Red Runs the Helmand

Chapter Two - The Ghazi

It was hot, and as Ensign Billy Morgan looked up into the cloudless sky he could see a pair of hawks circling effortlessly on the burning air just above the walls of Kandahar. They reminded him of the sleek, lazy-winged buzzards back in Ireland, except that there the sun rarely shone. He wondered how the thermals would feel to the birds – would they sense the heat of the air under their feathers as they scanned the collection of humanity below? And would they have any sense of the tensions that pulsed through the city under them? Then, as he looked at the gang of khaki-clad lads in front of him, he realised just how ridiculous his musings were. The birds cared not a damn for him or his soldiers, or for any man or living beast, he thought. Their eyes and beaks roamed ceaselessly for dead or dying things, for carrion to feed their bellies. Of the feelings and concerns of the men in the dust and grit below them, they knew nothing.

‘Is that belt tight enough, Thompson?’ Morgan was checking the six soldiers who had been detailed off to patrol the centre of Kandahar. They knew it would be a tense and hostile time, as the villagers pressed into the bazaars for market day.

‘Sir,’ replied Thompson, flatly – the Army’s universal word of affirmation that could mean anything from enthusiastic agreement to outright insubordination. The big Cumberland farmer’s lad looked back at Morgan, his face trusting and open.

‘Well, make sure it is. I don’t want you having to bugger about with it once we’re among the crowds. Just check it, please, Sar’nt Kelly.’ Morgan hesitated to treat the men like children, but even in his few weeks with the regiment, he’d come to recognise that the ordinary soldiers, dependable, smart and keen most of the time, could be the most negligent of creatures once they put their minds to it.

‘Sir.’ Sergeant Kelly came back with the same stock response ‘Come on, Thompson, I can get this between your belt and that fat gut of yours – look.’ Kelly had stuck his clenched fist between the soldier’s belt, which had been scrubbed clean of pipe clay on active service, and his lean belly. ‘Take it in a couple of notches.’ Thompson moved his right foot to the rear of his left, rested his Martini-Henry rifle against his side and undid the dull brass belt buckle, inscribed with ‘66’ in the middle and ‘Berkshire Regiment’ round the outer part of the clasp.

Thompson was the last man to be inspected. Once his belt was back in place and he’d assumed the position of attention, Kelly stamped in the packed dust just outside the regimental guardroom where the patrol had assembled, slapped the sling of his rifle and repeated the well-worn formula, ‘Leave to carry on, sir, please?’

‘And is Bobby a vital member of the patrol, Sar’nt Kelly?’ The non-commissioned officer’s scruffy little terrier-cross, which had followed his master all the way from India, now sat on the ground, sweeping his remnant of a tail back and forth, looking imploringly up at Kelly. Morgan’s words provoked laughter from the file of men, and a grin from Sergeant Kelly, relieving the tension. When he had arrived with the 66th, Morgan had been surprised by the deference the soldiers had shown to him. Sandhurst had trained him to expect and, indeed, demand their instant obedience, but he hadn’t anticipated how concerned they would be by his inexperienced eye being run over them during an inspection. Now there was the added edge of danger, with the knowledge that previous regiments had suffered casualties among the Afghan mob, and the need for constant vigilance.

‘No, sir. Go on, pup, away wi’ you.’ Kelly’s voice was firm but kind as he pointed towards the guardroom while the dog continued to look at him and wag his tail with increased urgency. ‘Go on, Bobby, fuck off.’

‘One word off you, Sar’nt . . .’ Private Battle, the longest-serving soldier in the patrol, murmured, to the delight of the others, Kelly grinning broadly as well. Morgan knew that Battle could be a handful, often nicknamed ‘Bottle’ because he was fond of his grog – that was why he was still a private.

‘That’s enough from you, Private Edward bleedin’ Battle. Got enough trouble wi’ one mongrel that won’t obey me without another addin’ to me grief. Go on, Bobby, fuck off to the guardroom like a good dog.’ The patrol laughed again as the mutt slunk off towards the bell tent that served as the entrance to the 66th’s lines.

As the fun died down, Morgan continued, ‘Right, Sar’nt Kelly, no one’s loaded but ammunition’s ready, ain’t it?’ Kelly simply nodded in reply. Standing orders stated that no firearms should have a round in the breech during a patrol except on the instructions of an officer or an NCO, but that ammunition should be broken out of its paper parcels and ready for instant use in the men’s pouches. A number of natives had been wounded during scuffles with the previous regiments and Colonel Galbraith was keen that the 66th should not have the same problems. ‘Good. Loosen slings, fix bayonets and stand the men at ease, please.’

Kelly gave a few simple instructions, none of the parade-ground shouting that Morgan had seen with other sergeants, to which the men responded readily, slipping the long steel needles over the muzzles of their rifles before pushing the locking rings home with an oily scrape. Then the leather slings were slackened, weapons slung over shoulders, and they all looked at Morgan for his next word of command.

‘Right, lads, gather round and listen to me.’ The six men shuffled round Billy Morgan, Sergeant Kelly hanging back, slightly to the rear. Morgan looked at his command. He was the junior subaltern of H Company, charged with leading nearly forty men, mostly good fellows as far as he could see, and few of the sweepings of the gutter that the press would have you believe made up the Army. Morgan was twenty-two, about the same age as most of his men, but they looked older. The product of the new sprawling industrial towns, some from the plough and a few from Ireland, they had been used to a hard life even before they came into the 66th. Now, good food, drill and regular physical training had made them fit and lean, prime fighting material. ‘Most of you have been on town patrol before . . .’ This was only Morgan’s second outing. The first had passed in a blur of new sights, sounds and smells but otherwise had been uneventful. ‘We’re to make sure that the natives know we’re here and alert, and to take note of anything unusual.’

‘Like what, sir?’ Battle, the old soldier of six years’ Indian service, cut in, his brogue as thick as the day he had left Manorhamilton.

‘Well, large gatherings of young men, the sight of any modern weapons such as Sniders – to be frank, you’re all more experienced than I am and I hope that you’ve got a better nose for trouble than I have.’ Morgan looked around. This touch of humility seemed to have been well received by the men. ‘But remember, lads, be on the look-out for the least sign of danger. The Fifty-Ninth found that a mob would know if something was amiss and would thin out at the approach of a patrol.’ The only British infantry regiment that had been part of General Stewart’s division and had handed over to the 66th had shared all sorts of horror stories with their successors. They’d had a litany of minor casualties and two deaths while patrolling the Kandahar streets. ‘So, keep your eyes peeled and if you think we need to put a round up the spout, ask Sar’nt Kelly or me before you do so.’

‘But, sir, we’re meant to be here to support the wali, ain’t we, not to do his troops’ work for ’im? The Fore and Afts’ – Battle used the nickname of the 59th – ‘got right kicked about an’ was never allowed to shoot back. If the town’s so bleedin’ ’ostile, why can’t the wali’s men deal with it an’ save us for the proper jobs?’

There was a rumble of agreement from the other men and Morgan shot a look at Sergeant Kelly, whose level stare merely told him that he, too, expected an officer-type answer to a wholly reasonable question.

‘Good point, Battle.’ Morgan paused as he measured his reply. ‘It isn’t like the proper war that was being fought last year. We’re here, as you say, to help the wali, but his own troops are unreliable and the town is full of badmashes we need to know about, and then report back to the political officer. Now, if there are no more questions . . .’ Morgan was suddenly aware that he and his patrol had been hanging around for far too long.

‘Yessir. What do we do if we see a Ghazi, sir?’ Thompson, belt now tightened, chirped up.

‘Most unlikely, Thompson. They’ll melt away at the sight of us,’ replied Morgan.

Thompson wasn’t to be put off. ‘They didn’t with the Fifty-Ninth, sir, did they? Why—’

‘Yes, well, we’re not the Fifty-Ninth, are we? This lot have heard that the Sixty-sixth are here and they won’t want to take us on. Now, split into pairs, ten paces between each. Sar’nt Kelly, bring up the rear, please. Follow me.’ With that, Morgan’s little command stepped out of the tented lines of the 66th, through a gate in the barbed-wire perimeter and away up the gentle incline three-quarters of a mile towards the walls, shanties and sun-lit pall of woodsmoke that was Kandahar.

Morgan walked as casually as he could among his soldiers. The men were moving either side of the pot-holed road in what the Army liked to describe as ‘staggered file’ – odd numbers on the left and even numbers on the right, no two men in a line with each other. That, he thought, was meant to make a random jezail shot less likely to strike more than one man, but he could see how the troops tended to close in on each other for comfort and reassurance.

‘No, lads, keep spread out. Don’t bunch up, keep your distance,’ Morgan said, as lightly as he could, trying not to let his tension show in his voice. He looked at the men that some mistaken fate had placed under his command. They were all polite to him, almost painfully so, trusting him because of the stars he wore on his collar and his accent, more than any proof of competence he had so far shown. Yet he was surprised by how easy he found their company. Sandhurst had told him to expect the worst, that while most of his men would be good, trustworthy sorts, a few would be out to mock him and dun him of every penny he might be foolish enough to carry around. He had identified no one like that. True, Battle was a bit of a handful – he’d come the wiseacre a couple of times over the young officer’s Protestantism – but Morgan had managed to slap him down good-naturedly enough.

But, looking at Private Battle, Billy Morgan remembered how his father would tease the Catholics both back home in Cork and in his countless stories about the old Army. Yet, while he pretended to be suspicious of their religion, his obvious fondness for what he called his Paddies shone through. Now the new Army, Morgan thought, had fewer of those Irishmen who’d been driven to take the shilling by the potato blight back in the forties and fifties, but those who had enlisted were good enough and fitted in well with the sturdy English lads that the 66th recruited from around their depot in Reading. No, even in the short space of time he’d spent with H Company, Morgan was beginning to understand the men, to enjoy their ready, irreverent humour (how had they referred to General Roberts in his vast, non-regulation sun-helmet when they saw his picture in the paper? ‘That little arse in the fuck-off hat’, wasn’t it?) and understand their values. How, he wondered, would he have managed if he’d been commissioned into one of the native regiments, like his half-brother, Sam Keenan? Everything would have been so foreign – and even if he’d managed to learn the language well enough to do his job, it would never have been possible, surely, to become really close to an Indian.

But, thought Billy Morgan, that would never have been the case for he was only ever going to serve in a smart regiment – his father would hear of nothing else. As a little boy he’d accepted, without questioning, that he would always get the best of everything while Sam would have what was left over. He could still remember when he was five years old and how bitter the older, bigger Sam had been at having to accept the smaller of the two ponies their father had bought for them. It was the first time Billy had really noticed any difference, but as he matured, he had seen how Mary, his step-mother, had protected the way in which Sam had been brought up in her Catholic Church.

His father had made a joke of it, laughing when Mary elongated the word ‘maas’ and crossing himself in faux-respect whenever something Roman was mentioned. And as Father thought that County Cork was far too much under the sway of the Pope, he would brook no suggestion that Billy should be sent to one of the local schools. Oh, no, they were good enough for Sam, but for Billy there should be nothing but the best: he was to be educated in England, at Sandhurst and then a good line regiment, just like his father.

He and his brother had seen little of each other. Only when Billy returned to Glassdrumman in the school holidays would they meet – and clash. Billy knew that Sam resented him and the preferential treatment he received, and on the few occasions that they were together as boys, and then as young men, he wasn’t slow to show it. Everything became a contest – no fish could be pulled from a stream or bird shot from a rainy sky without its becoming a test of manhood. At first Billy was always bettered by his bigger brother, who would challenge him to runs over the heather or bogs or turn a fishing trip into a swimming challenge across an icy lough, which he always lost. But as Billy grew, he began to win, so Sam ensured that the contests became more intense.

It was just before Sam had gone off to the Bombay Army, Billy remembered, that things had come to a head. He was home from school and Sam was full of piss and vinegar about his new adventure, full of brag about the Indians he would soon command and the glamour of that country. Then Billy had made some disparaging comment about native troops and the great Mutiny and Sam had retorted with something snide about Maude, Billy’s dead Protestant mother. Billy knew he was being daft, for he’d never known his mother – she had died in childbirth, allowing his father to marry again – and he loved his step-mother, Mary, but the sneer was too much and he had flown at his brother just outside the tack-room.

There hadn’t been much to it, really. Both boys were scraped and bruised by Billy’s first onslaught – he could feel the granite of the stableyard setts even now – before Finn the groom was pulling them apart and promising ‘a damn good leatherin’ to the pair o’ ye if you don’t stop it, so’. But, Finn’s intercession lay at the root of the trouble even now. Billy knew that if they’d been allowed to fight on, for them both to get the bile out of their systems, there might have been some settlement. Instead Finn had made them shake hands and Sam was away too early the next day for there to be any further rapprochement.

They’d not seen each other since that drizzly afternoon in Cork four years ago, but now Billy found himself at the end of the sun-baked earth, yet within spitting distance of the brother he’d hoped never to see again. The brother, Billy thought, who’d chosen to keep his own father’s name – well, God rot Sam Keenan, and the unlucky sods he commands.

Morgan was pulled back from his thoughts by a trickle of tribesmen on their way to market. At first the soldiers passed one or two heavily laden donkeys swaying up the gritty main road towards the town, their loads of newly woven baskets towering above them. Their owners ignored Morgan’s and his men’s attempts at cheerful greetings, and as the traffic became denser the troops gave up any attempt to humour the population.

‘Close up at the rear, please, Sar’nt Kelly.’ Morgan had to yell down the street to be heard at the back of the patrol: the closer they got to the Bardurani Gate, the thicker the press of people and animals became.

‘Right, sir. Come on, you lot, shift yourselves,’ answered Kelly, provoking the last pair of soldiers to break into a shuffling run, their eyes wide at the medley of sights, colours and smells before them. Like his men, Morgan was fascinated by what he saw – camels carrying earthenware pots, herds of bleating goats and sheep, driven by boys with long, whippy sticks, mules and asses with rolled carpets and every manner of cheap, Birmingham-made pots and pans, even a dog pulling a crude cart that squeaked under a load of apricots. And the stink filled his nostrils. Animal piss and human sweat, aromatic smells from little charcoal braziers where urchin cooks touted fried meat and cheese, stale puddles and the universal scent of smoke and shit. The women, Morgan noticed, swivelled great kohl-dark eyes away from his gaze behind the slits of the black burkhas that hid them from head to toe. But that was more than he got from any of the men. Tall hillmen, Mohmands, Afridis and Wazirs, each one heavily armed, strode past on sandalled feet while stockmen with broad, flat, Mongol faces and men from the plains – Durrani Ghilzais, Yusufzais – looked straight through him. It was as if he and his troops didn’t exist, as if some unspoken agreement between all the men dictated that the Feringhee should be made to feel as invisible as possible.

The noise was vast. Tradesmen proclaiming their wares, the rattle of sheep and goats’ bells, the hammering of smiths and, above all else, the Babel of a dozen different tongues and dialects, all competing to be heard above the others. So vast, indeed, that Morgan didn’t hear his leading left-hand man’s initial shout of alarm; he didn’t hear the soldier’s cry, ‘You little sod!’ The first he knew of the attack was when Thompson yelled in pain, which jerked him from his reverie in time to see a blur of white robes and khaki drill, a thrashing bundle of boots and sandals in the nearby gutter, one of his soldiers falling, rifle clattering, helmet rolling, sprawling on what seemed to be a boy as steel flashed and jabbed.

Private Battle reacted faster than his officer. While Morgan groped to draw his sword and understand the sudden bedlam, the older soldier rushed to help his mate, saw the boy pinioned below a shrieking wounded Thompson and a six-inch blade poking time and again into his comrade’s side. As Morgan ran he watched Battle’s bayonet rise and fall, spitting the brown, writhing form of a boy who, he guessed, could be no more than twelve years old. Now it was the child’s turn to cry out as the lethally sharp metal punctured his right arm, then cracked through his shoulder blade before transfixing him to the ground.

‘You murdering little fucker!’ Battle was standing astride both Thompson and the boy, trying to shake the assassin loose from his jammed bayonet. ‘Get off, won’t you?’

As Morgan sprinted up to the tangled trio, he looked down into the lad’s face. It was twisted in a combination of hate and pain, teeth bared, not yet old enough to be yellowed by tobacco, his dirty white robes and turban stained with his own and Thompson’s blood. The more Battle tugged at his weapon, the more the child rose and sagged, firmly skewered on the steel; all three shouted in a rising cacophony.

Without a second’s hesitation, Billy Morgan drove his sword firmly into the boy’s chest, remembering at the last moment to twist his blade so that it might not stick in the child’s ribs. The point passed straight through his target’s heart and Morgan saw both dirty little fists grab at the steel before falling away, just as the lad’s eyes opened wide in a spasm of shock and his whiskerless jaw sagged open.

Now Battle finished a job that was already done. At last his blade came clear and, with a stream of filthy language, the burly soldier kicked and kicked at the youth’s face with iron-shod boots, then stamped down hard until bone crunched and blood oozed from blue-bruised lips and a splintered nose.

‘All right, Battle, that’s enough – that’s enough, d’you hear me?’ Sergeant Kelly was suddenly on the scene. ‘Help Thompson. The kid’s dead enough.’ There was something calming, soothing, in Kelly’s tone for, despite the gore and horror all around him, he had hardly raised his voice. ‘You all right, sir?’

Morgan was suddenly aware that Kelly had taken him by the elbow, that his sword was free of the corpse and that, somehow, a spray of someone’s blood was daubed across his trousers. ‘Yes, Sar’nt Kelly, I’m fine.’ Morgan looked at the attacker’s sightless eyes and realised he had killed this boy, but he felt none of the nausea that was supposed to accompany such things and no more regret at having taken such a young life than he would after shooting a snipe. ‘How badly hurt is Thompson?’