Page 122 of The Sapphire Child
Andrew’s commander and frontier veteran, the craggy-faced Major McBain, had warned him on first arrival, ‘They’re the past-masters at guerrilla warfare, Lomax. Like our Scottish Highlanders of old. They can cover miles with just a crust of bread in their bellies, carrying only rifles and ammunition, and sleep out in bitter cold with a single blanket. Hard as bloody nails.’
The full-scale tribal war of the previous year had abated and the fears of a fresh rising once the winter snows had melted had not materialised. Yet his commander was cautious.
‘Don’t be fooled.’ McBain had laughed grimly. ‘It’s like summer sport for them to take on the ferenghi devils, as they call us. And as long as the Afghans are still prepared to arm them, they’ll cause us as much trouble as they can.’
‘So, is it the Nazis who are bankrolling the rebellion?’ Andrew had asked him.
‘Yes, it seems to be the case. We just have to pray to God that the Russians can hold out against the new German offensive.’
Andrew’s head pounded and he licked his cracked lips, trying to concentrate on the job in hand. Half an hour ago, he had led a dozen men up the precipitous slope to secure the piquet, something that they had done with textbook efficiency. Now they were keeping watch on the valley below as the convoy passed on its way to Razmak to resupply the army outpost. The Borderers were responsible for piquets on a ten-mile stretch to the next camp.Keep eyes in the back of your head as well as on the convoy. McBain’s words were drummed into him.
This was the most challenging stretch of the route, carved out of the steep flank of hillside above a gorge. Andrew was in awe of the sappers and miners who must have blasted this road through the rock with its sheer drop to the green-grey waters below.
It made Andrew think of ex-cavalry officer Dickie Mason, his mother’s friend, who had been stationed at Razmak in the early twenties. One day, Andrew hoped, he’d return safely to Britain and be able to swap stories with the amiable Dickie. Andrew wondered if his father too had ever patrolled this rock-strewn valley or defended these same treeless slopes.
Andrew craved a cigarette. He wiped the sweat from his eyes. He’d like to chat to his dad about the Frontier – compareexperiences – and once again chided himself for wasting the opportunity to talk to his father in Pindi.
The convoy of armoured cars, trucks and mules snaked into view around the bend below. The dust raised by the rumbling vehicles could be seen from afar and the noise filled the silence like distant thunder.
Every Waziri for miles around would be able to see it and would know of its coming; the convoys were weekly. But part of the exercise was to try and draw out the enemy and engage them in open warfare, so that the British-Indian forces could use their Vickers machine guns and superior fire power to rout the tribesmen.
‘Wily Pathans won’t be drawn,’ McBain had told him. ‘They know there’s little point attacking motorised transport. It’s the piquets where they understand we’re vulnerable – and we’re at our weakest when we withdraw from one piquet and move to the next.’
Two weeks ago, Andrew had lost one of his men to a Waziri sniper. Private Henderson was from a village outside Ebbsmouth and Andrew had had to write and tell his parents. It was the hardest letter he’d ever written.
Andrew’s jaw clenched as he surveyed the road below and the mountain terrain around them. He must concentrate. The train of vehicles shimmered in the heat, writhing in his vision. His temples thumped.
Corporal Mackenzie passed him a canteen of water and whispered, ‘Sir, a wee sip?’
Andrew took it with a grateful nod. It was he who should be looking after the men, not the other way around. He gulped at the water, which tasted oddly metallic. After a moment of relief, he was as thirsty as ever.
Eventually, the convoy was almost past. Andrew gave the signal for his men to withdraw from the piquet. With weapons drawn, they descended as quietly and swiftly as possible. Halfway down,bullets suddenly began spraying the scree around them, sending loose stones bouncing into the air.
‘Take cover!’ Andrew shouted out across the men.
They scrambled behind clumps of thorny scrub – the only protection on the stark mountainside – and returned gunfire. Andrew saw a flash of white turban from behind the wall they had been guarding just minutes earlier. He took aim and fired. The head bobbed out of view. The sniper fire continued. They were pinned down and partially exposed.
Andrew motioned to Mackenzie to put into action the drill they had practised. While the corporal and the others kept up a constant barrage of bullets against the snipers, Andrew wriggled on his belly to the slight overhang below the piquet. Finding a foothold, he hauled himself up, his lungs labouring for breath in the thin air, and dived behind a large boulder. Swiftly, he pulled a grenade from his belt and released the pin.
Standing up, Andrew hurled the grenade with all his force at the tumbledown piquet and then threw himself flat behind the rock, praying it would withstand the blast. Seconds later, the grenade went off. Stones and dust rained down beside him. Andrew burrowed into the ground, his mouth filling with grit and his ears ringing.
Looking up, he could see nothing through the billowing clouds of smoke and dust. He heard no answering gunfire. Quickly, he hurtled back down the overhang, skinning the palms of his hands, and landed back beside his men.
‘Think that’s cleared the nest, sir,’ said Mackenzie.
Andrew, heaving for breath, gave the order for them to head down to the convoy.
They executed three more piquet duties that day without incident and arrived in camp before sundown, in time for the men to erect bivouacs and set up the various mess tents for the evening meal. Andrew sat on a camping stool eating chicken and rice next to a fellow Scots officer, Lieutenant John Grant, who had heard of his grenade attack.
‘All that cricket practice, eh, Lomax?’ he joked. ‘Best overarm in the platoon, I hear.’
Andrew shared his cigarettes with Grant while the amiable lieutenant chatted about fishing on the Tweed. It amazed Andrew how Grant always managed to have immaculately groomed auburn hair and moustache even in the desert.
‘Fishing in Kashmir is supposed to be good,’ said Grant.
‘It is,’ said Andrew. ‘I used to fish there with my father as a boy.’
Andrew stared at the ball of fire that was sinking behind the mountains of Waziristan. He could still see the sun imprinted on his eyelids when he closed them. He felt heady. What on earth were they doing chasing tribesmen on this remote western frontier when a vast fascist army was pressing at the eastern borders of India?
