The battles of the world : $b or, cyclopedia of battles, sieges, and important military eventsBorthwick, J. Douglas (John Douglas)
History
The battles of the world : $b or, cyclopedia of battles, sieges, and important military events
Borthwick, J. Douglas (John Douglas)
Battles; Military history
The divisions made a general move at daybreak, on the 12th
October, to Thag Bakh, about six miles distant from Cabul; and on
the entrance to the Koord Cabul Pass, Her Majesty’s 9th and 13th
Regiments, together with six Native Corps of the 1st Division,
manned the hills commanding the pass, to enable those in the
valley below to move on unmolested. On the morning of the 13th the
troops entered the Pass which led to Tezeen, about nine miles. The
mountains were high and craggy, and very dark, rendering the road
extremely gloomy and sad; a torrent ran in a serpentine direction
from side to side, which reminded me of the Bolun; it had to be
crossed twenty-eight times during about six miles. We had scarcely
got well into the jaws of this awful scene of romantic vastness,
whose hollow crags seemed to echo defiance to our intruding tread,
when a number of the enemy made their appearance in the rear, but
were kept in check. The very great height of the mountains, of a
dark, reddish colour, struck one with awe, and silence seemed to
reign over all; the mind was totally occupied in contemplating this
fearful sight of hidden deeds; horror struck the feeling heart,
when the eye fell on the skeletons of our departed comrades, who
lay in most agonizing positions, indicative of their last struggle
for life. Here a spot would be strewed with a few crouched up in a
corner, where they had evidently fled to cover themselves by some
detached rock, from the overpowering cruelty of their foe, and
had been rivetted by death. There couples were lying who had died
in each other’s arms, locked as it were in the last embrace of
despair: numbers lay in every direction, devoid of every particle
of clothes; some with the greater part of the flesh putrefied on
their bleaching bones--others were clean from having been devoured
by the vast number of carrion birds and beasts inhabiting these
terrible regions. I at first attempted to count the number of
frames as I went along, but found them so numerous that I could not
find time, and my inclination sickened from the awfulness of the
scene. The pass was no more than thirty feet wide at this part, and
so numerous were the mouldering frames of these whose lives had
been sacrificed during the last winter, that they literally covered
the road--and, in consequence, the artillery and other wheeled
carriages had to pass over them--and it was indeed horrible to
hear the wheels cracking the bones of our unburied comrades. It was
quite easy to discover the Europeans by the hair on the skulls,
which still remained fresh. After a tedious, and indeed a painful
march, we reached Tezeen, which opens from the narrow Pass into a
much wider part, sufficient to enable us to pitch our camp. Here
was a sad scene of recent strife--scarce a tent could be pitched
but a skeleton or two had to be removed, just kicked aside as
though it were a stump of a tree, in order to leave clear the
place for the interior of the tent, and there remained unnoticed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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