New Chumbi proved to be a delightful place to wait for the return of the forward party and one of the most pleasant sites for an army staging post that Simon and Alice could remember. All around, the giant mountains looked down, craggy, ice-bound peaks with skirts of dark pines breaking out from the snow lower down. The plain itself was a huge, flat meadow, sprinkled with the remains of the summer’s wild flowers that reminded them all again of home: wild strawberries, anemones, primulas and celandines. Finches and red-legged crows chirped and croaked and larks swooped overhead, singing their more felicitous song, while the bark of a fox could be heard most mornings from the lower foothills as the sun touched the tent tops at about 7 a.m.
‘I am beginnin’ to feel distinctly warmer,’ said Jenkins, returning one morning from the river, holding up two brown trout.
‘How did you get those, for goodness’ sake?’ asked Simon. ‘You don’t have a rod and line with you, do you?’
‘Oh yes.’ He held up one gnarled hand. ‘Me fingers, see. These little fishes love bein’ tickled, look you. Just right for breakfast, isn’t it?’
Fonthill grinned, remembering that Jenkins had been brought up on a farm in North Wales and how his bucolic skills had often saved them from hunger in the wild.
‘The lad got one, too.’ Jenkins jerked his head to where Sunil was running towards them, a silvery fish wriggling in his fist.
The youth had now taken to shadowing the Welshman for much of the time, listening intently as the workings of the Lee Metford, and also of the more modern Lee Enfield rifles carried by Jenkins and Fonthill, were explained to him and adjusting his posture in the saddle under Jenkins’s tuition. Slowly, however, he began also to form a bond with Alice, sitting watching silently as she scribbled her copy and then taking it for clearance to the Gurkha captain who, much to the latter’s disgust and Alice’s chagrin, had been given the task of press censor. He had become, noted Simon, almost one of the family, always there, always anxious to learn or be useful. It was clear that he had not forgotten the language of his ancestors, either, for he had slipped into the role of bargaining on their behalf for the delicacies – buckwheat and potatoes, plus fodder for the animals – that local people had taken to bringing in to the camp.
‘I wish I could take him home to Norfolk,’ confided Alice. ‘He would be invaluable in Norwich market on Saturday mornings.’
Two days later, General Macdonald returned with his forward scouting party.
‘Blimey,’ muttered Jenkins, as the party came into sight far across the plain. ‘It’s not so much a scoutin’ unit, more another bloody army.’
Indeed, it was; a force of some 800 men that the General had taken with him to reconnoitre the way ahead to the north. His objective had been the great fortress of Phari, some twenty-eight miles further up the valley, and over the pass of Tang La towards the towering mass of Mount Chomolhari and so into the interior of Tibet. As the huge scouting party entered the camp the news soon spread: another seemingly impregnable wall across a gorge had had its door opened for the troops and the defenders of Fort Phari itself had welcomed the invaders with open arms, running towards the soldiers with their tongues protruding from open mouths – the mark of friendship.
Fonthill, Alice, Jenkins and Sunil watched the arrival with interest. ‘Hmmm,’ muttered Simon. ‘No cavalry to speak of. Look.’ He pointed. ‘There are only some thirty what you could call horsemen.’
It was true – and they looked completely exhausted. A young red-haired officer led what appeared to be a group of Sikhs, swathed in poshteens, some wearing great fur hats and others with woollen scarves tied across the top of their turbans and under their chins, walking ponies all of whom had their heads hanging low. For these men and beasts, at least, it had obviously been a testing excursion.
‘Not cavalry, really,’ mused Alice.
‘More Mounted Infantry, I’d say,’ offered Jenkins. ‘An’ not well trained at that.’
Simon turned towards Sunil. ‘We all think about Tibet as being a land of mountains and high passes,’ he said. ‘Are there many more plains or plateaus like this one further inland?’
‘Oh yes, sahib.’ The youth nodded his head vigorously. ‘Many. Only not like this one, as I remember.’ He gestured around him. ‘This very nice place, with flowers, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Not further up, through the mountains. There are flat places but very high. Not much grows. Very wide and long and stony and not nice. No, not nice at all. I live there when little.’
Jenkins nodded. ‘We’re goin’ to need cavalry,’ he said. ‘At least for scoutin’ an’ that.’
‘Exactly.’ Frowning, Simon looked across at his old comrade. They had not spoken about the slip over the trail’s edge after they had arrived at the camp, but it had been preying on his mind.
‘I believe that,’ he said, ‘if we have to continue this march onto Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, there are, in all, five high passes to cross – counting the one from which we have just descended. How do you feel about that, 352?’
The Welshman returned the frown. ‘Ah,’ he said eventually. ‘No other way round then, eh?’
‘Afraid not.’
‘Well, to tell you the truth, bach sir, I’d be a bit worried about that, like.’
‘I thought you would be. But I don’t want to leave you behind. Do you think you could manage them?’
Jenkins sucked in his moustache. ‘O’ course I could. Just a question of takin’ a deep breath, look you, an’ stayin away from the bleedin’ edge, like. Nothin’ to it, really, eh?’
Fonthill sighed. ‘Absolutely nothing to it, old chap. Well done. We will all keep our eye on you – and we will rope up. That should make you feel better, eh?’
The Welshman frowned again and stared ahead, to the north-west away towards the towering peaks. ‘Well, if it’s all the same to you, bach sir,’ he said, ‘I’d rather not, see. I’d be worryin’ all the time, like, about bringin’ you all down the mountain the quick way, with me. You see …’ His frowned deepened as he thought for a while. ‘This bein’ frightened of ’eights is silly, really. P’raps after I’ve slipped down the fifteenth mountain I’ll ’ave conquered it, like. So the only way is to keep goin’ with yer chin up, look you.’
‘Good man. That’s the spirit. But we will still keep an eye on you.’
‘Now that would be kind, so it would. Thank you kindly.’
Simon decided not to pay his respects to Brigadier General James Macdonald immediately, for it was clear the man had much to do. But the next morning he sent a message, asking if he could wait upon him. The reply came back: ‘Whenever you like.’
The General, who had, like Fonthill, been appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath, had, Simon knew, originally been ordered to join the mission as a colonel in charge of the building of roads over the border and into Tibet. Later, however, he had been promoted on the express order of his fellow sapper, Lord Kitchener, to take command of the mission’s escort. He had served earlier in East Africa, somewhat controversially, and then in a more fighting role against Muslim rebels in Uganda, but his experience as an Engineer was wide. Nevertheless it was whispered he had been appointed to take military command of the expedition only because he was the most senior officer on the spot in Sikkim nine years later.
The man who stood to meet him at the entrance to his tent was of medium height and certainly looking older than his forty-one years. He was unsmiling and bent to stub out a cigarette as Fonthill approached. His head was bald and his nose, sharply pointed and tipped slightly upwards at its end, stood out above a less than luxurious but wide moustache. The General’s expression, Simon, could not help but note, seemed sad and tired.
‘How do you do,’ he said. ‘Do come inside.’ He spoke with a faint but distinct Aberdeenshire accent.
‘Thank you, General. I hear that you have had a most successful trip up into the mountains.’
‘Ah yes. I suppose one could say that. Cigarette?’ He offered an open silver cigarette box.
‘No, thank you.’
Macdonald struck a match, lit his cigarette and deposited the matchstick carefully into a tray that was laden with nub ends. ‘At least we met no opposition, although that is not to say that we shan’t be opposed if we carry on much further into the hinterland.’
Fonthill noticed the ‘if’, but decided not to query the qualification. Macdonald gestured to a camp stool and sat opposite in a more comfortable folding chair. He was obviously a man of few words and sat, smoking, waiting for Simon to speak.
‘Apart from paying my respects after my arrival, General,’ Fonthill said, breaking the silence, ‘I felt I should talk to you to see if you had any idea of the role you would like me to play in the column.’
‘Hmmm.’ Blue smoke curled past his nose as Macdonald put his head back and considered the tent ceiling for a moment. ‘Lord Kitchener has written to me about you and has commended you warmly to me. Said you did first-class work in South Africa during the last show there.’
‘Yes.’ He regarded Fonthill through the thin cloud of smoke, his eyes narrowed. ‘I think we were both involved in the Boxer Rebellion, although we did not meet.’
‘Really?’ Simon scanned his brain quickly. He had no memory of encountering this wiry, rather distant man in the hothouse that was Peking during the siege of the city. Perhaps on the relief expedition?
He put the question and Macdonald nodded. ‘I ended up as Director of Railways,’ he said. ‘Not the most glorious of postings but I knew of you, of course. You were always out there in front, getting up to all kinds of remarkable things, as I remember.’
The tone of cynicism was alleviated to some extent by a faint smile on the Scotsman’s face, but Simon did not take kindly to it. ‘Well,’ he said, frowning, ‘my wife was locked up in that bloody city beleaguered by those fanatics and I was desperate to get in there and join her. It was a most difficult time – and I have to say that the relief expedition, you will remember, took its time reaching Peking.’
‘Yes. Quite so.’
Another silence fell between them and Simon stirred again. ‘I am quite sure that you have an excellent staff here, General, and I would not wish to intrude at a senior level.’
Macdonald carefully knocked the ash off his cigarette and coughed. ‘Yes. I am very happy with the fellows I have, although, you know, they are all predominantly infantry officers.’ There was another pause. ‘Sooo …’ He drew the word out slowly. ‘Do you have any suggestions to make, Fonthill?’
‘Well, I do so with reluctance, since I have only just arrived here, but I am most anxious to be of use and I agree with Younghusband that I might have rather more to offer on the military side than as some sort of diplomatic aid.’ He smiled, seeking agreement, but Macdonald remained silently regarding him, through his blue smokescreen.
‘Yes … er,’ Simon sought for the right words to continue. Blast the man, he was being forced to present his qualifications for being in Tibet at all! He refused to offer the obligatory ‘Sir,’ and said: ‘General, you may know that I ended the Boer War as a brigadier general – very temporary, I hasten to add – in command of two units of cavalry?’
Macdonald nodded.
‘I spent the last two years of the war – that is when the Boers took to the veldt and, organised as highly mobile commandos, conducted guerrilla warfare against us – I spent it in the saddle chasing those remarkably elusive and, to my mind, rather brilliant farmer generals all over the Free State, Natal and in the Transvaal.’
The General remained silent.
Simon cleared his throat. ‘In fact, the chaps I had were never really trained cavalry at all, in that they were not from the smart regiments, like the Hussars and the Dragoons. No, my men were a rather ragtag lot from the gold fields and cities who volunteered to fight for us. In effect, given that some of them had seen service on foot, they became Mounted Infantry.’
‘Yes.’ Macdonald spoke slowly. ‘I have about thirty of the same sort of fellows with me now, although, of course, they are Indians, mainly Sikh Pioneers.’ He drew on his cigarette again. ‘As far as I can see they have been spending quite a lot of their time falling out of their saddles, but I have a good young Irish chap leading them, young but good.’
Fonthill felt his heart sink. Was his idea going to be rubbished before he proposed it? ‘Yes, I saw them return. They looked as though they were more or less shattered.’
‘They were.’
Another silence. ‘My idea is this, General,’ Simon said, leaning forward. ‘Although I was an infantry subaltern years ago in the old 24th Regiment of Foot in Zululand – you will remember Isandlwana, Rorke’s Drift, etc?’
Macdonald nodded. Damn the man! Didn’t he have a tongue?
‘Yes, well,’ Fonthill continued, ‘I do not consider myself a regular soldier and, anyway, as you say, you have a first-class staff filling the key roles. I have always served outside commissioned ranks, acting as scout and sometimes intelligence officer. The Boer War, however, was different, I was recommissioned and had my own command. Nevertheless, my role was, what you might call, irregular. It was Kitchener’s idea that I should stay with my men out in the veldt, fighting the Boers at their own game. Travelling light, without artillery or baggage, living in the saddle and attacking them wherever we could find them and harassing them when we could not attack.’
Macdonald nodded again, but there seemed to be a light of interest glowing in his dark eyes.
‘Now, things will be very much different here, of course. But you will need horsemen. From what I have learnt of the terrain ahead, it will not be all high, snowbound passes but also vast, stony plateaus, very inhospitable but where you will need mobile scouts to range far ahead of you and spy out the Tibetan defences and indeed their forward movements against you.’ Fonthill paused to gather breath. This was like pushing water uphill.
‘At the moment,’ he continued, ‘you have some thirty men, not well trained by the look of them. You will need more, in my view, with good, hard-working ponies. I know these are difficult to find but you will need them, I promise. I am glad to hear that you have a good young fellow with them at the moment but he looks young and inexperienced.’
He leant forward again in emphasis. ‘General, I can train those men. Sikhs are not generally regarded as good horsemen, but they can learn. I have with me my man Jenkins—’
Macdonald interrupted. ‘The famous 352?’
Ah that was better! ‘Yes, 352 Jenkins. He was my regimental sergeant major in South Africa and gained a bar there to the Distinguished Conduct Medal he earned with me in the Sudan. He is a splendid horseman – a damned sight better than me, I assure you – and he trained all our men in the Transvaal. If you can get more men, Sikhs or whatever, and ponies I will guarantee to train them on the hoof, so to speak, and, given the help of Jenkins and your red-haired fellow, lead them – I hope well.’
His words hung in the air. Then, Macdonald removed the cigarette from his mouth and said: ‘I like the sound of it, Fonthill. It sounds to me as though you could be invaluable. But, you know,’ he stubbed out the cigarette, ‘you would have to have rank. Lieutenant colonel – how would that suit?’ He gave a rare smile. ‘A demotion, I fear, from your last post but probably the best we can do.’
‘That’s of no matter to me, General. I suppose that means that Jenkins must rejoin, too. Perhaps colour sergeant – we shall not exactly be cavalry, only Mounted Infantry?’
‘Very well. Now I must get K’s approval to this, because, although I can promote, I can’t take in someone from outside the army and give him a position of such seniority without his permission. I’ll telegraph him. Mind you, I don’t think we need bother with uniforms out here. They can’t be seen under the poshteens and furs anyway. I will get on with all this now and also inform Ottley – he’s the young captain in charge of our so-called cavalry – that he’s got a new CO.’
Macdonald rose from his chair and extended his hand. ‘Now, if you will excuse me, for I have much to do. Good to have you with us, Fonthill.’
‘Thank you, General.’
Fonthill strode away feeling much happier in his mind. At least he had carved out a role for him and Jenkins to play – and one with which they were reasonably familiar. They would be independent to a large extent and not having to work under the sharp nose of Macdonald. He frowned. A strange fish, indeed! He must obviously be handled with care. So too would Ottley, the young Irishman. He would not take kindly to having a very irregular soldier imposed in command over him. Simon sighed. At least it would be an irregular who had earned the CB and Distinguished Service Order. Perhaps that would mollify him somewhat.
He found the flame-haired captain instructing his Sikhs on how to groom their horses correctly; a good sign. He introduced himself and immediately Ottley’s face lit up.
‘Ah, delighted to meet you, sir,’ he beamed. ‘I read about the work you did with Mounted Infantry on the veldt in the recent bit of trouble. Wish I’d been with you then. What are you up to here, in this godforsaken place?’
Simon coughed awkwardly and then transmitted his news. ‘I am sorry that you will be losing your independence, my dear fellow,’ he said. ‘But I promise that I am here to learn as much from you as you from me. It looks as though you have already done a good job in teaching these Sikhs how to ride.’
The young man’s smile did not lessen. ‘Good lord, no, sir,’ he said. ‘We are not exactly Horse Guards, you know. If a rabbit leaves its hole, half of my troop are liable to fall out of their saddles. But they are good men. Basically good soldiers and I think you will become proud of them.’
Fonthill held out his hand. ‘I am sure I will.’ They shook hands. ‘What is your Christian name?’
‘William.’
‘Good. I will address you so. And you must call me Simon.’ He grinned. ‘No Horse Guards stuff here, William. We will be a very irregular unit. Oh, one more thing I should tell you.’ He explained Jenkins’s role.
Ottley frowned at first, but when Jenkins’s name was introduced his face brightened. ‘Oh! 352. Goodness, sir … er … Simon, he is almost as famous as you. Got a DCM, didn’t he?’
‘Two, in fact. The first in the Sudan and the second against the Boers.’
‘Well, he obviously knows his stuff.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Any chance of us being the first into Lhasa, do you think?’
‘Wouldn’t mind putting a guinea or two on it.’
‘Splendid. Look forward to it. Do you want to superintend the grooming?’
‘No. I have other things to do. I will meet the men in the morning.’ A thought struck him. ‘No. Better not yet. My position has to be confirmed by Kitchener. So let’s keep this under our hats for the moment. But I don’t anticipate any problems there. Carry on, William.’
‘Thank you, ah, Simon.’
Fonthill walked away with a new-found spring in his step to find Alice and Jenkins. His wife, as usual, was not in their tent, for, with little hard news to transmit back to Fleet Street, she was regularly out and about watching the behaviour of the troops and the coolies, picking up facts and colour. At this point, she still had a free hand, for her colleagues from the other newspapers had still not made the difficult journey up from the border. Jenkins, however, was crouched down outside his tent at the side of Sunil, whose Lee Metford rifle he had broken down in parts and laid out on a piece of cloth on the ground.
‘Good news,’ cried Simon. ‘We’re back in the army.’
The Welshmen immediately assumed a melancholic face. ‘Oh, bloody ’ell,’ he grunted. ‘You promised me that there would be no more of all that … bloody salutin’ an’ stuff.’
‘No, nor will there be. We are going to be in charge of the Mounted Infantry. That lot that we watched coming in. And there’s more reinforcements on their way, from what I hear. We will be a very irregular unit. Rather like what we were out on the veldt, except we won’t have that bloody man Sir John French breathing down our necks. And you have been demoted to Colour Sergeant.’
‘Ah well. Could ’ave been worse. Could ’ave been the Mountain Climbers Brigade. When do we start?’
‘Probably tomorrow. As long as it takes Lord Kitchener to approve our appointment by telegraph. Then we shall have to start training these Sikhs. You work with Captain Ottley teaching ’em riding and I’ll teach them formation work and so on – if I can remember the drill, that is.’
‘I don’t think we shall need much of that in these parts, bach sir. More a question of ’ow to sit in the saddle when the bleedin’ ’orse is goin’ straight up a mountain.’
‘Yes. Something like that. Now, Sunil, can you put the kettle on?’
Kitchener’s approval came back with flattering speed, relayed to Fonthill by Macdonald’s orderly. The two men immediately found the mounted Sikhs’ lines and the work began. In fact, it transpired that Ottley, a captain of the 23rd Pioneers, was the only man in the expeditionary force who had attended the Mounted Infantry course at Sialkot. He had had very little time to train his men before the column set off and the thirty with him now had been the only Sikhs, plus a handful of Gurkhas, who had been considered efficient enough to leave with the main force. Forty or so had had to be left behind for further training. Since then, twenty or so had come up to New Chumbi and others were expected.
Unskilled as horsemen, nevertheless the little unit had led the flying column that Macdonald had taken into the mountains. Ottley told Fonthill that his ‘cavalry’ had penetrated far ahead of the column, past the fortress of Phari – ‘an imposing sight’ – and pressed on up over the 15,200-high Tang La, ‘The Clear Pass’, so called because the prevailing winds kept it usually clear of snow, until they met the lower slopes of Mount Chomolhari.
‘They towered above us like a perpendicular wall of snow,’ recounted Ottley. ‘We had gone as far as we possibly could and we and our ponies were exhausted. Also, despite the snow, there was little to drink, so we had to turn back.’
‘Magnificently. I was proud of them. We met no opposition, of course, from the natives and those we saw at Phari were very welcoming. But we discovered that we had one great problem.’
‘What was that?’
‘We have no riding breeches, of course, and the loose serge trousers worn by the men had chafed their inner thighs horribly. Many were bleeding and hardly able to walk, let alone ride. We need to get proper breeches as soon as possible.’
‘Of course. I’ll see to it straight away.’
‘Despite all the problems – which included, by the way, the fact that the ponies became very disturbed and refused to settle down – despite all this, we managed to cover thirty-five miles in one day to get back. Pretty damned good, I’d say. Augurs well for the future. They are good men.’
‘Splendid. I will telegraph back to the base camp for breeches. Oh – what happened with the Phari Fort? Younghusband has issued a promise to the Tibetans that we will not occupy territory or fortified positions. I presume the General left no garrison there?’
For the first time Ottley looked troubled. He frowned. ‘Afraid so. Despite the appeals of the Tibetan commander there, the General threw out the wives and dependents of the defenders – who had offered no resistance, remember – and installed two companies of Gurkhas in the fort.’
‘Oh dear. Presumably he was worried that it could prove an obstacle to the main column if the Tibetans decided to resist.’
‘I suppose so. It looks a pretty formidable place from the outside, at least. I heard it was a fort that had dominated the old trading route to India and also some kind of mobilisation centre for this end of Tibet, so I suppose the General knew what he was doing.’
The habitual sunny smile returned to his face. ‘But then generals are always supposed to know what they are doing, aren’t they?’
Fonthill returned the grin. ‘I’ve known a few who didn’t. I’ll go and telegraph about the breeches. Have you had the MO see to the men?’
‘Yes. Just a bit of ointment. Don’t think the Sikhs liked it but I made ’em apply it.’
‘Good.’
Because of the chafing problems, the men were relieved of riding duties for the next few days and Simon, Ottley and Jenkins restricted their teaching activities to lectures on keeping formation, wheeling into line, firing from the saddle and so on. The black faces of the men wore intense expressions as they listened, both eyes and mouths wide open and Fonthill worried that little had been imparted, but Ottley assured him that all of the instructions had been taken on board.
Christmas came and went at New Chumbi with hardly a break in the routine of drill, weapon inspections and, once the riding breeches had been delivered, scouting expeditions by Fonthill’s men that produced no sign of hostile troops. The biggest change was in the weather, for the smiling face of the Chumbi valley quickly disappeared when bitterly cold and strong winds swept along the plateau and winter settled in. Luxuries disappeared from the menu and the chapattis had to be made from a basic mixture of flour and water, which tasted, as one subaltern confessed, ‘like mustard plaster’. The biggest hardship was when the officers’ mess orderlies revealed that their normal care in cooling the champagne had been overdone and the wine was far too bitterly cold to be drunk. Beer, which had been kept under cover, had to be substituted.
‘Serves you all right,’ muttered Alice. ‘Nobody deserves champagne so far, because nothing has happened. What are we supposed to be doing here, anyway?’
The answer seemed to be ‘consolidating’, while a second supply route between Gangtok and New Chumbi was opened, which cut some ten miles off the route and enabled the amount of food being brought in to rise to 40,000 pounds a day. The indigenous inhabitants of Chumbi were also now losing their reserve and were providing animal fodder, buckwheat and potatoes, for which they were paid handsomely.
Alice had now lost her exclusivity in the column for she had been joined by three other journalists representing The Times, the Daily Mail and Reuters News Agency. She dourly resented their presence and refused to join their little tented compound, preferring to mess with Simon, Jenkins and Sunil.
‘We are all fighting for journalistic scraps here, anyway,’ she confided to Simon, ‘for there is nothing to write about. I am tired of describing the bloody sunset and the difficulties of putting up tents when you can’t drive a peg into the ground. I do wish we could advance.’
Her wish was granted early in January, however, when it was announced that another flying column, with Younghusband and the diplomatic heart of the mission, would advance over the Tang La and set it up in a further advanced base high up on the plateau at a tiny hamlet called Tuna, where it would see out the rest of the winter.
It was to everyone’s relief, then, when sufficient supplies had been built up to allow this second, stronger, flying column, led by Fonthill’s Mounted Infantry, to set off from New Chumbi over the mountains again. Word filtered down that the move had been at the insistence of Younghusband who, it was said, had eventually won a highly charged argument with Macdonald about the dangers to be faced by advancing further into Tibet in midwinter. Simon, busily preparing his horsemen for the advance, was not involved in the argument – and he was heartily glad of it.
The journalists, who had grown increasingly restive under what Alice condemned as an unnecessarily rigid form of censorship installed by Macdonald on the plain, were now allowed to join the advance. Before setting off, Fonthill took Sunil to one side. The youth’s relationship to Alice had become even closer and he had begun trying to teach her Tibetan. Simon decided to capitalise on the friendship.
‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Now that we are advancing into Tibet proper and I shall be riding out with my men every day, I would be grateful if you would take on the responsibility of looking after the memsahib.’
Suni’s eyes opened wide. ‘Oh yes, sahib. What you want me to do?’
‘Well, she doesn’t need a nursemaid and she would be horrified at the suggestion that she could not look after herself. But,’ he grinned, ‘she can be a trifle headstrong, you know?’
The youth nodded gravely.
‘So there is no need to tread on her coat-tails, so to speak, but I would be most grateful if you would stay close to her as soon as we go into action. Do you think you could do that?’
‘Oh yes, sahib. Don’t tread on skirt but stay close, yes.’
‘Splendid. You still have your Lee Metford rifle, I think?’
‘Oh yes. Jenkins Bach has given me lessons on shooting it.’
‘Good. As soon as we meet trouble, my wife will certainly want to go to the front to take notes about the battle or whatever. Now, she will certainly ignore any attempts by you to stop her from doing so. So don’t try it. But I would ask you to go with her, with your rifle, and protect her if it becomes necessary. Do you understand?’
Sunil’s chest visibly swelled. ‘Certainly, sahib. I will protect. Most certainly.’
‘Good man. I knew I could rely on you. Now, don’t tell her what I have asked you to do, because that will annoy her. Just accompany her casually, as though you are interested in all that she does. Which I think is true, anyway. Is it not?’
‘Oh yes, indeed sahib. I will be journalist when this journey is finished.’
‘Good. I am sure that you will make a good one.’
Simon looked into the earnest face before him and felt reassured. Alice could well look after herself but – and he frowned at the thought – she had a propensity for pushing herself into danger and, perhaps, with Sunil at her side, she might feel a sense of responsibility for him and so curtail her eagerness to get close to the action. He shook the boy’s hand and strode away.
The Chumbi Valley was situated at about 10,000 feet above sea level but the climb for the column began almost immediately after leaving the encampment at New Chumbi. Once again, as the trail led ever upwards and became steeper, the Mounted Infantry, ranging far ahead, were forced to dismount and lead their ponies. The route led between masses of sharply cornered rocks, which merged later into great overhanging bare cliffs of blackened granite.
‘Oh, bloody ’ell,’ grunted Jenkins. ‘’Ere we go again.’
In fact, the trail, although steep up to the 15,200 feet high Tang La pass, was not as terrifying as that leading to the Jelep La, for it wound through rocks on either side, through which the wind howled like a thousand banshees, but offering no precipitate falls to an abyss below. Just beneath the pass, at about 14,000 feet, Fonthill and his advance guard debouched onto an open, barren stretch of upland, the first intimation that they were approaching the great northern plain, the Chang Tang, the fabled ‘roof of Tibet’. Here, on the advice of Ottley, who had ridden this way days before, they waited until the main force caught up with them and the whole column camped for the night.
Fonthill sought out Alice and Sunil and asked anxiously ‘any sign of mountain sickness?’ Both shook their heads negatively and Simon, who, with Jenkins, had felt nothing more than tremors in his stomach as they climbed, put this down to the fact that they had acclimatised to a large extent at New Chumbi. After dark, however, a different problem faced them.
That night the temperature plummeted to minus eleven degrees Fahrenheit and it became clear that every scrap of clothing would be needed to prevent frostbite attacking. Simon and Alice shared a tent, as before, with Jenkins and Sunil in the other. They all retained their sheepskins and felt boots within their sleeping bags and stretched canvas covers over the bags, soon learning to sleep on their backs, for turning over allowed a piercing shaft of bitterly cold air to penetrate into the bags. Little sleep was had that night.
Dawn, however, brought bright sunlight, a cloudless sky and a rejuvenation of spirits all around – particularly when the news reached everyone that an officer in the main column had unwisely placed his false teeth in a tumbler of water at his side to find them frozen solid by the morning.
A march of little more than a mile and a half over half-frozen greensward led to a bluff beyond which stood the impressive Fort of Phari, a castellated virtual castle, looking like some remnant from the Crusades, from which a row of prayer flags and a Union Jack streamed in the strong wind – showing that the two companies of Gurkhas were still in possession. Here, a halt was made while mules and ponies were laden with supplies for the new base, some fourteen miles ahead at Tuna.
Alice took advantage of this to visit the fort, a wide-eyed Sunil at her side, carrying his Lee Metford. The stronghold had earlier yielded its stock of gunpowder and bullets without firing a single shot as the soldiers had advanced through the huddle of miserable huts that stood at the foot of its walls. Now, however, Alice wrinkled her nose in disgust as she walked through the hamlet. Centuries of inhabitants had thrown their rubbish outside their doors so that it had grown so high that steps had had to be dug down through it to reach the ground floor of the dwellings. Inside the fort, she found that its courtyards were strewn with similar rubbish, including old armour, matchlocks, limbers and spears and the building itself was a warren of narrow passages and dingy cells, all empty.
She made notes and retreated to the village in the hope of finding some of its inhabitants. They proved to be as unprepossessing as their surroundings. The women, who extended their tongues in a gesture of greeting, had covered their faces with a red paste that had blackened as it oxidised, obviously to protect their faces from the constant wind. From the pungent odour that accompanied them, Alice realised that they must have smeared their bodies with rancid butter. Yet everyone seemed to have a perfect set of white, gleaming teeth.
Through Sunil, she attempted to question them, to gain their opinion of this intrusion of alien soldiers from so far away. But the youth confessed that they seemed reluctant to talk and, she suspected, he was having difficulty in understanding their dialect. Shivering in the cold, she gave up and they walked back to the encampment, where she began writing a despatch to be cabled back by the new telegraph wires that had been set up as the column advanced, now linking Phari to the Indian border, Calcutta and the outside world.
She sat in the weak sun, drinking tea in an attempt to keep warm and sucking her pencil. There had been no military action to write about so far and, indeed, no enemy to describe. If this was a war, she confessed, it was a fake one, unreal – even spurious. Younghusband’s Mission, with its escort bristling with weaponry, had been allowed slowly to climb, slip and plod wearily into the Tibetan uplands without deterrence. The weather and the terrain had been the enemy.
In this context, she decided to lead her story with a sad fact that she had picked up from one of the Indian coolies, who spoke excellent English. One of the Indian Post Office men, working on the telegraph lines, had contracted frostbite in his foot because the Raj had ruled that only soldiers were to be issued with the Gilgit felt-lined boots, which offered protection from the biting cold. As a result, the man’s foot had to be amputated.
Alice licked her pencil with relish. This was just the sort of detail that would illustrate so well the conditions under which the ‘little people’, the ordinary civilians, were being forced to work on this expedition and also the inflexible bureaucracy of the Indian government and its army where its rules were concerned. And she was fairly certain that she had this small but telling detail exclusively to herself. She began scribbling quickly.
Then, however, she frowned and tore up the sheet and threw it away. This was just the sort of story that some ham-fisted censor, selected by the unimaginative, newspaper-hating Macdonald, would delete without a second thought. He would remove it because it would, of course, reflect badly to a liberal-minded audience back home on the leadership of the expedition. No. She sucked the pencil again and stared unseeingly at the distant tip of Chomolhari shimmering in the distance. She would slip it in lower down in the story, so that it would not stand out so invitingly to the censor – and she was sure that the Tory-loving foreign editor back home would let it through, because, after all, it was fact and not opinion.
The next day an event occurred which raised the eager interest, not only of Alice and her fellow scribblers, but the whole column. A delegation arrived, completely unannounced, consisting of three monks from the three great Tibetan monasteries and a senior commander in the Tibetan army, named Depon Lhadang, plus their attendants. Younghusband, unsure of their seniority, declined to meet them and sent, instead, his close aide, adviser and fluent Tibetan speaker, Captain Frank O’Connor, to parley with them.
The meeting proved inconclusive, with the Tibetans giving no ground and refusing to enter into any formal negotiations until the British Mission and its escort had turned back and returned to Yatung.
After the delegation had left, Fonthill sought out O’Connor, whom he had first met on the North-West Frontier, during the Pathan Revolt of 1897, when the latter was serving as a young subaltern. ‘Were the Tibetans ameliorative at all?’ he asked.
‘Not a bit. Oh, the General, whom I’ve met before, was studiously polite but the other three, all high lamas from the Kashag, the ruling body of the country, were aggressive, snarling and using most disrespectful language. I am just glad that the Colonel was not there.’
O’Connor leant forward. ‘I’ll tell you something else, Fonthill. I’ve just heard back from a lama from Sikkim, whom we sent the other day to Lhasa with a special message from Younghusband to the Dalai Lama. The feller turned back a few miles from Tuna when he met a large force of Tibetan warriors, numbering about 2,000, who, he said, are waiting to stop us. This feller kept whispering to me: “War! War! They mean war!” So perhaps we shall see some action soon, eh?’
‘Indeed.’ Fonthill nodded and frowned. ‘Well the sooner we get to Tuna and set up a properly defended camp the better.’
Within two days the column had crossed the Tang La without incident and arrived at Tuna, which turned out to be nothing more than three unremarkable stone buildings squatting in the middle of an empty, and quite flat plain, stretching out to the foothills of the dominating Mount Chomolhari to the south-east and encircled elsewhere by bleak hills. Tufted grass poked through the loose gravel that seemed to stretch for miles and no trees were to be seen.
Fonthill, in the vanguard, sat on his pony and looked around him in disbelief, his eyes watering in the cold wind. Apart from the three now deserted stone dwellings, there were no physical features that could be used to defend the camp: no gullies, no hillocks, not even a clump of bushes to provide cover. The rock-hard plain stretched unrelievedly all around. Certainly an attacking force could be detected from some distance, unless it advanced in a snowstorm, which was unlikely. But the ground was clearly ice-bound and looked impervious to pick or shovel. There could be no trenches to give shelter to the camp’s defenders. He sucked in his frozen lips. Which idiot had chosen this godforsaken place as the site on which to see out the winter?
As the last mules arrived, the provisions were unloaded and the difficulties of the place were exposed. Efforts proved indeed that no trenches could be dug and, although a rough barricade of boxes and mealie bags were erected, if it was not for the rolls of barbed wire that had been providentially brought up from Chumbi and wound round the perimeter, there were no real defences that could be erected to protect the tented encampment. The walls of the three houses were promptly loopholed but they proved far too small to house more than a handful of defenders.
Fonthill took his Mounted Infantry out immediately to scout the surroundings and immediately found what he sought. He almost stumbled into a large force of armed Tibetans who were concealed behind piles of brushwood some twelve miles distant. Wheeling to the south, he encountered a second and larger group of the enemy encamped even nearer, at some hot springs beside the Bham Tso lake, near a small hamlet called Guru, guarding the ancient caravan trail that led to Gyantse.
Here, with Ottley and Jenkins, he left his men behind and trotted ahead to study what defences had been erected. He dismounted within easy musket range, dismounted, climbed a rock and scanned the way ahead through his binoculars. Although he was now in plain sight of the Tibetans, none attempted to fire or otherwise molest him as he studied the way ahead.
The road led to where the plain narrowed between the lake, which was frozen, and to the outlying spur of one of the mountain ranges to the left. Here, a rough stone wall had been erected across the top of which rows of matchlocks and what looked liked primitive artillery pieces, long-barrelled jingals, were levelled. Above where the wall met the spur, stone sangars, or rifle emplacements, had been established up the hillside to command the approach to the wall. At the other side, the wall ended in a small stone house. Beyond was an open space which clearly had once been a marsh, extending from the lake and probably impassable in warmer weather. But now it was frozen hard.
‘The bloody fools,’ muttered Ottley. ‘They’ve left that side of the wall quite open and unprotected by the look of it. We could easily swing round there and take them by the rear.’
‘Except,’ said Jenkins, shielding his eyes and looking beyond the wall, ‘that there appears to be millions of the buggers massin’ there, look you.’
Fonthill lowered his glasses. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ve seen enough. This is the old caravan trail to Gyantse and so this is the way we shall have to advance, when and if,’ he emphasised the last two words scornfully, ‘we advance. We shall have to knock that wall down. But we might be attacked well before then. Let’s get back and report. I have to say that I think our camp is very vulnerable.’
His report produced one quite unsuspected and potentially dangerous turn of events. Younghusband decided, on what appeared to be a sudden whim, to ride out to Guru, where the main force of Tibetans were camped, some ten miles away, to intercede with them personally. He took with him only O’Connor, to interpret, and a young subaltern, who was said to be learning the Tibetan language – no escort, not even an orderly to hold their horses while they entered the Tibetan camp.
On returning, O’Connor recounted to Fonthill that no progress had been made and that, as before, the Tibetan general had been courteously polite but that the three lamas, who were ensconced in the camp, had been even more adversarial, confirming that it was they who were behind the opposition to the opening of any meaningful negotiations. At one point, he said, they became menacing and refused to let the trio return to Tuna. O’Connor related that it was only the good humour and bland impassivity of Younghusband that saved the day.
Simon shook his head in disbelief. It was clear that Younghusband did not lack courage, but that he possessed an impetuous streak that boded ill for the future.
From that moment on, there was no lack of contact between the two opposing forces. Little parties of Tibetans began visiting the British camp to repeat their mantra: the British must retreat and leave Tibetan soil before meaningful talks could begin. They were met with courtesy but blank refusal. It had become, reflected Fonthill, a ridiculous stalemate, with the British unable to advance because of a combination of foul weather and insufficient supplies to sustain the advance, and the Tibetans seemingly unable to summon the will to attack.
If they did decide to attack, he was not at all sure of the outcome. For the weather had blunted whatever advantages their modern weaponry gave the invaders. However carefully they were oiled, rifle bolts were now being frozen into their breeches. With night temperatures now dropping to four degrees below zero within the tents, the machine guns were particularly susceptible to the cold and Hadow, the young subaltern in charge of the guns, had taken to removing the locks from the Maxims and huddling them to his breast inside his sleeping bag at night. Sometimes Fonthill found that the carbines of his Mounted Infantry had frozen to the bottom of their saddle buckets on return from patrol.
The rarefied air in which they all lived now had also adversely affected the accuracy and range of the guns, causing them to overshoot in practice. Simon could not help but feel that a mass attack by the Tibetans at night could overwhelm the British camp. Yet none came.
On return from patrol one day, dismounting with his teeth chattering, Fonthill found that Macdonald was closeted with Younghusband and an aide suggested that it would be unwise to interrupt. ‘I think there is a bit of an altercation going on between the two, sir,’ he confided. ‘I’ve heard raised voices. Better wait a bit, unless it’s vitally urgent.’
Fonthill frowned. This was the sort of situation which, clearly, Curzon might have had in mind when he had hinted that he might have a reconciliatory role to play. But, dammit it all, he didn’t cherish the thought of acting as schoolteacher in a playground argument. Let the two argue themselves out first and then perhaps he could step in. And, anyway, he was desperately in need of a cup of tea.
Later, he met O’Connor. ‘Have you heard?’ the Captain asked, conspiratorially.
Simon nodded glumly. ‘Been a bit of a row, I gather.’
‘Yes. The governor, it seems, has completely lost his rag with Macdonald. The bloody man wants to withdraw to Chumbi. Says we can’t exist here on this plain. Younghusband refuses to budge.’
‘Well, I must confess that I have seen better defensive positions.’
‘Yes, but the old man says that retreating now, when there are quite a few Tibetans hanging about, will mean losing face completely in their eyes and it will set us back quite a bit in this diplomatic stand-off. Younghusband says that, anyway, there is plenty of fodder about, if you really look for it, and that with our modern weapons, we can adequately defend ourselves.’
Fonthill shrugged. ‘Well, Younghusband knows the terrain better than anyone. But I feel we could be pushed a bit if we are attacked and I have seen enough Tibetans to think that we might be. I am on my way to Mac to report now.’
The General heard the news of the nearby Tibetan forces with seeming equanimity, although he immediately coughed and lit a new cigarette from the stub of that still held between his fingers. ‘Did it look as though they were preparing to attack?’ he asked between coughs. To Fonthill, he appeared to be a sick man.
‘I confess I don’t think so,’ he replied. ‘Although we were only a handful, there was no attempt to challenge us when we met the first lot behind the brushwood. They all seemed to be having a bit of a picnic. And the bigger group at the wall – must have been well over 2,000 of them – let us approach quite close and observe them without a shot being fired.’
‘Humph. Well, I don’t like it. I will double the guard at night. Keep patrolling, Fonthill. We will need ample warning when they come.’
But they did not come. The days mounted as the force camped out under canvas waited and shivered in the cold wind. Fonthill and his men continually ranged the plain, keeping the Tibetans under surveillance, but the enemy showed no sign of moving. Indeed, they waved quite cheerily at the horsemen.
Nevertheless, it was a surprise when, on returning from one patrol, Simon was met by Alice with the news that Macdonald was withdrawing most of his force to New Chumbi and that Younghusband would be staying, with a considerably depleted military escort.
‘What! He is going to leave Younghusband stuck out here? What’s the point of that?’
Alice found a temporary home for her pencil by sticking it in her hair. ‘From what we’ve been told, I gather that Macdonald feels that this plain can no longer sustain so large a force, the weather is too bad to continue the advance for the moment and, anyway, we haven’t built up sufficient supplies to do so, Younghusband refuses to retreat, so General Mac is taking his toys and going back sixty miles to his playpen in Chumbi, where it’s much warmer at only 10,000 feet up.’
‘But that’s bloody ridiculous. It’s leaving the diplomatic mission comparatively undefended.’
‘Not quite. You, dear, will be staying with your remarkably ungainly Sikh cavalry, and so will four companies of the 23rd Sikh Pioneers, the Norfolks’ Maxim-gun detachment, a detail of Madras Sappers – who, coming from southern Indian, of course, are all shivering so much that they are quite useless as soldiers – and one of the Gurkhas’ seven-pounder guns. About 200 so called fighting men in all.’
‘What about you?’
‘Oh, I am staying, of course, and so are the rest of the scribblers. Although General bloody Macdonald has refused to extend the telegraph line from Phari to here, probably because he hates us all.’
The General was quite sanguine, however, when Fonthill bearded him. ‘We can’t stay here in these numbers for the rest of the winter,’ he growled, through a blue haze of cigarette smoke. ‘Younghusband won’t move so I am taking the main party back. It makes sense. We will, of course, keep bringing up supplies to Phari ready for the advance when the weather improves.’
‘What if we are attacked?’
‘Well,’ Macdonald paused while he removed his cigarette and coughed. ‘You have repeatedly assured me that the Tibetans show no sign of moving and Younghusband is perfectly happy with the defensive arrangements we have made here. We can advance Gurkhas to help you from Phari if you need them and I can move back here within a few days, weather permitting. Younghusband is quite prepared to take the risk. I must consider the overall position and a force this large can’t be sustained here. And that’s all there is to it.’
‘Very well. Do you think the telegraph from Phari will remain uncut?’
‘Oh yes. Since we flogged the local headman for cutting it, there has been no further trouble.’
‘Who will remain in military command here?’
‘Couldn’t let you do it, we must be fair. Must have a regular. Colonel Hogge commands the 23rd Pioneers so he will do it. You will report to him, although I know you will stay close to Younghusband. Now you must excuse me. I have much to—’ And he thrust a handkerchief to his mouth to herald another burst of coughing.
Two days later, Fonthill, Alice, Jenkins and Sunil stood together sombrely and watched as the greater part of the mission’s military escort gradually turned its back on the little camp at Tuna and wound its way back over the mountains.
‘Talk about the rats leaving the sinking whatsit …’ muttered Jenkins.
Alice gripped her husband’s hand tightly as the last trooper disappeared into the enveloping mist.