PDA

View Full Version : Good Morning...1/16,000 survived



Okla-homey
1/13/2006, 07:09 AM
January 13, 1842 Sole British soldier escapes Kabul

http://img81.imageshack.us/img81/2024/afgreatgamecartoonfrom18780df.jpg
Commonly called "The Great Game," throughout much of the 19th century, Britain and Russia sparred over control of the Asian subcontinent. Here an representative Afghan is depicted in a British political cartoon as caught between the British lion and the Russian bear.

On January 13, 1842, a British army doctor reaches the British sentry post at Jalalabad, Afghanistan, the lone survivor of a 16,000-strong Anglo-Indian expeditionary force that was massacred in its retreat south from Kabul to the Indian border He told of a terrible massacre in the Khyber Pass, in which the Afghans gave the defeated Anglo-Indian force and their camp followers (in this context "camp followers" equals wives, whores and the children of both) no quarter.

http://img81.imageshack.us/img81/82/afbrydon2gr.jpg
You can read Brydon's entire horrible account. Essentially, the British column was simply picked to death as they made the long overland march from Kabul in the north of Afghanistan, to the first British outpost on the Indo-Afghan frontier.

In the 19th century, Britain, with a goal of protecting its Indian colonial holdings from Russia, tried to establish authority in neighboring Afghanistan by attempting to replace Emir Dost Mohammad with a former emir known to be sympathetic to the British. This blatant British interference in Afghanistan's internal affairs triggered the outbreak of the first Anglo-Afghan War in 1839.

http://img81.imageshack.us/img81/1261/afangloafghan4zi.gif
British camp outside Kabul in 1842. As you can see, their position was untenable amidst a hostile population of Afghans who wanted to stab them all in the face.

Dost Mohammad surrendered to British forces in 1840 after the Anglo-Indian army had captured Kabul. However, after a serious and widescale Afghan revolt in Kabul the British had no choice but to withdraw. The withdrawal began on January 6, 1842, but bad weather delayed the army's progress. Having been there in wintertime, your correspondent can attest, it is one cold-arse inhospitable place.

The column was attacked by swarms of Afghans led by Mohammad's son, and those who were not killed outright in the attack were later massacred by the Afghan soldiers. A total of approximately 4,500 soldiers and 12,000 camp followers were killed. Only one man, Dr. William Bryden, an Army surgeon escaped to recount the details of the military disaster.

In retaliation, another British force invaded Kabul in 1843, burning a portion of the city. In the same year, the war came to an end, and fourteen years later in 1857, wiley old Emir Dost Mohammad, who had been restored to power in 1843, finally signed an alliance with the British because it suited him.

There would be two more Anglo-Afghan wars. Afghanistan did not completely regain its autonomy until the dawn of the 20th century.

http://img81.imageshack.us/img81/2677/insane7zo3zr.jpg

TUSooner
1/13/2006, 11:04 AM
Kipling's poem "The Young British Soldier,"
( http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1146.html ) in which a grizzled veteran gives advice to a green recuit, ends like this:

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
So-oldier _of_ the Queen!