The 35th Bengal Infantry was left at Bukkur to hold the bridge over the Indus, and preparations were made to punish the Scinde Sirdars, who evinced a determination to oppose the passage of our troops through their country. Wiser counsels prevailed, possibly due to the fact that H.M.S. _Wellesley_ had with a couple of broadsides knocked the forts at Kurrachee into pieces, and that the Bombay troops were advancing from the south. On reaching Quettah, the Bombay column, which was under Sir John Keane, the Commander-in-Chief, joined hands with the Bengal army. This force consisted of the 4th Hussars, the two Bombay cavalry regiments named above, the 2nd (Queen's), 17th (Leicesters), and the 19th (now the 119th) Bombay Infantry. Leaving the 43rd Bengal Infantry at Quettah, the army pushed on to Kandahar, losing an immense number of its baggage animals _en route_, and suffering much from marauding Baluchis, and still more from the terrible heat in the passes. It must be remembered that the men marched in leather stocks, in leather shakos, and red coatees! In June the army reached Kandahar, and thence a force was detached, under Brigadier Sale, to the Helmund River, meeting with a certain amount of opposition. Leaving a strong garrison under Colonel Herring in Kandahar, and entrusting the chief command in Southern Afghanistan to General Nott, the Commander-in-Chief advanced to the north towards the end of June, reaching the neighbourhood of Ghuznee on July 21, where the first serious opposition was encountered, the Afghans being signally worsted by our cavalry, who were well handled by General Thackwell, a Peninsular veteran, who had lost an arm at Waterloo. GHUZNEE, 1839. This battle honour was the first granted during the reign of Queen Victoria, and was awarded to the following regiments, who were present at the storming of the Afghan fortress by Sir John Keane on July 23, 1839: 4th Hussars. 16th Lancers. The Queen's (R.W. Surrey). 13th Somerset L.I. 17th Leicesters. 1st Bengal Fus. (Munsters). 3rd Skinner's Horse. 31st Duke of Connaught's Lancers. 34th Poona Horse. 3rd Sappers and Miners. 119th Multan Regiment. All the regiments of the old Bengal army which participated in this feat of arms, or in the subsequent operations in Afghanistan, were swept away in the Mutiny of 1857. Sir John Keane, against the advice of his artillery officers, had left his siege-train behind, owing to difficulties of carriage, and there was nothing to be done but to carry Ghuznee by storm. There were men present who had assisted at the storming of Bhurtpore in 1826, and all remembered the terrible losses incurred by Lord Lake's army at the unsuccessful assaults of that fortress in 1805. The prospect was not a pleasing one, but with the Oriental _l'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace_ is the best policy in the long-run. On July 23 Keane carried the place by assault with but trifling loss, and so earned a peerage.