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Jacob I located presently at the head of the jam, quiet as ever, and bade him get his men across the Sarwek nullah on the left to strengthen Cookie's picquets in oase of trouble that side, for although there was so far no movement, there was much noise, and the little picquets on the bank fired incessantly in reply to a dispersed cloud of snipers who shot methodically at everything appearing above the bank.

Then I pushed forward in search of news to where the guns spat cheerfully in the open river-bed, 300 yards behind the advance-guard. Beyond Flathead Left, and hidden by it until you reach its very

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YORK (?)

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Scale = 1 inch = 5.2937 miles (or yards if preferred)

Nowadays we have excellent maps, for a keen survey party came with us and produced at lightning speed quite acourate contoured sketch-maps, followed by more detailed surveys. The trade-mark of the Survey of India is a large white plane table surmounted by a still larger white brolly rampant. I speak but sober truth when I say that with mine own astonished eyes have I seen this amazing target proceeding into the very firing line of the covering troops during a rather messy picquet show, in order to sketch the enemy's side of the ridge. They had, however, the sense

to furl the umbrella while at work.

This, however, is a digression. To revert to Flathead, of which we had no maps, when the advance-guard of Cookie's reached the foot of the far end of Flathead Left, they came upon the deep nullah opening to their right between the two hills, and further found it full of Mahsuds. So Cookie's (with their attachés, the South Waziristan Militia) and the Mahsud and Wana Wazir smote each other good and proper, killing at point-blank range round the rooks and boulders that cluster the precipitous foot of Flathead.

From Marble Arch, 800 Left, for the Mahsud, as ever, yards farther on, an enormous emboldened by success, had limestone half-moon-shaped leapt into the counter-attack, oliff with a base of hollowed while the guns clamoured away caves, Mahsud dwellings, the in the vicinity of the tower enemy showered them with and villagelet of Asa Khan, lead, and the red-and-white which stood on a tiny kach in rooks of Cookscomb, nearer a nullah running out at right still, seethed with angry angles opposite to Flathead,snipers. So there the ad- that I came upon Shortleigh vance-guard stuck, across the talking to a Q. staff officer. river from the foot of Flathead up on to the right bank, for on their right the special flank guard, found as you may remember by the 2/5th Gurkhas, was held and forced back.

These latter had made their way over the brow of Flathead Left and started down the dip into the nullah between the Flatheads. Then the Mahsud fell upon them in foree, and they fought hand to hand, bayonet and kukri and knife, ay, and jagged stone as well, as happens when men get down to really primeval killing.

But the odds were too heavy, even apart from the fact that the 2/5th had been dropping picquets all the way along from Ahnai Right; so the two shattered companies of the special flank guard had to rally and cling to the orest of Flathead Left, whence they had started down, with their C.O., Crowdy, and their leading company commander dead. I think this was the one who was picked up later with seven knife-thrusts in his body, evidence of the bitterness of the fighting.

It was at this stage of the proceedings, when the remnants of the 2/5th; were fighting about the knoll of Flathead

A staff officer's duty is to keep up the moral of the troops when things go wrong, and some achieve it by an optimistio cheerfulness that becomes the cheerier the worse things really are. But this Q. officer, being gifted by nature with a visage of preternatural gloominess, had devised another plan of raising people's spirits, one of distinot originality. It is noteworthy that if you appear as reasonably downeast as the situation demands, you immediately depress all those with whom you come into contaot; whereas, if you can only muster a fictitious look of exaggerated depression, you at once raise their spirits by making them feel that bad as things may be they can't possibly be as bad as you look.

Seven Dials was, as I have already mentioned, a bad camp, snipeable and sniped, rushable though-Dieu merci!never rushed, badly lacking in wire, and commanded from most points of the compass. When we first entered it and sat on our kit waiting for the mess mules, we looked at the camp, and smelt it, and tasted it, for the air was solid camel, and thereafter felt depressed

Then there realised that further advance was impossible until the peak of Flathead Left was made good beyond danger of loss, and so sent up the second in command of the 2/76th Punjabis with a company to take charge of the remains of the 2/5th Gurkhas and command the Flathead battle.

beyond words. happened on the scene this Q. bird with his detached air of Stygian gloom, and conversed in despondent funereal tones, his muted manner implying that if by any extraordinary chance we were not scuppered before nightfall, we certainly would be by midnight. I'm not sure if he offered to take charge of our wills and post farewell letters for us from Ahnai Camp, but he probably did. Any way, when he left us we were positively hilariously cheerful instead of being somewhat dismal, as he had found us.

On this occasion he was directing Shortleigh, and any other British officers he could find, to collect every single man with a rifle that they could lay hands on, form them into groups, and oram them into the mouths of the two big nullahs on the right bank southward of Asa Khan, where, as I have said, sniping was assiduous. It was a sound tactical move, for an attack on our rear was quite likely, since the Mahsud had us bottled up in a distinotly sticky place. Somehow or other, he handled this rather ticklish business so skilfully in his dry despondent way that no one took alarm, and there was not the least suspicion of panic-which is no mean feat, as any one oan realise who has endeavoured to collect debris to deal with trouble behind what time the main body is catching it hot in front.

Column H.Q. had by now
VOL, CCVIII.—NO. MCCLXI.

Up the hill he shinned with his following, 800 feet of slithery rock, and arrived at the knoll where now stands Flathead picquet. It took him about half a minute to size up the situation, and, paraphrasing Caesar, he signalled down down "Veni, Vidi, N.B.G.," or words to that effect, planted his company round about him under what cover

he could find, and, squatting under 8 rook in the midst of a hai of sniping, sucked his pipe philoso phically, waiting, Micawberlike, for something to turn up.

It turned up eventually in the shape of H.Q. and the remaining three companies of his regiment under the C.O., Lieut.-Col. Chamberlayne, all that column H.Q. had now got left unemployed in the main body. They arrived shortly after midday, and deployed themselves into attaoking formation to go down into the dip which the Gurkhas had failed to clear. They had to do it entirely on their own, for Flathead Left, rising sheer above the guns in the river, precluded any covering artillery fire being brought to bear on Flathead Right, and there were no machine-guns trench-mortars on this show. 2 Q

or

It was a project conceived in high soldierly spirit, standing about a 1 per cent chance of being successful. They made 150 yards out of the 1200 they had to go for a matter of sixty casualties. This was the first easy 150 yards prior to the descent down the convex slope into the nullah, where the serious work began. The nullah swarmed with Mahsuds waiting for them to come down and be cut up, and the opposite hill was orammed with marksmen slating them where they lay.

So they wisely decided to give up the advance, and settled down on the edge of the dip to hold Flathead, and there they lay all day into the dark, until the Gurkhas behind them, reinforced later by a company of the 2/9th Gurkhas, clinging to the knoll and sniped without respite, fashioned themselves the ghost of a picquet.

It is a little epio, that day of the 2/76th Punjabis on Flathead. They were a very very young second-line battalion, and they bumped into a fight such as the oldest of veteran frontier - force battalions had never even dreamt of.

Nevertheless, they attacked with go, when bidden, and when told to hang on, hung on to what they had got, exposed hour after hour to incessant torment of snipers' bullets; while from time to time the prone line of men huddled behind rocks and stones would swirl into sudden movement, as a rush of Mahsuds came up one or other of the nullahs

and folds leading unseen to the very orest-line.

But they stuck grimly to their ground the whole of that weary hard-fought day, doing all that men could do-just sticking it, and dying in the process.

That intrepid fighter their C.O., who made them the fine battalion they are, lay dead under the little thorn - bush below the orest; Riddell, mortally wounded, lay dying on the kaoh below; and minute after minute added to the growing roll of dead and wounded Sikh, Jat, and Punjabi Mussalman on the sunlit hill-top. The second in command was slid away down the hillside, a keyholed bullet through

his thigh; and O'Leary, hit three times in France, was wounded yet again ere later in the day a final bullet killed him.

on

The little rock-strewn hollow between the forward orest and the knoll where the Gurkhas were trying to make their picquet was choked with dead and dying, and all the while the pitiless bullets from Flathead Right spat down wounded and unwounded alike, and the air was heavy with reek of blood and acrid bomb-fumes. times did the Mahsud counterattack, and five separate times with bullet and butt, bayonet and bomb, did the 2/76th, and later the Gurkha reinforcements for the pioquet, hurl him back down the slopes.

Five separate

As the column commander wired that day, "the safety of

the column depends on the staunchness of the troops," of the P.B.I. on Flathead and elsewhere. Staunch indeed they proved, but none more so than those children of the 2/76th. Evidently they have a tradition of "sticking it" in the 76th, for their first battalion was part of the immortal garrison of Kut.

My two baggage-guard oompanies sat, one across the Asa Khan nullah, and one over the ridge by the Sarwek nullahs. Presently came a young staffcaptain seeking the C.O. With some difficulty he was extrioated from the seething mass of restless camels, where he and his two companies had just come in after handing over rearguard to the 57th.

General Skeen himself, standing by Asa Khan tower, pointed out the objective, "Dazzle Hill," what seemed from the river but a low hillock a few hundred yards off, from which incessant bullets swept down the banks of the Asa Khan nullah, where the perimeter would have to be that night, rendering serious work impossible.

"Two companies?" queried the C.O. as he got his orders. Two companies it was, and so away they went diagonally up the bank, Hodkin's Konkani Mahrattas leading with the Babe in the front line, pink of cheek under his high-tied pagri, among his dark-faced

men.

Hardly had the rest of the battalion started off for the attack on Dazzle Hill than I was sent for and told to take a

company up to Flathead and establish two picquets. Shortleigh's Dekhanis having been seized by Column Headquarters to hold the Asa Khan nullah, I went in search of Jacob and his Rajputanas, and loading up with bombs and tools and picquet stores we scaled our laborious way to the rook pinnacle at the top of Duke's Nose. There the two of us argued mightily as to whether the picquet should be on the top of the rook pinnacle or round its base, and finally, compromising, put a bit in each place. Then leaving the resourceful Jacob with two platoons to establish himself, the rest of us departed in search of another picquet site somewhere between Duke's Nose and the knoll on the far orest of Flathead.

It is one of those badstepped hills so common on the frontier, where each bump is overlooked by the next, and you go climbing on and on in a vain search for a spot that isn't commanded at short range. Eventually I selected a poorish enough spot where a Gurkha picquet was lying, and called up Birmingham, Jacob's company officer. This double appearance double appearance evidently annoyed a party of enemy concealed in the bushes fringing a nullah 600 yards away, for they commenced to snipe exceedingly viciously, and we understood why the Gurkhas lay so flat.

Birmingham spent a hectic afternoon there, trying to build that picquet, his men pushing up stones in front of them

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