Camps, Quarters, and Casual PlacesForbes, Archibald
History
Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places
Forbes, Archibald
Military camps; Military history, Modern
and they all sat down each by her husband. Then their husbands said,
'Go back,' and they would not. Whereupon the Nana ordered his soldiers,
and they went in, pulling them forcibly away." ...
The drive from the railway station to the European cantonments is
pleasant and shaded. At a bend in the road there comes into view a
broad, flat, treeless parade ground. This plain lies within a circle of
foliage, above which, on the south-eastern side, rise the balconies and
flat tops of a long range of barracks built in detached blocks, while
around the rest of the circle the trees shade the bungalows of the
cantonment. Near the centre of this level space there is an irregular
enclosure defined by a shallow sunk wall and low quickset hedge, and in
the middle of this enclosure rises the ornate and not wholly
satisfactory structure known as the "Memorial Church." It is built on
the site of the old dragoon hospital, which was the very focus of the
agony of the siege. It is impossible to analyse the mingled emotions of
amazement, pride, pity, wrath, and sorrow which fill the visitor to
this shrine of British valour, endurance, and constancy. The heart
swells and the eyes fill as one, standing here with all the arena of
the heroism lying under one's eyes, recalls the episodes of the
glorious, piteous story. The blood stirs when one remembers the buoyant
valour of the gallant Moore, who, "wherever he passed, left men
something more courageous and women something less unhappy," the
reckless audacity of Ashe, the cool daring of Delafosse, the deadly
rifle of Stirling, the heroic devotion of Jervis. And a great lump
grows in the throat when one bethinks him of the beautiful constancy
and fearful sufferings of the women; of British ladies going barefoot
and giving up their stockings as cases for grape-shot; of Mrs. Moore's
journeys across to No. 2 Barrack; of the hapless gentlewomen, "unshod,
unkempt, ragged, and squalid, haggard and emaciated, parched with
drought, and faint with hunger, sitting waiting to hear that they were
widows." And what a place it was which the garrison had to defend! Not
a foot of all the space bomb-proof, an apology for an intrenchment such
as "an active cow might jump over." The imagination has to do much work
here, for most of the landmarks are gone. The outline of the
world-famous earthwork is almost wholly obliterated; only in places is
it to be dimly recognised by brick-discoloured lines, and a low raised
line on the smooth _maidan_. The enclosure now existing has no
reference to the outlines of the intrenchment. That enclosure merely
surrounds the graveyard, in the midst of which stands the "Memorial
Church," a structure that cannot be commended from an architectural
point of view. But the space enclosed around its gaunt red walls is
pregnant with painful interest. We come first on a railed-in memorial
tomb, bearing an inscription in raised letters, on a cross let into the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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