Read Online Death on a Pale Horse by Donald Thomas - Free Book Online

was utter confusion in the Movements Office as to what was going on in Afghanistan. I asked a transport officer how I might best catch up with the 5th Northumberland Fusiliers. I understood that they might already be garrisoned in Kandahar, on the far side of the Khyber Pass. This chair-bound Irish major looked at me irritably. He spoke as though the pandemonium in his office was all my fault.
    â€œHas no one told you, mister? Your travel order should make it clear. The Northumberlands no longer require an assistant surgeon. It is the Berkshires who are in need. Assistant Surgeon Mackintosh has been invalided back to the depot at Peshawar with dysentery. You will exchange into the Berkshires at your earliest convenience. Draw travel warrants and your pay draft here. The railway does not run as far as Peshawar. Requisition a seat as far as Lahore on tomorrow’s Delhi train. Make arrangements when you get there. Now, who’s the next man?”
    Such was my welcome to active service. I set out the following morning on the first stage of my journey in a saloon coach of the Bombay, Baroda and Central India Railway. This was one of several coaches reserved for British officers. With wide windows, easy chairs, and clubroom tables, it was the type of train which, in England, carries young swells with their picnic hampers and servants to a fashionable race meeting.
    From the pages of the newspaper behind which I retired, I gathered that the situation in Afghanistan had deteriorated since the last news reached England. The rebel leader Ayub Khan had gained the upper hand, and our expeditionary force had been obliged to move forward with speed. A good many officers from all over India now filled the carriages of every train destined for the nearest junctions to the North-West Frontier. In those days, the line stopped short of the Khyber Pass. I should have to join a mounted column for the journey beyond Lahore. My imagination was full of the high snow-covered peaks of the pass and the white-walled city of my destination. Not so long ago, Kandahar had been the capital of Afghanistan.
    As we travelled north, there was a curious interlude. I could not see that it concerned me at the time—so much the worse for me. At every stage of this northward journey, I was increasingly preoccupied by the petty discomforts which anyone who has travelled by military train in India will recognise. Black horsehair is used as upholstery in these saloon carriages because it is easily cleaned and hygienic. Unfortunately, in that heat, it becomes a refined torture after a very little while. The firm stuffing gradually feels more like compressed bramble thorns, and its effects upon the body grow more acute with every passing mile.
    I was not alone in my restless discomfort. The train to Lahore was far too crowded with our troops for anyone to have a carriage to himself. I found myself sharing with a captain and two lieutenants from a regiment I shall not for the moment name. The lieutenants answered to the names of “Jock” and “Frank.” Both had come aboard in mufti. Their regimental blazers and white flannels equipped them better for a picnic on the banks of the Thames than an encounter with Ayub Khan’s murderous Jezails. I should guess that they were no more than twenty-one years old: they could not have more than a couple of years service between them.
    After my seven years spent walking the wards of St Bartholomew’s Hospital, the gap in our age and experience made them seem frivolous and vexatious. They were like excited schoolboys on a holiday. The uniformed captain, whom they called by his surname, Sellon, was a little older and far more sober. He glanced at me from time to time, as though suspicious of who I might be and what I had come for.
    Sleep helps to pass the time but I was soon glad of conversation to take my mind off the horsehair padding. The lieutenants and I exchanged small talk. From the first, it