Red Runs the Helmand. Patrick Mercer

I want you all to be prepared to take the field for an indefinite period at twenty-four hours’ notice.’ He prosed on about musketry, skirmishing practice, preparation of the horses and their fodder, and a host of minor details that Harry Brooke, Nuttall and I had already been working on.

      We scratched away in our notebooks to show willing while Primrose tried to tell us our jobs. What he didn’t cover, though, were the vital details that we all wanted to know. Eventually he ran out of steam and asked for any questions.

      ‘Yes, General. McGucken’s intelligence, understandably, is less than perfect.’ Harry Brooke, I knew, had become good friends with McGucken, admiring the Scotsman’s plain speaking and direct approach. ‘But what do we actually know about the forces that Ayoob Khan might have available to him?’

      ‘He’s got about eight thousand regular troops of which some two thousand are cavalry, and as many as six batteries of guns, many of which are rifled pieces, but we lack detail, Brooke.’ I could see why Primrose was reluctant to divide his already slender force.

      ‘Aye, General, but that’s only really half the story.’ This was McGucken at his best. He was by far the most junior in terms of both military and social rank yet the rest of us would hardly have dared to correct Primrose: we were too career-conscious, too much the victims of the Army’s strangling habit of unthinking obedience and uncritical respect. But not big Jock McGucken, who wore the DCM and knew that he had naught to fear from men like Primrose for there was nothing they could do for him. His reward was the knowledge that his children wouldn’t grow up in the Glasgow slum that had been his home, and the respect that all of us showed him. ‘The real question is how many irregulars, tribesmen and mad Ghazis he’ll be able to draw to his colours. If he’s a halfway decent commander, he could double the number of men he’s already got – and we’ve all seen what ugly buggers the Ghazis and their like can be.’

      I was as stunned by McGucken’s monologue as the rest of them. Suddenly there was the prospect of the best part of fifteen thousand men with more guns than we had descending on our three untried and untested brigades in a town that had no serious defences and was riven by malcontents. On top of that, I remembered the wali’s words of caution about his own troops’ dependability and the dubious attractions of a swarm of Ghazis. Surely he would know better than any of us Feringhees what a ticklish spot we could be in.

      ‘General, I wonder if we shouldn’t prepare the town for defence.’ Harry Brooke, Nuttall and I had spent hours wondering why Primrose hadn’t done what should have been done an age ago by Stewart.

      ‘We’ve discussed this before, Morgan, but, I grant you, the situation has evolved so tell me what’s on your mind.’

      I knew from the tone of Primrose’s voice that he wouldn’t relent. ‘Well, sir, should we not bring the troops within the walls of the town and establish a proper defensive routine rather than trying to live in the cantonments as if we were a peacetime garrison? We could then put the troops to work on improving the walls and preparing gun positions both there and in the Citadel. And we ought to start to clear the shanties and mud dwellings that deprive us of any fields of fire.’

      ‘Yes, and that’s exactly the point I’ve tried to make all of you understand.’ I’d annoyed Primrose – but Brooke had made a pretty good start on that with his earlier questions. Now the peppery little sod was about to go for all of us. ‘Right, everyone except the brigade commanders – you as well, McGucken – please leave us.’ The three brigade majors and Primrose’s own pair of lickspittles grabbed at their papers and maps and scuttled from the room, only too happy to leave their superiors to face the storm. ‘Can’t you see that we’ve got to make this whole situation look as normal as possible and that the least little thing we do’ – the man was getting redder and redder in the face as the discussion turned into a rant – ‘could upset the whole damned applecart and cause the wali’s troops to revolt?’

      ‘All the more reason to have us on top of them, surely. If we’re in the town then we can watch them more closely and act more quickly – it makes sense,’ McGucken was unable to conceal his irritation any longer, not even adding a per functory ‘sir’, treating Primrose like a particularly dim recruit.

      ‘And I’ll thank you not to interrupt, Major McGucken!’ The venom in the general’s hissed reply shocked me – and it seemed to have the same effect on the others, for there was a sudden silence. Even the flies stopped buzzing, so taken aback were they. ‘Do you really think that we could clear the mosques and other religious sites that teem just outside the walls?’ None of us replied. ‘Well, do you? You all seem to think that we can treat this place as we did Cawnpore or Peking twenty-odd years ago. But can’t you get it into your thick heads that this is a new kind of war where I’ve got newspapers and politicians looking over my shoulder . . .’ (I’d have loved to add, ‘and dictating our tactics and risking our men’s lives’, but he was vexed enough already) ‘. . . and that, no matter what’s happening elsewhere in the country, Kandahar is supposed to be the one place in which we’re succeeding? If we tear the scab off things here, then the government’s strategy to get us back to India without further bloodshed will be ruined.’

      It was a shame that the little fellow had lost his rag for he’d just alienated the lot of us.

      ‘So, get back to your troops now, gentlemen, and let’s hear no more about ruining Kandahar. If the wali can’t deal with Ayoob Khan and we’re called upon to do the job, we’ll do it in the field as far from this town as we possibly can. That’s always supposing our intelligence gives us any warning at all.’ Primrose was speaking normally now, but he hadn’t grasped how much damage he had done to his standing in our eyes. He hadn’t even been able to resist that nasty little dig at McGucken, which I knew he would come to regret. I was on my feet and saluting almost as quickly as the other three, for none of us could bear the poisonous career-wallah for a second longer.

      When Sam Keenan had moved up to Afghanistan with his regiment, he’d known that life wouldn’t all be gallant deeds and glory. He had vivid memories of Finn the groom yarning to Billy and himself back in the tack-room at home about India and the Sikh wars in the forties and much of that had revolved around heat and dust, flies and rotting food, good officers and bad. There had been little about blood and flame. Well, he thought, now it was his turn to experience the waiting and frustration of campaign life.

      June was the hottest month in these latitudes and the temperature only made the smell of piss-damp straw all the more distinct. It wasn’t an aroma that any cavalryman could actually dislike, but in A Squadron’s horse lines, which had been established in an old Kandahari stable, it was almost overpowering. There were none of the drains and gutters to which the regiment had become used, and the windows were so narrow that a permanent gloom hung over the place. Now, as he waited for Rissaldar Singh to join him, he peered down the long line of feeding horses, the thin streams of sunlight thick with the dust that the hoofs of the tethered mounts threw up.

      Almost eighty horses had been crushed into the stable, sixty or so the private property of each trooper, his pride and joy, and another twenty remounts provided by the government while on campaign. Keenan worried about this so-called sillidar system, which was the very definition of irregular cavalry. Each man would bring his own mount as a condition for enlistment – a very considerable investment for these mainly Pathani men who came from poor hilly country – and tend it. Horses became ill or were injured and had to be put down so they needed a cushion of extra animals. But now, as casualties had occurred, the men were being issued with whalers, like any common regular regiment, and Keenan was worried that they would not be cherished as much as a man’s own horse had been. The squadron leader had ordered extra veterinary inspections in the certain knowledge that the stabling and relatively little exercise might encourage certain maladies.

      Now Keenan, who’d done his basic vet’s course at the cavalry school in Nasirabad, looked at his list of common diseases and symptoms as he waited for Singh by the wide doors of the building.

      ‘I’m sorry, sahib, am I late?’

      Keenan looked up from his list towards the native officer as he stopped and saluted. ‘No,