Jack Windrush Collection

Chapter 5

1 An Afghan source (Sirdar M. A K Effendi) gives Ayub Khan’s numbers as high as 25,000, which may be an exaggeration.

1 The final stand of eleven men, two lieutenants and nine privates of the 66th Foot and Bombay sepoys excited the admiration of the Afghans. The defenders charged out of the compound, faced their enemy and died fighting. Even the ghazis were scared to approach, so the Afghans shot the British down. Ayub Khan’s men were so impressed by the bravery of the British soldiers that they built a monument in their honour.

2 Bobbie was the dog of Lance sergeant Peter Kelly. Bobbie (or Bobby) survived the action at Maiwand and returned home to Britain. Queen Victoria later presented him with the Afghanistan Medal. Bobby was not the only animal honoures, for Victoria also awarded Roberts’ horse with the Afghanistan Medal, with four clasps.

3 An Afghan shell blew open the RHA treasure chest during the retreat. I altered this incident to include Jack.

1 For this action, Major George White was awarded the Victoria Cross.

2 The Battle of Kandahar was the British final victory and the last battle of the Second Afghan War. The British killed an estimated 1,200 Afghans, losing forty dead and 228 wounded. Roberts also captured all of Ayub Khan’s artillery, including the two guns the Afghans captured at Maiwand.

3 Although Roberts won various victories in Afghanistan, his uncontested march from Kabul to Kandahar brought him public fame. He became one of two well-known British generals, the other being Sir Garnet Wolseley. Both were from Ireland, and they were intense rivals.

4 Ayub Khan was not responsible for Maclaine’s death. Ayub left the camp about eleven, giving instructions not to kill Maclaine and the other prisoners. Either the guard or some other person disobeyed the order.

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1 Ayub Khan was not yet finished. In July 1881, he raised another army, defeated an Afghan government army and captured Kandahar. Abdur Rahman called up 12,000 regular Afghan regulars, plus some tribal lashkars and defeated Ayub. Some units of Ayub’s army deserted to the Amir, which possibly affected the outcome. Ayub Khan fled to Persia (now Iran), where he threatened more trouble until 1888, when the British granted him political asylum in India.

1 Sung to the tune of Waltzing Matilda. These may be the original early eighteenth-century words of Waltzing, although Banjo Paterson, the poet, claimed never to have heard or seen the words of Rochester.

Waltzing MatildaWaltzing,Rochester.1 Time expired – completed the term of military service. By this period, soldiers signed on for a limited number of years. Many counted the years until their time expired.

1 The Alexandria Riots of 11th June 1882 started with an argument between a Maltese and an Arab donkey boy named El Ajjan at a café called Kawat-el-Gezaz near the Great Square. When the Maltese stabbed the Arab, a crowd of some thousands of Egyptians attacked any European and Christian they saw. Around fifty Europeans died and perhaps two hundred Egyptians.

1 Prime Minister Disraeli purchased shares in the Suez Canal in 1875.

1 The bombardment of Alexandria was a one-sided affair that destroyed the defending forts with only minor damage to the British fleet. The official British casualties were as follows: Killed: on board the Alexandra, one; Superb, one; Sultan, two; Inflexible, one total killed, five. Wounded: on board the Alexandra, three; Sultan, seven; Superb, one; Invincible, one; Inflexible, six; Penelope, eight; total wounded, twenty-seven.

AlexandraSuperbSultanInflexibleAlexandraSultan,Superb,InvincibleInflexiblePenelope,1 It was approved. A Portsmouth man, Israel Harding VC rose to become Chief Gunner. A veteran of the Baltic campaign in the Crimean War, and the Ashanti War, he died in 1917, aged 83.

2 John Arbuthnot Fisher, known as Jacky Fisher rose to become Admiral of the Fleet and arguably one of the greatest modernisers the Royal Navy ever possessed. He introduced torpedoes and torpedo-boat destroyers and encouraged turbine engines, oil rather than coal for fuel and the first dreadnoughts.

3 The Irish National Invincibles, a splinter group of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, murdered Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Henry Burke in Phoenix Park, Dublin, in May 1882.

4 “Fifty-four forty or fight” was the battle cry of Polk as he contested the US Presidency in 1845. He was trying to force the US frontier up to that geographical parallel. He settled for the 49th parallel but still won the presidency.

1 Publics: the popular term for a public house in the 19th century. It was later shortened to the still-current ‘pub’.

2 Mehmet Ali or Muhammed Ali of Egypt (1769-1849) was the Albanian Ottoman governor of Egypt. At the height of his powers he controlled Egypt, Sudan, areas of Saudi Arabia and parts of the Levant. He founded the dynasty that controlled Egypt until 1952.

1 Lieutenant Vyse died from his wounds. Private Frederick Corbett was awarded the Victoria Cross for trying to give medical aid while under heavy Egyptian fire.

1 This incident occurred in Alexandria, with no mishap to the seamen involved.

2 Queen Victoria was not amused. Her journal recorded: “When I read that my darling, precious Arthur was really to go, I quite broke down. It seemed like a dreadful dream.”

1 This incident also occurred in October 1882. The Victorian era British soldier was strangely keen to see action.

1 Lieutenant-General Harry Smith Willis had not been in action since the Crimean War and had hardly commanded troops in the past two decades.

2 In Wolseley’s “Soldier’s Pocket Book”, 1871 edition, he wrote: “Without saying so directly, you can lead your army to believe anything; and as a rule, in all civilised nations, what is believed by the army will very soon be credited by the enemy, having reached him by means of spies, or through the medium of those newly-invented curses to armies – I mean newspaper correspondents.”

1 That phrase referred to the abortive British attack on Rochefort in September 1758. The expedition achieved nothing and cost around a million pounds, with the opposition Whig politician calling it ‘breaking windows with guineas’.

1 Although that cavalry attack failed with many horses shot, few British soldiers died.

1 This officer was Lieutenant Gordon Carey of the Highland Light Infantry, who reputedly killed three or four Egyptians with his sword, despite being shot in the arm. On his way back from the battle, sitting astride a mule, Carey, aged 21, remarked that it was his first fight, and he “never enjoyed himself so much.”

1 Valentine Baker, or Baker Pasha, was a career soldier who saw service in the Cape Frontier War of 1852-53 and the Crimean War. Kicked out of the army after an indecent assault on a woman in a railway carriage, he distinguished himself in the Ottoman Army before being offered the post in Egypt. He was soon transferred to the command of the Egyptian police and later commanded an abortive expedition of Egyptian troops to Sudan.