Books: Hira Singh
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Talbot Mundy >> Hira Singh
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But we went forward--cavalry, without a spur among us--cavalry with
rifles--cavalry on foot--infantry with the fire and the drill and
the thoughts of cavalry--still cavalry at heart, for all the weapons
they had given us and the trench life we had lived. We remembered,
sahib, that the Germans had been educated lately to despise us, and
we were out that night to convert them to a different opinion! It
seemed good to D Squadron that Ranjoor Singh, who had done the
defamation, should lead us to the clearing of our name. Nothing
could stop us that night.
Whereas we had been last in the advance, we charged into the lead
and held it. We swept on I know not how far, but very far beyond the
wings. No means had been devised that I know of for checking the
distance covered, and I suppose Headquarters timed the attack and
tried to judge how far the advance had carried, with the aid of
messengers sent running back. No easy task!
At all events we lost touch with the regiments to right and left,
but kept touch with the enemy, pressing forward until suddenly our
own shell-fire ceased to fall in front of us but resumed pounding
toward our rear. They call such a fire a barrage, sahib. Its purpose
is to prevent the enemy from making a counter-attack until the
infantry can dig themselves in and secure the new ground won. That
meant we were isolated. It needed no staff officer to tell, us that,
or to bring us to our senses. We were like men who wake from a
nightmare, to find the truth more dreadful than the dream.
Colonel Kirby was wounded a little, and sat while a risaldar bound
his arm. Ranjoor Singh found a short trench half full of water, and
ordered us into it. Although we had not realized it until then, it
was raining torrents, and the Germans we drove out of that trench
(there were but a few of them) were wetter than water rats; but we
had to scramble down into it, and the cold bath finished what the
sense of isolation had begun. We were sober men when Kirby sahib
scrambled in last and ordered us to begin on the trench at once with
picks and shovels that the Germans had left behind. We altered the
trench so that it faced both ways, and waited shivering for the
dawn.
Let it not be supposed, however, sahib, that we waited unmolested.
The Germans are not that kind of warrior. I hold no brief for them,
but I tell no lies about them, either. They fight with persistence,
bravery, and what they consider to be cunning. We were under rifle-
fire at once from before and behind and the flanks, and our own
artillery began pounding the ground so close to us that fragments of
shell and shrapnel flew over our heads incessantly, and great clods
of earth came thumping and splashing into our trench, compelling us
to keep busy with the shovels. Nor did the German artillery omit to
make a target of us, though with poor success. More than the half of
us lived; and to prove that there had been thought as well as
bravery that night we had plenty of ammunition with us. We were
troubled to stow the ammunition out of the wet, yet where it would
be safe from the German fire.
We made no reply to the shell-fire, for that would have been
foolishness; so, doubtless thinking they had the range not quite
right, or perhaps supposing that we had been annihilated, the enemy
discontinued shelling us and devoted their attention to our friends
beyond. But at the same time a battalion of infantry began to feel
its way toward us and we grew very busy with our rifles, the wounded
crawling through the wet to pass the cartridges. Once there was a
bayonet charge, which we repelled.
Those who had not thrown away their knapsacks to lighten themselves
had their emergency rations, but about half of us had nothing to eat
whatever. It was perfectly evident to all of us from the very first
that unless we should receive prompt aid at dawn our case was as
hopeless as death itself. So much the more reason for stout hearts,
said we, and our bearing put new heart into our officers.
When dawn came the sight was not inspiriting. Dawn amid a waste of
Flanders mud, seen through a rain-storm, is not a joyous spectacle
in any case. Consider, sahib, what a sunny land we came from, and
pass no hasty judgment on us if our spirits sank. It was the
weather, not the danger that depressed us. I, who was near the
center of the trench, could see to right and left over the ends, and
I made a hasty count of heads, discovering that we, who had been a
regiment, were now about three hundred men, forty of whom were
wounded.
I saw that we were many a hundred yards away from the nearest
British trench. The Germans had crept under cover of the darkness
and dug themselves in anew between us and our friends. Before us was
a trench full of infantry, and there were others to right and left.
We were completely surrounded; and it was not an hour after dawn
when the enemy began to shout to us to show our hands and surrender.
Colonel Kirby forbade us to answer them, and we lay still as dead
men until they threw bombs--which we answered with bullets.
After that we were left alone for an hour or two, and Colonel Kirby,
whose wound was not serious, began passing along the trench, knee-
deep in the muddy water, to inspect us and count us and give each
man encouragement. It was just as he passed close to me that a hand-
grenade struck him in the thigh and exploded. He fell forward on me,
and I took him across my knee lest he fall into the water and be
smothered. That is how it happened that only I overheard what he
said to Ranjoor Singh before he died. Several others tried to hear,
for we loved Colonel Kirby as sons love their father; but, since he
lay with his head on my shoulder, my ear was as close to his lips as
Ranjoor Singh's, to whom he spoke, so that Ranjoor Singh and I heard
and the rest did not. Later I told the others, but they chose to
disbelieve me.
Ranjoor Singh came wading along the trench, stumbling over men's
feet in his hurry and nearly falling just as he reached us, so that
for the moment I thought he too had been shot. Besides Colonel
Kirby, who was dying in my arms, he, and Captain Fellowes, and one
other risaldar were our only remaining officers. Colonel Kirby was
in great pain, so that his words were not in his usual voice but
forced through clenched teeth, and Ranjoor Singh had to stoop to
listen.
"Shepherd 'em!" said Colonel Kirby. "Shepherd 'em, Ranjoor Singh!"
My ear was close and I heard each word. "A bad business. They did
not know enough to listen to you at Headquarters. Don't waste time
blaming anybody. Pray for wisdom, and fear nothing! You're in
command now. Take over. Shepherd 'em! Good-by, old friend!"
"Good-by, Colonel sahib," said Ranjoor Singh, and Kirby sahib died
in that moment, having shed the half of his blood over me. Ranjoor
Singh and I laid him along a ledge above the water and it was not
very long before a chance shell dropped near and buried him under a
ton of earth. Yes, sahib, a British shell.
Presently Ranjoor Singh waded along the trench to have word with
Captain Fellowes, who was wounded rather badly. I made busy with the
men about me, making them stand where they could see best with least
risk of exposure and ordering spade work here and there. It is a
strange thing, sahib, but I have never seen it otherwise, that spade
work--which is surely the most important thing--is the last thing
troopers will attend to unless compelled. They will comb their
beards, and decorate the trench with colored stones and draw names
in the mud, but the all-important digging waits. Sikh and Gurkha and
British and French are all alike in that respect.
When Ranjoor Singh came back from his talk with Captain Fellowes he
sent me to the right wing under our other risaldar, and after he was
killed by a grenade I was in command of the right wing of our
trench.
The three days that followed have mostly gone from memory, that
being the way of evil. If men could remember pain and misery they
would refuse to live because of the risk of more of it; but hope
springs ever anew out of wretchedness like sprouts on the burned
land, and the ashes are forgotten. I do not remember much of those
three days.
There was nothing to eat. There began to be a smell. There was worse
than nothing to drink, for thirst took hold of us, yet the water in
the trench was all pollution. The smell made us wish to vomit, yet
what could the empty do but desire? Corpses lay all around us. No,
sahib, not the dead of the night before's fighting. Have I not said
that the weather was cold? The bombardment by our own guns preceding
our attack had torn up graves that were I know not how old. When we
essayed to re-bury some bodies the Germans drove us back under
cover.
That night, and the next, several attempts were made to rush us, but
under Ranjoor Singh's command we beat them off. He was wakeful as
the stars and as unexcited. Obedience to him was so comforting that
men forgot for the time their suspicion and distrust. When dawn came
there were more dead bodies round about, and some wounded who called
piteously for help. The Germans crawled out to help their wounded,
but Ranjoor Singh bade us drive them back and we obeyed.
Then the Germans began shouting to us, and Ranjoor Singh answered
them. If he had answered in English, so that most of us could have
understood, all would surely have been well; I am certain that in
that case the affection, returning because of his fine leadership,
would have destroyed the memory of suspicion. But I suppose it had
become habit with him to talk to the enemy in German by that time,
and as the words we could not understand passed back and forth even
I began to hate him. Yet he drove a good bargain for us.
Instead of hand-grenades the Germans began to throw bread to us--
great, flat, army loaves, Ranjoor Singh not showing himself, but
counting aloud as each loaf came over, we catching with great
anxiety lest they fall into the water and be polluted. It took a
long time, but when there was a good dry loaf for each man, Ranjoor
Singh gave the Germans leave to come and carry in their wounded, and
bade us hold our fire. Gooja Singh was for playing a trick but the
troopers near him murmured and Ranjoor Singh threatened him with
death if he dared. He never forgot that.
The Germans who came to fetch the wounded laughed at us, but Ranjoor
Singh forbade us to answer, and Captain Fellowes backed him up.
"There will be another attack from our side presently," said Captain
Fellowes, "and our friends will answer for us."
I shuddered at that. I remembered the bombardment that preceded our
first advance. Better die at the hands of the enemy, thought I. But
I said nothing. Presently, however, a new thought came to me, and I
called to Ranjoor Singh along the trench.
"You should have made a better bargain," said I. "You should have
compelled them to care for our wounded before they were allowed to
take their own!"
"I demanded, but they refused," he answered, and then I wished I had
bitten out my tongue rather than speak, for although I believed his
answer, the rest of the men did not. There began to be new murmuring
against him, led by Gooja Singh; but Gooja Singh was too subtle to
be convicted of the responsibility.
Captain Fellowes grew aware of the murmuring and made much show
thenceforward of his faith in Ranjoor Singh. He was weak from his
wound and was attended constantly by two men, so that although he
kept command of the left wing and did ably he could not shout loud
enough to be heard very far, and he had to send messages to Ranjoor
Singh from mouth to mouth. His evident approval had somewhat the
effect of subduing the men's resentment, although not much, and when
he died that night there was none left, save I, to lend our leader
countenance. And I was only his half-friend, without enough merit in
my heart truly to be the right-hand man I was by right of seniority.
I was willing enough to die at his back, but not to share contempt
with him.
The day passed and there came another day, when the bread was done,
and there were no more German wounded straddled in the mud over whom
to strike new bargains. It had ceased raining, so we could catch no
rain to drink. We were growing weak from weariness and want of
sleep, and we demanded of Ranjoor Singh that he lead us back toward
the British lines.
"We should perish on the way," said he.
"What of it?" we answered, I with the rest. "Better that than this
vulture's death in a graveyard!"
But he shook his head and ordered us to try to think like men. "The
life of a Sikh," said he, "and the oath of a Sikh are one. We swore
to serve our friends. To try to cut our way back would be but to die
for our own comfort."
"You should have led us back that first night, when the attack was
spent," said Gooja Singh.
"I was not in command that first night," Ranjoor Singh answered him,
and who could gainsay that?
At irregular intervals British shells began bursting near us, and we
all knew what they were. The batteries were feeling for the range.
They would begin a new bombardment. Now, therefore, is the end, said
we. But Ranjoor Singh stood up with his head above the trench and
began shouting to the Germans. They answered him. Then, to our utter
astonishment, he tore the shirt from a dead man, tied it to a rifle,
and held it up.
The Germans cheered and laughed, but we made never a sound. We were
bewildered--sick from the stink and weariness and thirst and lack of
food. Yet I swear to you, sahib, on my honor that it had not entered
into the heart of one of us to surrender. That we who had been first
of the Indian contingent to board a ship, first to land in France,
first to engage the enemy, should now be first to surrender in a
body seemed to us very much worse than death. Yet Ranjoor Singh bade
us leave our rifles and climb out of the trench, and we obeyed him.
God knows why we obeyed him. I, who had been half-hearted hitherto,
hated him in that minute as a trapped wolf hates the hunter; yet I,
too, obeyed.
We left our dead for the Germans to bury, but we dragged the wounded
out and some of them died as we lifted them. When we reached the
German trench and they counted us, including Ranjoor Singh and
three-and-forty wounded there were two-hundred-and-three-and-fifty
of us left alive.
They led Ranjoor Singh apart. He had neither rifle nor saber in his
hand, and he walked to their trench alone because we avoided him. He
was more muddy than we, and as ragged and tired. He had stood in the
same foul water, and smelt the same stench. He was hungry as we. He
had been willing to surrender, and we had not. Yet he walked like an
officer, and looked like one, and we looked like animals. And we
knew it, and he knew it. And the Germans recognized the facts.
He acted like a crowned king when he reached the trench. A German
officer spoke with him earnestly, but he shook his head and then
they led him away. When he was gone the same officer came and spoke
to us in English, and I understanding him at once, he bade me tell
the others that the British must have witnessed our surrender.
"See," said he, "what a bombardment they have begun again. That is
in the hope of slaying you. That is out of revenge because you dared
surrender instead of dying like rats in a ditch to feed their
pride!" It was true that a bombardment had begun again. It had begun
that minute. Those truly had been ranging shells. If we had stayed
five minutes longer before surrendering we should have been blown to
pieces; but we were in no mood to care on that account.
The Germans are a simple folk, sahib, although they themselves think
otherwise. When they think they are the subtlest they are easiest to
understand. Understanding was reborn in my heart on account of that
German's words. Thought I, if Ranjoor Singh were in truth a traitor
then he would have leaped at a chance to justify himself to us. He
would have repeated what that German had urged him to tell us. Yet I
saw him refuse.
As they hurried him away alone, pity for him came over me like warm
rain on the parched earth, and when a man can pity he can reason, I
spoke in Punjabi to the others and the German officer thought I was
translating what he told me to say, yet in truth I reminded them
that man can find no place where God is not, and where God is is
courage. I was senior now, and my business was to encourage them.
They took new heart from my words, all except Gooja Singh, who wept
noisily, and the German officer was pleased with what he mistook for
the effect of his speech.
"Tell them they shall be excellently treated," said he, seizing my
elbow. "When we shall have won this war the British will no longer
be able to force natives of India to fight their battles for them."
I judged it well to repeat that word for word. There are over ten
applicants for every vacancy in such a regiment as ours, and until
Ranjoor Singh ordered our surrender, we were all free men--free
givers of our best; whereas the Germans about us were all
conscripts. The comparison did no harm.
We saw no more of our wounded until some of them were returned to us
healed, weeks later; but from them we learned that their treatment
had been good. With us, however, it was not so, in spite of the
promise the German officer had made. We were hustled along a wide
trench, and taken over by another guard, not very numerous but
brutal, who kicked us without excuse. As we went the trenches were
under fire all the time from the British artillery. The guards swore
it was our surrender that had drawn the fire, and belabored us the
more on that account.
At the rear of the German lines we were herded in a quarry lest we
observe too much, and it was not until after dark that we were given
half a loaf of bread apiece. Then, without time to eat that which
had been given to us, we were driven off into the darkness. First,
however, they took our goatskin overcoats away, saying they were too
good to be worn by savages. A non-commissioned officer, who could
speak good English, was sent for to explain that point to us.
After an hour's march through the dark we were herded into some
cattle trucks that stood on a siding behind some trees. The trucks
did not smell of cattle, but of foul garments and unwashed men. Two
armed German infantrymen were locked into each truck with us, and
the pair in the truck in which I was drove us in a crowd to the
farther end, claiming an entire half for themselves. It was true
that we stank, for we had been many days and nights without
opportunity to get clean; yet they offered us no means of washing-
only abuse. I have seen German prisoners allowed to wash before they
had been ten minutes behind the British lines.
We were five days in that train, sahib--five days and nights. Our
guards were fed at regular intervals, but not we. Once or twice a
day they brought us a bucket of water from which we were bidden
drink in a great hurry while the train waited; yet often the train
waited hours on sidings and no water at all was brought us. For food
we were chiefly dependent on the charity of people at the wayside
stations who came with gifts intended for German wounded; some of
those took pity on us.
At last, sahib, when we were cold and stiff and miserable to the
very verge of death, we came to a little place called Oeschersleben,
and there the cruelty came to an unexpected end. We were ordered out
of the trucks and met on the platform by a German, not in uniform,
who showed distress at our predicament and who hastened to assure us
in our own tongue that henceforward there would be amends made.
If that man had taken charge of us in the beginning we might not
have been suspicious of him, for he seemed gentle and his words were
fair; but now his kindness came too late to have effect. Animals can
sometimes be rendered tame by starvation and brutality followed by
plenty and kindness, but not men, and particularly not Sikhs--it
being no part of our Guru's teaching that either full belly or
tutored intellect can compensate for lack of goodness. Neither is it
his teaching, on the other hand, that a man must wear thoughts on
his face; so we did not reject this man's advances.
"There have been mistakes made," said he, "by ignorant common
soldiers who knew no better. You shall recuperate on good food, and
then we shall see what we shall see."
I asked him where Ranjoor Singh was, but he did not answer me.
We were not compelled to walk. Few of us could have walked. We were
stiff from confinement and sick from neglect. Carts drawn by oxen
stood near the station, and into those we were crowded and driven to
a camp on the outskirts of the town. There comfortable wooden huts
were ready, well warmed and clean--and a hot meal--and much hot
water in which we were allowed to bathe.
Then, when we had eaten, doctors came and examined us. New clothes
were given us--German uniforms of khaki, and khaki cotton cloth from
which to bind new turbans. Nothing was left undone to make us feel
well received, except that a barbed-wire fence was all about the
camp and armed guards marched up and down outside.
Being senior surviving non-commissioned officer, I was put in charge
of the camp in a certain manner, with many restrictions to my
authority, and for about a week we did nothing but rest and eat and
keep the camp tidy. All day long Germans, mostly women and children
but some men, came to stare at us through the barbed-wire fence as
if we were caged animals, but no insults were offered us. Rather,
the women showed us kindness and passed us sweetmeats and strange
food through the fence until an officer came and stopped them with
overbearing words. Then, presently, there was a new change.
A week had gone and we were feeling better, standing about and
looking at the freshly fallen snow, marking the straight tracks made
by the sentries outside the fence, and thinking of home maybe, when
new developments commenced.
Telegrams translated into Punjabi were nailed to the door of a hut,
telling of India in rebellion and of men, women and children
butchered by the British in cold blood. Other telegrams stated that
the Sikhs of India in particular had risen, and that Pertab Singh,
our prince, had been hanged in public. Many other lies they posted
up. It would be waste of time to tell them all. They were
foolishness--such foolishness as might deceive the German public,
but not us who had lived in India all our lives and who had received
our mail from home within a day or two of our surrender.
There came plausible men who knew our tongue and the argument was
bluntly put to us that we ought to let expediency be our guide in
all things. Yet we were expected to trust the men who gave us such
advice!
Our sense of justice was not courted once. They made appeal to our
bellies--to our purses--to our lust--to our fear--but to our
righteousness not at all. They made for us great pictures of what
German rule of the world would be, and at last I asked whether it
was true that the kaiser had turned Muhammadan. I was given no
answer until I had asked repeatedly, and then it was explained how
that had been a rumor sent abroad to stir Islam; to us, on the other
hand, nothing but truth was told. So I asked, was it true that our
Prince Pertab Singh had been hanged, and they told me yes. I asked
them where, and they said in Delhi. Yet I knew that Pertab Singh was
all the while in London. I asked them where was Ranjoor Singh all
this while, and for a time they made no answer, so I asked again and
again. Then one day they began to talk of Ranjoor Singh.
They told us he was being very useful to them, in Berlin, in daily
conference with the German General Staff, explaining matters that
pertained to the intended invasion of India. Doubtless they thought
that news would please us greatly. But, having heard so many lies
already, I set that down for another one, and the others became all
the more determined in their loyalty from sheer disgust at Ranjoor
Singh's unfaithfulness. They believed and I disbelieved, yet the
result was one.
At night Gooja Singh held forth in the hut where he slept with
twenty-five others. He explained--although he did not say how he
knew--that the Germans have kept for many years in Berlin an office
for the purpose of intrigue in India--an office manned by Sikh
traitors. "That is where Ranjoor Singh will be," said he. "He will
be managing that bureau." In those days Gooja Singh was Ranjoor
Singh's bitterest enemy, although later he changed sides again.
The night-time was the worst. By day there was the camp to keep
clean and the German officers to talk to; but at night we lay awake
thinking of India, and of our dead officer sahibs, and of all that
had been told us that we knew was lies. Ever the conversation turned
to Ranjoor Singh at last, and night after night the anger grew
against him. I myself admitted very often that his duty had been to
lead us to our death. I was ashamed as the rest of our surrender.
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