The Scottish soldier and Empire, 1854-1902 - Reenactor.ru

54 The Scottish Soldier and Empire
assumed command of a company of 5th Gurkhas after their captain
had been killed and led them on to victory. ‘These gallant little
fellows’, wrote Aitken, ‘declare that they too are Highlanders, and
fraternise with our men in a most amicable manner.’ 45 Aitken also
described how the Kabul Field Force commemorated the anniversary
of this ‘brilliant engagement’, with Roberts awarding four distinguished
conduct medals and commending the 72nd for its part in
the Afghan operations. Within six days the battalion was ‘hotly
engaged . . . in driving large swarms of Afghans off the Asmai
heights, about a mile from barracks’. Daily attacks followed by an
enemy whom Aitken reckoned to number ‘at least 40,000’ (some
estimates are much larger) 46 but, in the final mass assault on the
23rd, they ‘were repulsed with immense loss’. The battalion, conceded
Aitken, had paid a heavy price: two officers and sixteen men
killed and twenty wounded on the 14th, with Captain Spens slain
with ‘innumerable sword-cuts’. On the other hand, the enemy had
suffered huge losses, particularly in their final attack, and had dispersed.
The Highlanders were now able to celebrate Hogmanay
with liberal supplies of grog (although forty-seven received silver
bars for remaining teetotallers throughout the campaign) and
the band played Scottish airs. 47 Colonel (later Brigadier-General)
Charles MacGregor, though normally well-disposed towards his
fellow countrymen, recalled that they ‘made a hideous row on New
Years night for two hours . . .’ 48
Over the next six months reports from Afghanistan aroused
much less interest. Aitken wrote mundane letters on picquet duty
during the winter months and a month-long expedition into the hinterland
in the summer. Despite all the rigours of marching, fully accoutred
and carrying seventy rounds of ammunition, over stony and
dusty tracks, barely covering ten miles per day, the experience ‘was
unmarked by excitement’. Of more importance for the 72nd was the
arrival of some 150 young soldiers from Stirling Castle, replacing the
losses of seven officers and 186 men, most of whom had either died
from disease or been invalided back to India or England. This ‘infusion
of young blood’, opined Sergeant Aitken, was ‘highly desirable’;
they were soon ‘hard at drill, getting knocked into form under
Sergeant Pickard’. 49
The value of this training was soon put to the test. By 28 April the
Conservative government had fallen from office (and Conservative
representation in Scotland had plummeted to seven seats out of
sixty). Gladstone, the new Prime Minister, had replaced Lord Lytton