CHAPTER ELEVEN: IN THE COURSE OF DUTY

As Lady R had her mouth full, I seized the opportunity to reply on her behalf. To ensure that she didn’t interrupt me and give the game away, I pressed her head into my crotch. Unfortunately, this action dislodged her instantly recognisable crown: it rolled out of the bower in the direction of the Commander-in-Chief, thereby confirming her presence. However, I was committed to a course of action from which there was now no turning back. Pitching my voice as low as I could, and rolling my ‘r’s’ for all I was worth, I attempted to impersonate Bertie.

“Buggerr orf!” I growled.

“My profound apologies, Your Royal Highness…” Joe said.

With any luck he would do as I’d commanded and, if I waited a few minutes, I would be able to finish the business with Her Ladyship and then slip back to the party undetected. I had, however, momentarily forgotten that Lady R thought that she was pleasuring the very man I’d just sent on his way and would be sure to demand my identity the minute the coast was clear. In that I was not wrong. With a noise that sounded like a plunger being pulled out of a drain, she disgorged my wedding tackle, threw off my restraining hand and sat bolt upright.

“Who in tarnation are you?” she demanded with a roar, that would have had monkeys running for cover if there had been any in the foliage above us.

I had two options: to fess up or to flee. I chose the latter. Hauling up my undergarments I made a run for it. Unfortunately (that damned word yet again), I hadn’t gone more than a dozen paces when I collided with a robed figure.

“What the hell?” I heard Joe say as he reeled backwards.

But I didn’t stop to apologise. Instead, I headed back to the cloakroom as fast as my septuagenarian legs would take me, recovered and once more donned – with the obliging help of another semi-naked Egyptian servant - my Merry Monarch outfit and resumed my place with C-G, who was still gossiping with The Lady of the Lake. A short while later Joe Wolseley hove into view and made straight for us. This time there was no escaping.

“Evening, Speedicut. Fine night.”

“Indeed, Joe. Do you know m’wife and Mrs Hall Walker?” I replied, trying to keep my voice level as I tried to work out if he’d recognised me in the garden and, if he had, whether or not he would make a scene. He nodded to the women and then turned back to me.

“You haven’t by any chance seen someone dressed as a Berber have you?”

“A Berber?”

“Yes. In the garden.”

“Can’t say as I have,” I lied.

“Strange. I’ve just bumped into someone who reminded me strongly of a fella I served with in Egypt; same gait, y’know.”

“Well, if I see him – whoever he was – I’ll tell him you’re lookin’ for him.”

“No, don’t bother. It’s not important.” Then he stomped off into the next room. But if I thought I was in the clear, the appearance a few minutes later of Lady R soon put paid to that.

“Colonel Speedicut, would you oblige me with a moment of your time, if Lady Charlotte-Georgina can spare you that is?” C-G said ‘of course’ and Brooklyn’s version of the Empress Theodora hauled me off into an adjacent side chamber.

“You have fooled Joe Wolseley, Jasper…” I started to protest that I didn’t know what she was talking about. “Oh, I think you do,” she snapped. “You may once again be dressed as the most dissolute King since Caligula, but half-an-hour ago you were in Arab robes, as one of the Duchess’ footmen has confirmed to me.” I continued to protest that she and the dratted ducal servant were mistaken. “Don’t lie to me, Jasper. I may not have been able to see your face down there in the garden, but I know a circumcised prick when I suck one,” she hissed, “and Joe’s isn’t circumcised.”

I still don’t know if I was more appalled by being unmasked or by the robust crudity of her language. Of course, I knew her to be completely uninhibited, at least when it came to copulation and its many variations, but I’d never for one moment expected it in her conversation.

“I don’t like being deceived,” she continued with a snarl that would have sent shivers running through the jungle, “and I am going to make darn sure you pay for your deception. How I will achieve that remains to be seen. Goodnight, Jasper – and sweet dreams. You’re gonna need them.”

The rest of the evening I passed in an agony of fear at what she might do. Would she tell Charlotte-Georgina (who might have petitioned for divorce) or Bertie (who would have frozen me out of the Marlborough House set and Society) or, God forbid, Joe Wolseley (who would probably have ordered me to be ADC to the Akond of Swat)? Only time would tell.

…

But by the last week of July nothing untoward had happened, at least not on the Indian front, and I’d stopped fretting about Lady C’s promise of revenge. In fact, all my thoughts were bent on trying to find a winner at Goodwood, where we were staying for the races in a small house party chez the Richmond & Gordons,110 who were distant cousins of C-G, along with twenty other guests including young Churchill and his feral mama. Somewhat to my surprise, La Churchill was all charm where I was concerned: this should have put me on my guard.

Before dinner on the second evening I was minding my own business in the library, desperately trying to spot a sure-fire winner for the next day. But, despite the best advice in Sporting Life, I’d drawn a blank and was about to take out a pin for a more scientific attempt at picking a nag, that would at least complete the circuit, when young Churchill barrelled in all bonhomie and bombast.

“Splendid news, Colonel Speedicut!” he announced, as I surreptitiously replaced the pin behind my lapel.

“What is?”

“Surely you’ve heard?”

“Heard what?”

“Blood and the Malakand Field Force are on their way to the starting post.”

“Never heard of ’em, which race are they in?” Well, my mind was far from India and wholly focussed on the form of the next day’s runners.

“Race? No, Colonel, the Pathans are in revolt and Blood’s Force is on the march to give the Mad Mullah and his chums in the Swat Valley a bloody nose. I heard the news in the paddock this afternoon. I’ve told the Duke that I must leave immediately and he said that, as you too were leaving, we could share the trap that will take me to the station. Who knows, we may even be shipmates on the voyage to India.”

“What nonsense are you babblin’?” I said with considerable irritation. “I’m goin’ nowhere other than the racecourse until, that is, m’wife and I head back to London at the end of the meetin’.”

“So the Duke hasn’t told you?”

“Told me what?”

“That a telegram has arrived for you from the War Office. I told Mama and she said that would be your orders to join the expedition.”

“How the hell would she know?”

“I asked her that and she said that Lord Wolseley had told her…”

…

As anyone who hasread more than a line or two of my memoirs will know, I’m not much given to philosophising. However, on the outward journey to India, I had more than enough time to review the past three score year and ten (or two) and I came to some conclusions.

The first was that regret was the most useless emotion known to man: as you can’t put the clock back, what’s the point of it? The second was that, despite what the Corsican Corporal said on the subject, there’s no such thing as luck. About ten years ago C-G took up bridge (I can’t get into it myself – it takes too damned long to play and the stakes are pathetic - give me bezique any day). But one of her bridge-playing stuffies said something that, as I lay dozing in my cabin, I decided was not a bad metaphor for life. What the old trot said was this: ‘the difference between a good bridge player and a bad player is that a good player will make the most of a bad hand, whilst a bad player will make the worst of a good hand.’ There are times, however, when that ace bitch, the Fickle Finger of Fate Fairy who presided at my birth, deals one such a stinker that not even the best player can escape from the consequences.

My assignment to cover the exploits of the Malakand Field Force fell firmly into that category. Having to traipse half-way around the world to write press reports on a punitive expedition was, of itself, bad enough; but it was made worse by a telegram I received at Brindisi from Blood just as Churchill, Fahran and I were about to set sail for Aden and Bombay.

GLAD TO HAVE YOU ON THE TEAM STOP YOUR JOB TO STICK TO CHURCHILL LIKE GLUE AND VET HIS DISPATCHES STOP REPORT NOWSHERA STOP BLOOD

Prior to this telegram, my plan had been to ditch the pot-hunting little bugger as soon as our feet touched the foetid dirt of India. In that I had an advantage, in as much as he had to travel six hundred miles south to Bangalore to request permission from the 4th to join Blood, whilst I headed twelve hundred miles north to the railhead of the Field Force at Nowshera. I had calculated that, by the time Churchill arrived on the frontier (assuming he was given leave by his Commanding Officer) I would already be otherwise tasked and so would not have to act as his minder. But ‘the best laid plans of lice and men never did run smooth’, as that appalling old shirt-lifter, Wilde, said after his first trial.111

My plan unravelled further when Fahran and I had to wait in Bombay for four days for a north bound train – the Station Master’s excuse was elephants on the line – and when one did show up that was travelling in the right direction who was the first passenger I saw climbing down to stretch his legs? Bloody Churchill. The upshot was that we shared a shuttered, leather-lined compartment for four days during which I tried to read and Churchill droned on about ‘what fun it was all going to be’.

“Oh, I know that a lot of people will be killed,” he said, “and, on our side, the government will have to pension the widows and the badly wounded will be hopping around for the rest of their lives, but it will all be very exciting and, providing one isn’t killed or wounded, very jolly.”

Eventually, I could take no more of his immature school-boy enthusiasms.

“Look here, young Winston,” I growled from my corner, where I’d been trying to catch some reading light through the shutters, “there are a few facts I think you need to know before you get to play soldiers with Blood and his merry band of brothers. The first is that warfare is, like life, brutal and bloody.”

“Oh, I know that, Colonel,” he quipped back, “I was on active service in Cuba a couple of years back with the Spanish Army.”

“Huntin’ down rebels on some tropical island is not the same as dealin’ with Pathans when their blood is up. Believe me, I’ve campaigned in central America and in this region and there’s no comparison. For a start, I don’t imagine that your Cuban revolutionaries brought their wives along for the sport, now did they?”

“Err, not that I saw…”

“Well, the tribes on the other side of the passes do and they put them to good use.” I hoped this would elicit an enquiry from him as to the function of women in warfare on the North-West Frontier. It did.

“What sort of use? As camp followers to carry the rations and the spare ammunition?”

“Not exactly.”

“Or perhaps to tend to the wounded?”

“In a manner of speakin’ – at least when it comes to our wounded.”

“How interesting. I had no idea that Miss Nightingale’s principles were in operation amongst the tribes.”

“They’re not.”

“So what do you mean?”

“Let me answer your question with one of my own. Why do you think it is that the Mr Kiplin’ wrote this?” I leafed back through the volume of verse in my hand, which C-G had given me as a leaving present and was all that I had left to read on the benighted trip:

“When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains, And the women come out to cut up what remains, Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.”112

“I’ve no idea, Colonel – besides which we’re not going to Afghanistan.”

“As near as makes no difference, Winston. So let me tell you why we try never to leave our wounded behind…”

Over the next couple of minutes, I told him, in the most graphic language that I could conjure up, precisely what would happen to him if he was unfortunate enough to end up at Mrs Pathan’s Ladies Academy for the Study of Castration and Vivisection. In the half-light in the compartment I watched Churchill turned a delicate shade of bilious green.

“You exaggerate, I think, Colonel,” he said as he swallowed hard.

“I fear not, my dear Winston. In fact, cuttin’ off your cock and balls is the least of it. As I know from personal experience, durin’ the last big dust up we had in those parts - in ’80 I think it was - the women added a new refinement for dispatchin’ our wounded.”

“What could be worse than emasculation followed by evisceration?” Churchill asked as he again swallowed hard.

“Do you really want to know?”

“Yes,” he answered, although his eyes told a different story.

“They drowned them.” He looked somewhat relieved at this.

“By throwing them down a well, as the Pandies did during the Mutiny?”

“No, Winston – and what I’m tellin’ you I saw with my own eyes - our boys were stripped and staked out in the sun,113 then, when they were racked with thirst and screamin’ for water, the ladies of the district came out to bring them relief.”

“That was kind of them.”

“Not that sort of relief.”

“What then?”

“They squatted over the wounded… and pissed in their mouths until the poor buggers drowned.”

Churchill said not a word, but reached down, grabbed the jerry from under his seat and was violently sick into it. That was the last I heard on our journey north of ‘what jolly good fun it was all going to be’.

We arrived at Nowshera to find that Blood had moved his three Brigades due north up to the Malakand Pass for the start of his punitive march through the valleys. According to the Staff briefing we received there on arrival, Blood proposed stepping off from the Pass to wreak the Raj’s righteous revenge on the Mad Mullah for getting his barmy Swat ‘army’ of smelly tribesmen, in their long valley to the north-east, to attack the tiny fort at Chakdara which guarded the strategically important suspension bridge over the Swat River. That done, Blood then planned to march on an anti-clockwise route through the valleys of Dir and Bajaur, by-passing the Mamund valley, before giving a recalcitrant tribe called the Mohmands a bloody nose prior to completing the journey back to Nowshera. In so doing, the descendant of the man who stole the Merry Monarch’s Crown Jewels, hoped to re-secure for another few years (if we were lucky) the strategic route to Chitral. That, at least, was the plan.

But, as we discovered on our arrival at the Field Force’s headquarters at the top of the Pass – after a dusty forty-mile journey from the railhead in a brace of pony-drawn tongas – the General had gone off with a flying column on an unscheduled trip to duff up the Bunerwals. These apparently ferocious fellows, encouraged by the Mad Mullah, had got particularly uppity in the Upper Swat Valley and required a dose of our ‘butcher & bolt’ policy to put them back in their place. As a seasoned campaigner, I’d arrived with the kind of kit (and personal armaments) which I knew would be required in the field and which Fahran was tasked with looking after; once, that is, he’d secured my comfort and safety. Churchill, on the other hand, was equipped for a parade on the maidan at Bangalore, but wholly ill-equipped for either his role as a journalist or a combatant.

“Don’t worry,” I told him when he raised the subject, “once Blood’s back there’ll be a kit auction of the fallen.”

“That’s a bit heartless, isn’t it?”

“Not a bit of it,” I said, “the families of the deceased will get the best possible prices in what is, in effect, a monopoly market and with no transport costs either.” And I was right on all counts.

Blood returned from the Bunerwal side show within a matter of days, with scarcely any of the eponymous liquid being spilt, although there had been a brisk exchange with the tribesmen at Nawa Kili. As Blood told me later, for inclusion in my first dispatch, a War Correspondent and another officer had so distinguished themselves that it was certain they would be awarded a Cross a’piece.114

Until he rode into camp, with his Staff ranged behind him and his Command Standard fluttering in the breeze, I’d never before met Blood, although I’d seen his image often enough in The Illustrated London News. In the flesh, and mounted on a well-groomed nag, he was even more imposing than in print. In person, he was charm itself and, when we met, he gave me a cheery welcome – Churchill got a slightly less warm one – and the instructions that the two of us were to attach ourselves to the 1st Brigade, which he would be leading from the front when, as was shortly to happen, he set off on his anti-clockwise march to cow the tribes in the valleys and then to administer a bloody reprimand to the Mohmands.

At first all went well, if you discount an incident en route during a village jirga – a sort of parliamentary session to sort out local issues which Blood was a master at managing. The Force Commander and his Staff, including me, the boy Churchill and Fahran, were sitting our ponies awaiting the arrival of the village headman. When he finally showed up with a crowd of his pals in tow, I couldn’t help noticing that he looked very much like Khazi. Whilst all our eyes were focussed on the two opposing leaders, suddenly and without warning Fahran let out a yelp and made to wheel his pony between me and the local parliamentarians.

“Huzoor, to the right! TAKE CARE!”

I looked where he was pointing and saw to my horror a swivel-eyed native MP bearing down on me from the edge of the delegation with a drawn dagger of the type favoured – and much used – by my late head coachman. The assassin closed the distance between us before Fahran could cover me or I could draw my Mauser. At two yards there was a loud report and my would-be murderer leapt back and collapsed in the dirt with blood pouring from a chest wound. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Blood lower a smoking pistol.115

“That’s one you owe me, Speed,” he said, as coolly as if he’d just saved me from stepping in a cowpat.

“I think that’s worth rather more than ‘one’, General,” I said as calmly as I could manage.

“One will do, thank you, Speed. Now let’s get on with the jirga…”

…

The leading of the three Brigades of the Malakand Field Force – which had set off from the Pass with a two-day interval between each formation - had got about half-way to the land of the Mahmunds when we had to pass by the entrance to the Mamund Valley, a ten-mile wide flat plain surrounded by steeply rising mountains. The Mamunds, who had a reputation only marginally better than that of their cousins the Mahmunds, were not - for some reason I never divined - on our list of miscreants requiring punitive correction. The Mamunds clearly thought that this was a major oversight on Blood’s part for, no sooner had our tents been erected, night fallen and the camp fires lit, than Mamund snipers started taking pot shots at our camp. Blood was impervious to their cheek and, despite the fact that bullets buzzed over and around the Mess tent, he insisted that we sit down to dinner as though nothing was happening. It was only when a lucky shot smashed a bottle of rather good claret, most of whose contents spattered our fearless commander, that he ordered that the candles should be extinguished.

The next day, with a lofty disdain for the events of the night before, which had resulted in several casualties including a bottle of Chateau Latour ’88, Blood ordered the Brigade to ignore the natives’ impudence and continue its advance to Nawagi. Unfortunately for our 2nd Brigade, the wretched Mamunds must have felt cheated of their sport. By the time, forty-eight hours later, that our comrades were pitching their tents, hundreds of tribesmen were waiting to give the 2nd Brigade’s partly-entrenched encampment a warm welcome. The Buffs sent us a heliograph to this effect the following morning.116

“Have a look at this,” said Blood, handing me a transcript. It read:

UNDER HEAVY FIRE OVERNIGHT STOP REGRET TO REPORT LOSSES STOP DETAILS TO FOLLOW BY FAST BLACK STOP REQUEST INSTRUCTIONS STOP JEFFREYS117

“What’s that?” asked the boy Churchill, who’d been hovering in the background.

To my intense irritation, and I think that of Blood as well, Churchill had been chuntering non-stop ever since we’d left the head of the Mamund Valley about how we should have given the arse-scratchers a good kicking for their insubordination. I raised an eyebrow at Blood and he nodded, so I handed the flimsy to young Winston. He in turn read it.

“I say, General, you’re not going to let them get away with that are you?”

“As a matter of fact I’m not, Churchill. Once I have Jeffreys’ report I will be issuing orders to him to teach the Mamunds a lesson. Meanwhile, I think it’s time for breakfast.”

The MFF HQ Staff were half-way through our morning tea and bully beef sandwiches – believe me, I’ve had worse breakfasts – when a native officer and ten Sowars of the 11th Bengal Lancers reined-up on well-lathered horses in front of the Mess. The officer leapt from his saddle, strode into the tent, gave Blood a pukka salute and reported:

“General sahib, I come from General Jeffreys with his report.”

“Please read it to me,” said Blood with considerable courtesy. “Churchill, get this officer a cup of tea would you?” Looking rather resentful, Winston did as he was told whilst the Lancer pulled a paper out of his sabretache.

“For the GOC from 2nd Brigade Commander,” read the Indian officer. “The Mamunds engaged our camp in force during the hours of darkness. Over a period of six hours the 2nd Brigade lost three officers - most unfortunately killed or most mortally wounded,” I think the Indian must have been improvising at that point, “ – thirty-seven other ranks killed or wounded and four hundred horses, camels or mules killed.” You could have heard a pin drop when he’d finished.

“I see,” said Blood. “Thank you. As soon as you have breakfasted, get yourself and your men some fresh horses and then take the following order to General Jeffreys: enter the Mamund Valley, march up the valley to its extreme end, destroy all the crops, break the reservoirs, blow up as many castles as time permits and shoot anyone who tries to obstruct this process.” The Bengali looked troubled at this – either because he hadn’t fully understood the order or, perhaps, because he was naturally cautious.

“May I be asking to have that in writing, General sahib?”

“Of course,” said Blood. “My Chief of Staff will give you a letter for General Jeffreys before you leave. Now get your lips around that cup of tea…” A few minutes later some degree of normality had returned to the Mess and I was surprised, therefore, to see Churchill sidle over to Blood and whisper something in his ear.

“If you must,” I heard Blood say and, with that, Lady Randy’s son and heir saluted, turned on his heel and actually ran out of the tent. “Colonel Speedicut?” said Blood turning to me. “Could I have a word with you?” and he too got up and headed outside. I rose and followed him.

“Young Churchill,” Blood said when I caught up with him, “has asked me if he can return to the 2nd Brigade with the Bengal Lancers and I’ve consented.” He didn’t look very happy with the decision he’d taken. “When I agreed last year that I would take him along, I told his mother that I’d keep a close watch on the fellow and keep him out of harm’s way. Accordingly, as I know that you also enjoy, ahem, cordial relations with Her Ladyship,” in a manner of speaking, I thought, “I’d be most obliged, Speed, if you could go with him, keep an eye on the boy and don’t allow him to do anything stupid.” I was about to protest when he added: “You do, after all, owe me one…”