regiment marched back on relief into the cantonment. Very early in October the great conflict levied its first contribution; some sepoys and sowars of a Sikh regiment and a cavalry regiment left Dera Ismail Khan as reinforcements for other corps; leaves from the tree blown by the breeze to the war’s whirlwind. But the cantonment still only stood sentry over the lawless of the frontier hills, nor could move to the war. Then, on October 11, a summons came, and ran along the wires to the Punjabis’ headquarters at Tank, and to Khajuri Kach, and Jandola, and the smaller outposts, that for the first time in the history of the frontier a regiment was to march away from the hills to war, to travel like the Indus to the sea, and cross the pathless ocean to the West.

Now those birds of passage, the Sahibs, go home by that familiar waterway, but for the man of the Punjab it was a summons to ‘Active Service Overseas’ and a strange land. Yet death is the strangest land of all to both Sahibs and sepoys, and in its vast region lies the eternal home of every traveller, so that they faced the way to the unknown right gladly together, and the reservists hastened to join them. There were as many rumours as there were men in the ranks, and each rumour was an enemy. To the Dogras there was the suggestion of violated caste in foreign lands; to the Sikh the pleasant whisper that the Raj feared the Khalsa and was carting the Sikhs away in ships to sink them; to the Pathan the assertion that the German Emperor and his Army were of the Mahomedan faith. But little cared the sepoys in the outposts—where doubtless they knew of the order before their officers, for the wires whisper many things well understood by the babus e’er ever they give official utterance—as they made haste to hand over to the Mahomedan regiment that marched hot foot to relieve them, while a regiment from down-country was railed north with all speed to keep the frontier cantonment at full strength. The Punjab regiment tramped into Dera Ismail Khan in little brown detachments that crossed the wide pale desert to the jingle of mules and the rumble of transport carts, and encamped on a bare parade ground awaiting orders. The General commanding the Derajat Brigade had his orders by then for the great war, so that the cantonment knew yet one more change. The Punjab regiment was extraordinarily busy; all the paraphernalia wherewith each human being encumbers himself, multiplied by one thousand, had to be dealt with. Mess trophies and treasures had to be packed; the regimental office had to be packed; all surplus kit had to be packed. Officers’ bungalows found new tenants; officers’ dogs found new owners; officers’ wives stood ready for their voyage to England on such dates and in such ships as the embarkation officer’s wire should direct. Very quickly the armed host shook itself free of encumbrance and stood equipped for war, the while post-cards from the sepoys’ homes fluttered into their camp, pleading ‘Come to me. Don’t go.’ And the voices that answered this pleading of hidden wives, the voices that replied to the hundred rumours—deep voices of sepoys speaking in the vernacular—will ring in my heart till I die. Thus, a Sikh, speaking to his officer’s wife of his ‘house’: ‘Nay, Huzur, I have not written. What profit to write? She will but say, “Take leave and come, I am ill,” and at this hour what man can get leave? This is without doubt no hour for leave. She will say, “Do not go,” having no understanding, but the Presence knows that there is an Order to go. Therefore from Karachi I will send a post-card saying, “I have gone. Bǎs!”[8]’ Yet it took thought for the welfare of its wives, this regiment of married men, and there was satisfaction in their tones when they announced to the Englishwoman,—‘The Colonel Sahib says that the Government will make provision for them, and that it will be in no man’s power to take it from them. That money will be no one’s “hukh,”[9] Protector of the Poor.’ Some hundred husbands knew content at the word of one man,—‘the Colonel Sahib says.’ And thus the Indian officers, very courteously,—‘We have eaten your salt and we fear nothing: it is good that we go.’ The Hindus spoke ever of the King, ‘Our King calls us,’ but the Mahomedan looked to his officer, ‘My Sahib is pleased to go; I also am pleased.’ All ranks spoke of the regiment’s name: ‘It is good for the name of the regiment that we go.’

A stripling rose up from among the hot shadows on the veranda, ‘Huzur, I am now the Sahib’s orderly. When the regiment went to Somaliland my father was the Sahib’s orderly. My father is dead, but I am the orderly of the Sahib.’ Something more here than the vow taken on enlistment: some vow this of the heart’s own making. And in the camp a spirit stirring among the menials: a young sweeper, son of a line sweeper, salaaming low to his Memsahib, ‘I am known to all men of the regiment, I go with the regiment.’ Surely they go upward as they go onward, these armed hosts of men who lift such humble beings out of the dust of themselves?

The club in the evenings was very gay, as though the fierceness of man was forged from bright metal. The comradeship was deep; ‘brothers in arms’ meant much to those soldier folk; the unspoken word was expressed in every handgrip, ‘Honorary member of my table, you give me orders, or take mine, but both serve King and Country—here’s luck to you.’ And when, on October 27, the Punjab regiment went forth to the war of the world, the courtesy and the tremendous sentiment which the Army feels for the Army was written plain by the cantonment for the city to see. And the city watched in little groups that drifted out through its narrow gates and took up positions where the desert breaks away from the military roads, and the piety of a Hindu has built a bathing place for such pilgrims as desire to perform orthodox ablutions in the waters of the hurrying river. Balu Ram’s Ghat was bleached by vivid sunshine, and an old Brahman accepted the respectful greetings of such as were not thrice-born. The portly tradesman of the cantonment, Beli Ram, whisked up on his bicycle and waited to watch them pass—those Sahibs who jested with him and paid his big bills when promotion worked miracles. Fat and lazy, yet not without shrewd enterprise; plausible and intriguing, but keeping faith in much; charitable, good-natured, indulgent to little children, he was well known to every man, woman, and child in the throng, and those sacrificial men of war, about to set forth on their perilous way, would carry him with them in their memories as ‘not half a bad fellow, old Beli Ram.’

In an empty bungalow among the litter of packing-cases, one young bearer was weeping shamefacedly. For many days he had protested his wish to follow his Sahib’s fortunes, but the night before departure the unknown had assumed a terrific aspect: the landsman dreaded the sea, the servant feared the bloody service of war—the spirit failed. His small bundles swayed aloft on a laden camel towards Darya Khan, but he stayed behind.

In one of the city dwellings two low-caste men, a syce and his brother, argued through the drowsy noon. Family debt, family affection cried ‘Stay,’ and so the charger was led to the door by an orderly who, saluting, announced ‘The syce has run away, what can be done? Nothing can be done. He has entirely departed, the son of Satan.’

The General and his Staff rode through the troops and took up a position beyond the Ghat. The band of a Sikh regiment sent its music rolling out over the river and the dunes. The wives of the officers made a little knot close to the shrine.

The disciplined wheat-coloured companies rippled out on to the dusty road, and those waiting by Balu Ram’s Ghat heard a shout rise deep-throated from its ranks, heard a cheer rise from the troops, horse, foot and guns, that lined its route, and heard the echoes die away across the desert sands, to rise and fall again and again.

In England regiments were marching through London Town, and the traffic was being held back at the crossings, while the housemaids threw open the upper windows and waved handkerchiefs; but by October crowds were silent, having grown weary of cheering the new warlike pageant of their thronged streets. In the hearts of the watching wives, and in the hearts of the British officers, the thoughts were of that hour at home, and not a little of the verdict which the people of those busy streets would pass on these Indian soldiers marching out of Dera Ismail Khan: men of strange faiths, men of diverse tongues, men of no education save for that stern schooling of war decreed by David the soldier poet—‘Thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things.’ Doran had raised this clan in 1857 at the urgent bidding of Lawrence, and it had crossed the seas in turn to China, Burma, and Somaliland, but never with so ill a wind, blowing no man aught of good, as is brewed to-day in Germany’s poisonous cauldrons. It had fought its way to Kabul, and been taken out of victorious action by a subaltern at Ali Masjid, but no mine nor shell had laid its young men low. It had nursed a British regiment that was sick unto death with cholera, and knew no white man by name, or sight, who would slay women, children, and the wounded. Long ago, in November 1858, it had passed from the service of stout John Company to the great service of the Crown, and for fifty-three years it served Empress and Emperors before it laid eyes on the person of its Sovereign, what time each Hindu officer and sepoy, among the millions of Calcutta folk, accounted that sacred privilege of beholding King George more favourable to the soul than three pilgrimages piously performed. In all its history only one man had set foot in England, an Afridi subadar, who attended the Coronation and returned full of mighty tales of the fabulous amount of milk given by our cows, of the work of scavengers done by Jews only, and many things hard to credit. But it was familiar with things strange to the far-off British Isles, this Indian regiment; earthquakes had tossed the villages of the Dogras to rubbish heaps in the spring of 1905, and for weary years plague had stricken the homes of Sikhs and Punjabi Mahomedans, while the neighbours of the Khattaks and Afridis ever held finger to rifle trigger. Neither pestilence, famine, battle, murder, nor sudden death were unknown to the men whose footsteps the knot of watchers by the Ghat could hear approaching, though months of sunless skies and sodden ground, bitter poverty of European slums, flowers tossed to the man of the East by white women, vast lands without mosque or temple or breath of the thronged bazaar, were things outside their experience, and beyond their imagination, on that October noonday.

The lay mind may fear or favour a regiment’s violence, but it is extraordinarily prone to lose sight of a regiment’s vocation. Now it had been brought home to one of the Englishwomen watching that regiment go forth to war that its strength was dedicated; for on a cold November morning in the Punjab she had seen a line of recruits drawn up opposite the battalion, and had heard the oath and affirmation taken in the vernacular which appointed each recruit a soldier and not a mere public executioner. Roughly translated, this is what she had heard,—‘I do swear,’ the Hindu youngster vowed; ‘I do swear by the holy Granth,’ declared the Sikh stripling; ‘I do solemnly affirm in the presence of Almighty God,’ the youthful Punjabi Mahomedan and Pathan said;—‘that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to His Majesty the King Emperor, his heirs, and successors, and that I will as in duty bound honestly and faithfully serve in His Majesty’s Indian Forces, and go wherever I am ordered by land or by sea. And that I will observe and obey all commands of any officer set over me, even to the peril of my life.’ Thus, all the lusty yeomen of the northern plains and hills, among whom the Hindus added, ‘So help me God.’ Whereupon, very impressively, the battalion paid its highest honour, and gave its most profound welcome, to its sworn men by presenting arms to them. Moreover, in this matter of vocation, the handful of British officers, who, from the day of the regiment’s birth, had guided it in the way it should go through succeeding generations, held a mandate that invoked supreme authority:

‘By the Grace of God ... Defender of the Faith ... to our trusty and well beloved ... Gentleman, greeting. We, reposing special trust and confidence in your loyalty, courage, and good conduct, do by these presents constitute and appoint you to be an Officer ... and you are at all times to exercise and well discipline in arms, both the inferior officers and men serving under you, and use your best endeavours to keep them in good order and discipline. And We do hereby command them to obey you as their superior officer, and you to observe and follow such orders and directions, as from time to time you shall receive from Us or any your Superior Officer, according to the rules and discipline of war in pursuance of the trust hereby reposed in you.’

And so when, across the shadeless parade ground where only the clouds threw shadows, the shouting ranks approached the Ghat, it was plain that each soldier felt with the Israelites of old that it is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in princes or in man, for the Dogras were calling on Kali, the Sikhs on their Gurus, and the Mahomedans on Allah the God of Battles.

Only a bugler was given to frivolity. Some weeks before, in the pride of his schooling, he had questioned a Memsahib eagerly, ‘Can the Presence read? Can the Presence write?’ and was crestfallen at meeting his match. Yet a professional hope remained. ‘Can the Presence beegle?’[10] he challenged, and established complete superiority. His mother had stood by his side that day; a tall, dignified, strictly secluded woman of the purdah, but neither she, nor any Indian wife or mother of the sepoy folk, stood watching the regiment depart. Only the Englishwomen bade all God speed, while the happy little bugler went forth to war and cheered his own performance.

The British officers wheeled their chargers up to the group of their countrywomen; and the Indian officers left the shouting companies to step aside, salute, and shake hands. Then all passed on. The Sikh band struck up ‘For Auld Lang Syne,’ and many thought of the gallant comrade who would never be forgotten by his regiment, now leaving his lonely grave behind. It was a strangely dramatic chance that turned this regiment of all regiments away from the hills of the Mahsuds, for scarce six months were gone since that day when, with reversed arms, it had laid to rest the great Dodd, soldier, ruler, and friend of the frontier where he fell, foully murdered, amid the false peace of his own border garden. On the day of his burial the thunder roared from the treacherous hills, the Last Post bade him sleep well, the solemn volleys promised stern remembrance, and every officer and man of his regiment longed to avenge him according to the Rules of War. But the orders and directions ran otherwise, and so ‘Doran Sahib-ki-Paltan’ marched away from Waziristan, through Balu Ram’s Ghat, with all the officers of the brigade bearing it good company as far as the bridge of boats across the Indus, whence it set forth to a destination unknown, with the trusty and well-beloved Gentlemen leading.

That night the young bearer realised suddenly that his Sahib had gone, and, like a dog that misses his master and gives chase, he stood up and clamoured to the officer’s wife, ‘Huzur, get me an ekha that I may now drive to Darya Khan while there is yet time. Without doubt I must of necessity go with my Sahib.’ Half an hour later a scarecrow wrapped in a blanket stood at her door, and a syce’s voice insisted, ‘Memsahib! Memsahib! get me an ekha and I will go to the Sahib and Moti the mare. And give no money to my brother, Huzur, for he has taken all my clothes so that I should not go. But I go now very swiftly. There is four annas to pay to the khansamah, if the Presence will give it? Salaam!’

And over the dim desert, through the starless night, by the groping light of little crazy oil lamps, with endless joltings and bumpings, to where the sleeping regiment waited to entrain at dawn, there drove urgently Burgwan Das, bearer, and Bhagu, syce.

John Travers.

FOOTNOTES