afghanistanpromised by Akbar Khan never arrived and long before the canton-
ment was evacuated, looters were climbing over the walls, pillaging the
houses and killing stragglers. In an attempt to escape the slaughter the
camp followers rushed forward to seek the protection of the rearguard,
spreading panic in the process and hampering the troops. All semblance
of order broke down as the column was strung out for several kilometres
along the road, making its exposed and unprotected flanks easy picking
for the Ghilzais and other plunderers who picked off stragglers, the sick
and the wounded.
After two days the column had only managed to travel 16 kilometres
(10 mi.) to But Khak, which under normal circumstances was a short ride
from the Bala Hisar. In front of them lay the deep, steep-sided, U-shaped
valley of the Khurd Kabul, the start of what was known as the Haft Kotal,
or Seven Passes, which lay between Khurd Kabul and Gandamak. This
was Jabbar Khel country, tribes whose khans and maliks felt betrayed by
Macnaghten’s cut in their subsidies and other broken pledges, and who
were bound by a sacred oath to destroy the infidel. The retreating troops
and hangers-on stood no chance and the Ghilzais picked them off from
the safety of the heights above as they ran the gauntlet of the Khurd Kabul.
The slaughter was terrible with no quarter given. After five days all but a
handful of the 16,000 men, women and children who had set out from
Kabul had been slain, or had died from exposure during the bitter nights,
while the wounded and those too exhausted to continue sat by the wayside,
awaiting the cold touch of a Ghilzai knife on their throat.
By the time the remnant reached Gandamak on the morning of 13
January 1842, all that remained of the army was a mere twenty officers
and 45 men of Shelton’s 44th Foot. Gandamak was meant to have had
a garrison of the king’s troops stationed there, but the survivors found
only the Ghilzais waiting to greet them. Major Griffith, who had assumed
command of what was left of the regiment after Akbar Khan had taken
Shelton hostage a few days earlier, was offered the chance to surrender,
but perhaps remembering the humiliation the regiment had suffered
on Tepa-yi Behmaru, he refused. When the Ghilzais tried to disarm the
soldiers a scuffle broke out that soon turned to hand-to-hand combat. By
the time it was over all but three had been killed. Captain Souter, one of
the survivors, was lucky. He had tied the regimental colours around his
waist and the Ghilzai, thinking he was an important person who would
command a substantial ransom, took him prisoner.
Around one o’clock in the afternoon of the same day a watchman on
the walls of the Jalalabad fort saw a single horseman riding towards the