Treachery in Tibet (11 page)

Simon shook his head in disbelief. It was clear that Younghusband did not lack courage, but that he possessed an impetuous streak that boded ill for the future.

From that moment on, there was no lack of contact between the two opposing forces. Little parties of Tibetans began visiting the British camp to repeat their mantra: the British must retreat and leave Tibetan soil before meaningful talks could begin. They were met with courtesy but blank refusal. It had become, reflected Fonthill, a ridiculous stalemate, with the British unable to advance because of a combination of foul weather and insufficient supplies to sustain the advance, and the Tibetans seemingly unable to summon the will to attack.

If they did decide to attack, he was not at all sure of the outcome.
For the weather had blunted whatever advantages their modern weaponry gave the invaders. However carefully they were oiled, rifle bolts were now being frozen into their breeches. With night temperatures now dropping to four degrees below zero within the tents, the machine guns were particularly susceptible to the cold and Hadow, the young subaltern in charge of the guns, had taken to removing the locks from the Maxims and huddling them to his breast inside his sleeping bag at night. Sometimes Fonthill found that the carbines of his Mounted Infantry had frozen to the bottom of their saddle buckets on return from patrol.

The rarefied air in which they all lived now had also adversely affected the accuracy and range of the guns, causing them to overshoot in practice. Simon could not help but feel that a mass attack by the Tibetans at night could overwhelm the British camp. Yet none came.

On return from patrol one day, dismounting with his teeth chattering, Fonthill found that Macdonald was closeted with Younghusband and an aide suggested that it would be unwise to interrupt. ‘I think there is a bit of an altercation going on between the two, sir,’ he confided. ‘I’ve heard raised voices. Better wait a bit, unless it’s vitally urgent.’

Fonthill frowned. This was the sort of situation which, clearly, Curzon might have had in mind when he had hinted that he might have a reconciliatory role to play. But, dammit it all, he didn’t cherish the thought of acting as schoolteacher in a playground argument. Let the two argue themselves out first and then perhaps he could step in. And, anyway, he was desperately in need of a cup of tea.

Later, he met O’Connor. ‘Have you heard?’ the Captain asked, conspiratorially.

Simon nodded glumly. ‘Been a bit of a row, I gather.’

‘Yes. The governor, it seems, has completely lost his rag with Macdonald. The bloody man wants to withdraw to Chumbi. Says we can’t exist here on this plain. Younghusband refuses to budge.’

‘Well, I must confess that I have seen better defensive positions.’

‘Yes, but the old man says that retreating now, when there are quite a few Tibetans hanging about, will mean losing face completely in their eyes and it will set us back quite a bit in this diplomatic stand-off. Younghusband says that, anyway, there is plenty of fodder about, if you really look for it, and that with our modern weapons, we can adequately defend ourselves.’

Fonthill shrugged. ‘Well, Younghusband knows the terrain better than anyone. But I feel we could be pushed a bit if we are attacked and I have seen enough Tibetans to think that we might be. I am on my way to Mac to report now.’

The General heard the news of the nearby Tibetan forces with seeming equanimity, although he immediately coughed and lit a new cigarette from the stub of that still held between his fingers. ‘Did it look as though they were preparing to attack?’ he asked between coughs. To Fonthill, he appeared to be a sick man.

‘I confess I don’t think so,’ he replied. ‘Although we were only a handful, there was no attempt to challenge us when we met the first lot behind the brushwood. They all seemed to be having a bit of a picnic. And the bigger group at the wall – must have been well over 2,000 of them – let us approach quite close and observe them without a shot being fired.’

‘Humph. Well, I don’t like it. I will double the guard at night. Keep patrolling, Fonthill. We will need ample warning when they come.’

But they did not come. The days mounted as the force camped out under canvas waited and shivered in the cold wind. Fonthill and his men continually ranged the plain, keeping the Tibetans under surveillance, but the enemy showed no sign of moving. Indeed, they waved quite cheerily at the horsemen.

Nevertheless, it was a surprise when, on returning from one patrol, Simon was met by Alice with the news that Macdonald was withdrawing most of his force to New Chumbi and that Younghusband would be staying, with a considerably depleted military escort.

‘What! He is going to leave Younghusband stuck out here? What’s the point of that?’

Alice found a temporary home for her pencil by sticking it in her hair. ‘From what we’ve been told, I gather that Macdonald feels that this plain can no longer sustain so large a force, the weather is too bad to continue the advance for the moment and, anyway, we haven’t built up sufficient supplies to do so, Younghusband refuses to retreat, so General Mac is taking his toys and going back sixty miles to his playpen in Chumbi, where it’s much warmer at only 10,000 feet up.’

‘But that’s bloody ridiculous. It’s leaving the diplomatic mission comparatively undefended.’

‘Not quite. You, dear, will be staying with your remarkably ungainly Sikh cavalry, and so will four companies of the 23rd Sikh Pioneers, the Norfolks’ Maxim-gun detachment, a detail of Madras Sappers – who, coming from southern Indian, of course, are all shivering so much that they are quite useless as soldiers – and one of the Gurkhas’ seven-pounder guns. About 200 so called fighting men in all.’

‘What about you?’

‘Oh, I am staying, of course, and so are the rest of the scribblers. Although General bloody Macdonald has refused to extend the telegraph line from Phari to here, probably because he hates us all.’

The General was quite sanguine, however, when Fonthill bearded him. ‘We can’t stay here in these numbers for the rest of the winter,’ he growled, through a blue haze of cigarette smoke. ‘Younghusband won’t move so I am taking the main party back. It makes sense. We will, of course, keep bringing up supplies to Phari ready for the advance when the weather improves.’

‘What if we are attacked?’

‘Well,’ Macdonald paused while he removed his cigarette and coughed. ‘You have repeatedly assured me that the Tibetans show no sign of moving and Younghusband is perfectly happy with the defensive arrangements we have made here. We can advance Gurkhas to help you from Phari if you need them and I can move back here within a few days, weather permitting. Younghusband is quite prepared to take the risk. I must consider the overall position and a force this large can’t be sustained here. And that’s all there is to it.’

‘Very well. Do you think the telegraph from Phari will remain uncut?’

‘Oh yes. Since we flogged the local headman for cutting it, there has been no further trouble.’

‘Who will remain in military command here?’

‘Couldn’t let you do it, we must be fair. Must have a regular. Colonel Hogge commands the 23rd Pioneers so he will do it. You will report to him, although I know you will stay close to Younghusband. Now you must excuse me. I have much to—’ And he thrust a handkerchief to his mouth to herald another burst of coughing.

Two days later, Fonthill, Alice, Jenkins and Sunil stood together sombrely and watched as the greater part of the mission’s military escort gradually turned its back on the little camp at Tuna and wound its way back over the mountains.

‘Talk about the rats leaving the sinking whatsit …’ muttered Jenkins.

Alice gripped her husband’s hand tightly as the last trooper disappeared into the enveloping mist.

The days that followed brought no attack and, although it remained bitterly cold, no deterioration in the weather. Younghusband did, indeed, find grass and fuel by sending foraging parties out across the plain, escorted by Fonthill’s Sikhs, although it became increasingly difficult to find sufficient yak dung to keep the precious fires burning. Nevertheless, life became not exactly unpleasant for the defenders of Tuna.

Colonel Younghusband, that lover of the mountains, seemed quite unfazed by the lack of progress of his mission. He spent much of each day lying out on the rocks, warmly muffled, writing letters home or reading poetry.

The rising sun struck the top of the tents every morning promptly at 7 a.m., climbing into a sky that was cloudless except for a soft wisp of haze. From the little river that supplied water to the troops a soft mist rose and, as the sun climbed higher, the bare brown base
of the surrounding mountains toned into a pastel delight of purples and pinks, while the snow summits turned into an ethereal blue. On the plain, plump little larks and finches ignored the cold and scurried about looking for food. Moles could be seen basking in the winter sunshine at the mouth of their holes.

‘I quite like this postin’,’ confessed Jenkins to Fonthill one day, ‘now that I’m not fallin’ off the bleedin’ mountains. And I’m gettin’ quite good at this fishin’ lark. What’s more, you’re gettin’ to be almost adequate at ridin’ on these ponies – almost, but not quite, that is.’

‘Don’t be impertinent, or I’ll have you demoted to dung clearer.’

‘Well, with respect, bach sir, we’re all almost that now. We’re not cavalry. We’re collectors of ’orse shit.’

‘Better than sliding near the edges of precipices.’

‘Very, very true. When d’yer think we’re goin’ to advance?’

‘Well, I hear that supplies are building up at Phari and it can’t be long now. If we don’t move soon those Tibetans will think we’re here on holiday.’

Alice had become the most restless of the quartet. There had been less and less to write about as the days passed and she and her colleagues had become increasingly irked by the double censorship imposed by Macdonald on the press corps. This had arisen because the task had originally been handled by the mission staff, but Macdonald had insisted that the army should be involved so that the press telegrams were scanned twice.

‘It is not as though anything that is published in London,’ fumed Alice, ‘is going to be eagerly read in Lhasa. The place could be on the moon as far as reading about the outside world is concerned.’

Her frustrations, however, had become ameliorated to some extent
by the growth of her friendship with Sunil. The two had now become inseparable and Alice always showed him the text of her telegrams, explaining to him how the abbreviations worked, saving precious pennies, and the subtleties of the grammar.

Her main story during these inactive months came when disaster struck one of the convoys bringing up supplies from New Chumbi to Tuna. Amazingly, her story was allowed through by the censors despite her graphic description, gathered when she interviewed the survivors:

Alice was particularly pleased that her disgusted revelation that the officers were found rations to eat while the sepoys were denied food somehow slipped through the censors.

It was clear to her that the two companies of Pioneers deployed in escorting the mule-train were almost certainly below strength and that
a sizeable part of the convoy was diverted from its main purpose by the need to carry the kit, rations and spare ammunition of the escort. Alice had cultivated Younghusband, and his simmering resentment of the caution of Macdonald in insisting on what he considered to be excessively large escorts had rubbed off on her.

‘The bloody man is so scared of risking a black mark on his career,’ she confided to Simon, ‘that he won’t raise a finger unless it is surrounded by three companies of sepoys. We will never move the sixty miles to Gyantse at this rate, let alone reach Lhasa.’

Fonthill smiled but shook his head. ‘The man is cautious, I agree, my love, but he carries a heavy responsibility. We are invading a completely unknown country in foul weather, with a line of supply and communications stretching behind us about four times the length of the fighting head. You must remember that.’

Alice scowled. ‘He’s supposed to be a general, isn’t he? And generals are supposed to fight, aren’t they? Nobody’s had to fire a shot in anger except at mountain goats for months. What’s he afraid of?’

The tension that had built all around, however, was relieved at last when, on the evening of 29th March, Macdonald arrived with his main body from New Chumbi prepared to advance on what he called another ‘reconnaissance in force’. The following day, however, a piercing wind swept across the plain and engulfed the camp with what Alice described in her telegraph to London as ‘a hurricane of tingling grit’. She reported that the discomfort of the men was increased by the orders of General Macdonald to strike their tents and to ‘conceal themselves’ in case Tibetan spies were observing their deployment from the surrounding hills.

‘How can 1,000 men,’ she complained to Simon, ‘with mules, ponies, guns, ammunition supplies and other stores, disappear into a naked plain? The man is an idiot.’

At 8 a.m. on the 31st March Macdonald’s army paraded in six inches of snow to begin the march on Guru. Because of the scarcity of ammunition, each infantryman was issued with no more than thirteen rounds. Nevertheless, the morning was bright, the sky was blue and everyone, including the little press contingent that marched with the column, was in good heart and relieved that, at last, the mission was on its way at least to Gyantse – and perhaps even to the forbidden city of Lhasa?

Despite the lack of ammunition the column was an impressive unit. It consisted of the two Pioneer regiments (misnamed in this context because these Sikhs had proved to be strong fighters); the 8th Gurkhas; two companies of Fonthill’s Mounted Infantry, which had now grown to be a hundred-strong; two ten-pounders of the 7th Mountain Battery (a British unit), the Gurkha-manned seven-pounders, ‘Bubble and Squeak’; the two Maxims of the Norfolks, also manned by British troops; and various ancillary units. The total strength of the column was just over 1,000 men, mainly made up of Indian sepoys, with British personnel numbering less than 200.

The destination was Guru, the little hamlet that Younghusband had visited, about ten miles away. But two miles to its south was the wall blocking the road that Fonthill had scouted while Tuna was being set up. This would have to be circumvented in the face of the Tibetans manning it.

As always, Fonthill and his Mounted Infantry rode on ahead of the
column, fanning out in a wide screen between one and two miles to the front and flanks to protect the main force from a surprise attack. The fact that the Tibetans knew that they were on the march was confirmed when emissaries twice approached the column, repeating their old demands that the British should retire to Yatung. Both times, Younghusband sent them back with a message to their general, saying that the column was bound for Gyantse and would soon reach Guru and that if he wished to avoid a fight then he and his troops should clear the road and let the British through.

Implacably, the advance continued until Simon and his men drew near to the wall. He found that, as before, its top was lined with armed Tibetans and that the sangars overlooking the road were also well manned. He galloped back to report to the main column.

This halted about half a mile away from the wall and the guns – ten-pounders carried on mules and ‘Bubble and Squeak’ by coolies – were assembled and made ready for action and the troops lined up. Immediately, a small party, led by two generals and riding ponies, cantered around the end of the wall and approached the British lines. They were met by Younghusband, Macdonald, Fonthill and, of course, O’Connor, all sitting their ponies underneath a large Union Jack that crackled in the strong wind. Rugs were laid on the ground, the main participants dismounted and the latest parley began.

Alice, notebook and pencil in hand, edged forward and began making notes. She could not hear what was being said, although she could only presume – what was, indeed, confirmed later – that the old litany of ‘Go back’ and ‘No’ was being repeated. But she could describe the scene that lay before her. The wall in the background, the gravel-studded ground and the rocks that climbed steeply to the left,
were all of a characterless grey. But the Tibetan deputation provided a bizarre splash of colour.

The general from Lhasa wore a high, domed and embroidered hat and both he and his fellow general wore gay yellow and green coats and carried long swords with richly worked hilts. The civilian notables squatted in equally colourful robes of purple and blue, their strange, fork-butted guns embossed with turquoise and coral; and their little ponies, fretting and stamping in the background, had saddlecloths worked in swastika patterns, filigree brass headbands and wide, moulded iron stirrups. It was, scribbled Alice, like a scene from the Arabian Nights, dropped into a slate-grey Himalayan amphitheatre.

Fonthill had remained in the saddle as the negotiations continued and, realising that they were once again going to end in stalemate, he edged his pony away to join Ottley and Jenkins, waiting at the head of the mounted Sikhs.

‘This is going nowhere,’ he whispered. Then he nodded ahead, to the right of the stone house that marked the end of the wall. ‘The way is clear through there,’ he said, ‘but there are hundreds of armed Tibetans well beyond the rear of the wall up in the rocks to the right. When we advance, as I am sure we shall, they could enfilade our men. I intend to suggest to the General that we gallop through there, past the men manning the wall, and clear those chaps out. But we must be careful that we don’t fire first. This whole thing may still just end peacefully and I don’t want to start a battle. So, William, have the men ready.’

‘Very good, Simon.’

Fonthill dismounted and walked back to where the little group still sat cross-legged on the sheepskins, the Tibetans talking
garrulously, O’Connor listening and nodding sympathetically, while Younghusband and Macdonald, the latter smoking his cigarette, sat stony-faced. He stood back from the gathering and edged towards Alice, who was still writing quickly, Sunil, his rifle slung from his shoulder, at her side.

‘What’s happening?’ she hissed.

‘Usual stuff, by the look of it, neither side giving an inch. It’s getting ridiculous and very boring.’ He nodded towards the wall, the top of which was lined with what appeared to be matchlocks and strange tubes, resting on tripods, which represented the nearest approach the Tibetans had to artillery. ‘We will probably have to use our guns to knock down that wall, although I am not sure they will be very effective at this range.’

He turned to Sunil. ‘Make sure you take the memsahib away behind those rocks if the firing starts,’ he said. ‘It could turn very hot here in this defile.’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Simon,’ snorted Alice. ‘I can look after myself. I have to get a good view of what’s going on. Although I do hope there is not going to be a battle. It could be a massacre, you know …’

Before she could explain a massacre of whom she was interrupted by the end of the palaver. With a grunt and wave of his hand, the Tibetan general scrambled to his feet and stalked away haughtily to his pony, followed by his entourage. They all mounted and, talking animatedly, urged their mounts into a ragged gallop back to the wall.

Fonthill approached Younghusband and Macdonald, who were in earnest conversation. ‘What has happened?’ he asked.

Younghusband sighed. ‘It’s been like talking to that damned wall over there. I have told them we want no bloodshed but that we are determined to continue on to Gyantse and they must let us through without firing. I don’t know what the hell they intend to do. I have given them fifteen minutes to clear the wall.’

‘It would be safer to bring up our guns and reduce the wall.’ Macdonald’s Aberdeenshire brogue sounded somehow deeper in the defile.

‘No, Mac. Give them time to make up their minds to clear out.’

Fonthill explained his intention of riding through and clearing the Tibetans at the rear.

‘Very well,’ grunted Macdonald, ‘but wait until we advance.’

The next fifteen minutes seemed an age to the three as they stood, staring intently at the enemy lining the head-high lines of stones ahead of them and in the sangars above and to the left. The Tibetans remained behind their weapons, chattering and gesticulating as though inviting the British to advance.

Eventually, Macdonald drew out his timepiece. ‘Time’s up,’ he said. ‘Do we fire?’

Younghusband’s face was a picture of despair. ‘No. Give them a minute or two more. I don’t want us to fire the first shot.’

Despite the grimness of the situation, Fonthill could not but give an inward smile. The normal state of the relationship between the two men seemed to have been reversed. Here was the ploddingly cautious General itching to attack the enemy, while the usually impetuous Younghusband was reluctant to move.

Eventually, Macdonald grunted. ‘We can’t stay here forever. I must bring up the artillery.’

‘No, Mac. Get your men simply to advance on the wall, withholding their fire until they are fired on.’