It is not proposed to describe the operations of the second Afghan war, for the first battalion of the Royal Irish, upon whom fortune had frowned during the Mutiny, were still pursued by ill luck, and played but the smallest part in the campaign. Though the war began in November 1878, it was not until the beginning of the following year that the first battalion was ordered up from Ferozepore to join the reserve division of the Northern Afghanistan field force at Peshawar. A few weeks later this division was broken up; the battalion was transferred to the Khyber Line force; and on May 2, 1879, eight hundred and four stalwart Royal Irishmen found themselves at the foot of the great wall of rock which forbids access to Afghanistan from the plains of India.[229] This natural rampart is pierced by the Khyber Pass--a dark and gloomy gorge, winding its way between high mountains which so nearly approach each other that in places their rugged sides are only ten or twelve feet apart. Through this defile, one of the most difficult in the world, runs the track which for centuries has been the highway of commerce between Central Asia and Hindustan. In the middle of the pass the mountains, suddenly receding, form a plain, where the battalion spent the next ten months in discharging the useful but unattractive duties which fall to the lot of line of communication troops. They had to hold Lundi Kotal and Ali Musjid; to provide escorts for convoys through the pass, and to piquet the neighbouring hills. The guards were numerous, for the local tribesmen were expert thieves, to whom every British rifle was worth its weight in rupees; and notwithstanding the vigilance of the sentries in the sangars round the camp, Afridi robbers succeeded in abstracting a few firearms from the tents in which the men were sleeping. A good many non-commissioned officers and privates were lucky enough to escape from the drudgery of this existence by obtaining employment as signallers on the Kabul-Peshawar line, where from constant practice they became experts with flag and heliograph. During the summer there was a sharp outbreak of cholera in the battalion, which cost the lives of Quartermaster R. Barrett and sixty of the other ranks.[230] “It came up from India in the most curious way, right along the signallers’ posts. We heard of it first at Jumrood; a few days afterwards a man in the first post was taken ill; a few days more and the second post was attacked, though there appeared to be no communication possible (except by heliograph) between the posts, and it gradually kept on till it reached the regiment. We knew it was coming; we could not move, and I think,” writes an officer, “that it showed the staunchness of the Royal Irish that they never went to pieces at all.” To keep up the spirits of the men and give them some amusement the officers rigged up a gymnasium and laid out a polo-ground and racecourse, where regimental gymkhanas were often held.