Frontier Fighters: On Active Serivce in Warziristan

The Memoirs of Major James Cumming

Walter Cummings, Jules Stewart

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781848842410
• eBook ISBN: 9781781598801
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Militärische Biographien

These are fascinating memoirs of a British officer who fought the legendary Pathan tribesmen of the Northwest Frontier, right up to the beginning of WW2. He describes desperate battles against this highly skilled and ruthless enemy. Pathan atrocities were commonplace and no prisoners were taken.Cummings served in two Frontier units, the South Waziristan Scouts and the Corps of Guides. Waziristan, then the home of Wazirs and Mahsuds, the most war like of Pathan tribes, is today sanctuary for Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists. Frontier Fighters describes the closing stages of Britains imperial presence on the subcontinent. Yet beside the pig sticking, polo and hunting, there was great excitement danger and gallantry. A unique bond existed between the British and their native troops. Paradoxically Cummings went on to command a Pathan regiment in North Africa in WW2.

Chapter 1

The Making of a Frontiersman

In May 1915, after finishing with school-leaving examinations, my brother and I were taken along by Dad for an interview with the General Officer Commanding in Quetta,¹ where we both had been brought up. After asking us a few questions, the General told us that we would have to prove ourselves fit to serve in the Indian Army before he would recommend the granting of commissions. So for a couple of months we two youngsters were attached to a local Regiment, marched up and down the parade ground by a havildar of the unit,² taken on long route marches and thoroughly disciplined. The Commanding Officer of the unit must have given a satisfactory report on our training for we were both commissioned into the Indian Army Reserve on 1 August 1915.

My brother³ left to join a unit stationed in a small outpost, Loralai, south of Fort Sandeman, and I departed to join an Indian Regiment in Chaman, a small military station on the border of British Baluchistan with Afghanistan.⁴ The unit I found myself with did not take soldiering seriously and we junior officers were left much to ourselves, with lots of time to go shooting and for playing games. Chaman is at the southern end of the main trade route running from Kabul through Kandahar into Baluchistan, with the result that the small but crowded bazaar was a wonderful sight on any day that a camel caravan arrived. On those days, the small cantonment⁵ fairly reeked of camels and the cries of traders, and their bargaining filled the air. Carpets, really beautiful carpets, could be had for a song, also poshtins,⁶ warm Gilgit boots, large camel bags and gaudy-coloured waistcoats, embroidered with gold thread.

It was luck for the carefree, happy-go-lucky Regiment I was with that peace, perfect peace, reigned in Chaman in those days. Our only worry was thieving, the bazaar being a rendezvous for trans-border murderers, thieves and other bad hats, and in addition, no doubt, to a few from our side. There seemed to be very little check on the monthly population of the bazaar area. However, I must admit, this mixed crew of cut-throats troubled us military folk little, as they confined their attention to the rich shops of the local traders, whether Hindu or Mussalman, when loot was their objective. The border, running as it did within a few hundred yards of the cantonment, was no obstacle and could be crossed at any time by anyone. All Army personnel had strict orders not to wander across into Afghanistan. However, were one in pursuit of a wounded kiloor⁷ or hare, the excitement of the chase could hardly deter the keen shikari⁸ from trespassing over a border, marked rather haphazardly by distantly positioned pillars. Also, there was no border guard to say ‘Nay’, or at any rate I never saw one.

Our relations with the Afghans were, in those days, friendly, at least outwardly so, and therefore there was little reason for all the officers who were present with the Regiment to stay in Chaman at weekends. The more senior and older officers of the unit usually went for long weekends in search of wine, women and song to Quetta, only a few hours away by train, the timings of which appeared to have been fixed with these weekends in view.

Those of us young second lieutenants whose ambition was to serve in the Indian Army, after the termination of the war, were now given the choice of resigning our temporary commissions and attending a Cadet College for a few months, with a good prospect of gaining permanent commissions. I opted for this at once and so did my brother, and we met again at the Cadet College in Chaman in January 1916.

Life was now really strenuous, from early morning to evening with PT, parades, riding lessons, lectures and so on. I shall never forget the agony of early morning rifle exercise parades in January and February, with the temperature hovering well below the freezing mark, with snow on the ground and an icy wind whistling through the quad. With hands blue and benumbed, it was sheer torture. However we had a really grand lot of British NCO instructors, who were certainly not of the hard-fisted, bawling stamp one sometimes hears and reads about. One hundred and twenty of us were put through the course and I, for one, thoroughly enjoyed it. Only one incident occurred which marred our stay there and this was towards the end of our six months’ training. The cadet platoon to which I was attached had the morning out for field sketching on horseback. All the Cadet College horses were dear old smokes, who understood and obeyed instantly all orders, from W-A-L-K to G-A-L-L-O-P, given by our riding master, but the horses given that morning for our exercise were, I think, borrowed from some unit in the station. At any rate, I found that the only way to do my sketch was to dismount now and again. My charger refused to stand still and several of my companions were faced with the same problem. After completing our road maps five of us turned back to return to College. We were trotting along together on the soft tan ride which ran alongside the tarmac road when, without warning, one of the horses, having decided that its time had come and gone, made up its mind to gallop back to the stables. Away he went, with his rider unable to hold him back. The rest of the horses in our group, not to be left behind, joined in the mad rush for home. No amount of pulling on the reins or sawing at the mouth had the slightest effect and the uncontrolled race continued for half a mile. So long as the soft tan ride lasted all was well but unfortunately for our horses and ourselves it stopped short, with a row of trees and a garden wall blocking the way ahead. At this point riders on the tan had to switch off sharply to the left and proceed on the main hard tarmac road. This was our undoing. My horse was number two in this hectic rush and about 10 yards behind the leader. Without slackening speed and yet switching off sharply resulted in the legs of the horses flying away from under them when their steel-shod hooves failed to grip on the slippery surface. Five horses and five cadets piled up in a struggling mass and by the time we had managed to get painfully on our feet the horses had recovered and continued on their gallop in a thunderous clatter.

A garry⁹ happened to come along a minute or two later and the Pathan driver, seeing the bloodstained and woebegone group, had pity on us and transported us to the College hospital. We were all admitted, smeared with stinging iodine, smothered in bandages and put to bed all in the same ward. The following morning, still feeling very sorry for ourselves, the five of us were further shaken to the core when the austere form of the Colonel Commandant appeared at the door of the ward. Screwing his monocle more firmly into his eye he came forward a few steps to halt in front of our five beds. Then, after snorting ‘Bloody young fools, not fit to ride donkeys!’ he stamped out of the ward. As none of us had taken a ‘voluntary’ but had come down with his mount we considered his findings a bit unfair. The Riding Master of the College, a hard-bitten ranker major of a famous British cavalry regiment, never lost an opportunity to instil into us ‘blockheads’ that not one of us would ever be considered a rider until he had taken at least around a dozen good pearlers, and that sliding off the bare and very broad back of a riding school horse when riding facing its tail, and when the instructor without warning ordered T-R-O-T when walking, could not be considered one of the dozen. At any rate, the five of us who landed up in hospital after our mix-up felt that we had surely arrived on to the second rung of that twelve-rung ladder.

At the end of June 1916, the 120 of us, less perhaps half a dozen who failed to pass out on account of sickness or some other reason, piled into the Punjab Mail at Quetta station, each of us supporting a very new and glittering pip on each shoulder. This daily train was rudely referred to as the ‘Heat Stroke Express’ because not many months before a party of military personnel, travelling crowded in a third-class compartment in this Punjab Mail, had met with disaster: on arrival at a station on the line most of them were taken out suffering from heat stroke and not a few had died as a result.

Ever since that dreadful happening any compartment, whether first, second or third class, and carrying military personnel on the Punjab line, had to be provided with sufficient ice on the journey to keep the carriage temperature down. This applied only to the hot weather months, from April to September, and one of the railway guards on each train was responsible for seeing that the ice was replenished as necessary. The following day, at Multan, those of us for units stationed on the North-West Frontier changed trains, while the rest of our friends, many of whom I never met again, went on to Lahore from where they would branch off in different directions. Providence decreed that my brother and I be posted to the same regiment, the 12th Frontier Force,¹⁰ but to different battalions. He went to the 3rd Battalion and I was on my way to the 2nd. We parted company at Mari Indus station as he was bound for Kohat while I, with two others of the same group, was on my way to Bannu to join the same battalion.

We did not stay long in Mari as it was dreadfully hot and a most uninviting place. Collecting a few coolies for our kit, we walked over the sand to the bank of the Indus where we found a paddle steamer preparing to cross to Kalabagh. The Indus is always in flood during the months of May, June, July and August when the summer heat melts the snows of the Himalaya and the cold waters flow down to give welcoming respite to thousands living on her banks, and for some reason the west bank always seems a little cooler than the east.

The river being broader than usual and the current strong, the old ferry must have taken an hour to cross over, however the longer it took the happier we were. On the ferry was like being in an air-conditioned room, and in addition everything was strange to us and therefore interesting.

A short distance from the ferry stop we found the small Kalabagh refreshment room, which overlooked the swirling waters of the Indus and, for the first time since leaving Quetta, we enjoyed good meals in a cool atmosphere and congenial surroundings.

The head servant produced for our inspection and remarks a large book with well-thumbed pages, on the cover of which was printed ‘Complaints Book’. However, within we found no complaints but numerous happy and witty remarks as well as a few short lyrics extolling the merits of the spic-and-span little rest house-cum-feeding house. It was going to be my lot to serve my King and Country many years across the Indus and further west across the administrative border of India ¹¹ of the districts of Bannu, Dera Ghazi Khan, Dera Ismael Khan and Tank, and therefore many times later I stopped for meals and a refreshing rest in that delightful small riverside inn. Calling for the same ‘Complaints Book’, I would pore over the pages, enjoy the remarks and find many signatures of past and present friends of the Frontier.

A small narrow-gauge railway runs between Kalabagh and Bannu, with a branch line turning off to Tank (pronounced Tonk) from about halfway. Because of the fierce heat during the day we were taking the evening passenger train, but even so the compartment was like an oven and remained hot until about ten o’clock. There is no exaggeration in saying that the hot weather temperature in the barren and sun-baked lands of those districts of Bannu and Tank often soar up to an incredible 125° F. About twenty-five years later I served in the Western Desert and although the heat there during the daytime can be great, it can’t hold a candle to that which Satan manages to stoke up in those godforsaken, semi-desolate lands bordering Waziristan.

At sundown it was time for the train to get on its way. The guard waved his green flag, at the same time blowing hard on his whistle. This was to warn passengers and their friends. The engine blew vast amounts of steam through its whistle, making a dreadful screech, but for half a minute nothing further happened. Apparently this was just another warning signal. However, soon after uttering another hideous screech the engine’s pistons came to life and with many clanking jerks the train moved off. Full speed was around 15 to 20 mph.

I recollect that on one occasion when travelling on this line my Airedale pup, Paddy, catching sight of another dog close to the track as we puffed along at full speed, took a flying leap out of the window. I immediately pulled the communication cord, below which was a plate bearing the words ‘Fine for Improper Use Rs50/ – ’. The little train obediently stopped, I raced back down the track and collected Paddy who, though shaken, was quite unhurt. The guard, with a kind and generous interpretation of the word ‘improper’, did not impose the fine. For this I was grateful. Subalterns seldom have 50 rupees to spare.

Our journey of considerably less than a hundred miles took us till a convenient hour the next morning when, at Bannu railway station, we were met by a tall jovial young officer, who informed us that he was the Adjutant. A fatigue party of men from the Battalion took charge of our kit and the four of us drove off in a tonga to the Bannu fort where we had our quarters. After a few minutes our kit arrived on a battalion mule cart and we were able to unpack, indulge in cold showers to wash away the sands of the journey and, getting into clean kit, we were ready to proceed to the Mess and meet our future fellow officers.

It was breakfast time and most of the battalion officers, including the Commanding Officer and Second in Command were present when we arrived at the Mess, so it did not take long to get the introductions over. Received with great friendliness, we were soon made to feel at home.

It is not easy to describe the lasting impression which the deep undercurrent of esprit de corps in a famous regiment makes on a newly joined member, whether an officer or a recruit, and in a short while this gets under the skin and into the bones, leaving a permanent feeling of great pride, loyalty and security.

It was a strange coincidence that on the very day of our arrival in Bannu, a raiding gang of Mahsud¹² tribesmen from across the border had carried out an armed raid on a village well within India. Not being able to get back with their loot into their independent territory, under cover of darkness they had taken shelter in a cave below the cliff of a dry nullah bed.¹³ A brave villager, taking his life in his hands, had followed the raiders and seen where they had gone to ground. Racing back to the nearest police post he gave the news, and within an hour a strong posse of Frontier Constabulary (FC) jawans¹⁴ moved out and took up their position on the cliff overlooking the cave’s mouth. The Mahsud gang was trapped and the leader knew it. Despite the jeers and taunts of his enemies he naturally refused to come out with his gang and shouted back abuse in his own dialect. The FC men also took no notice of the leader’s suggestion that they should come along and get them. Frontier Constabulary men were all Pathans and anything but cowards, however they were not going to be such fools as to invite certain death by appearing at the mouth of that cave to be silhouetted against the morning light. It was seldom that such a golden opportunity came their way to get certain and easy revenge on the hated dushman.¹⁵ With the safety catches off their rifles forward and their fingers itching and close to their triggers, they bided their time while a messenger was sent off to ‘phone their sahib, Handy, who would know how to deal with such a situation’.

Within an hour he came chugging and bumping along in his Tin Lizzie (Ford). Following closely came a half section of a mountain battery on its large, beautifully groomed mules, each led by a gunner at a steady trot. The plan of action soon took shape, and the mountain gun came into action on the opposite bank of the nullah. The Frontier Constabulary party above the cave broke up into two groups moving to safe positions right and left of the cliff and were ready to open fire if any Mahsud emerged. The gun then fired half a dozen shells into the mouth of the cave which was soon enveloped in clouds of smoke and dust, but this did not force out any raider nor did a few further rounds. Perhaps all the raiders were dead or wounded, it was impossible to say, but the CO of the Constabulary was not taking any unnecessary risks to jeopardize the life of any of his men and he sent off to the nearest village for large bundles of straw and a couple of long bamboo poles. When these arrived the straw was dropped in front of the cave mouth and pushed in as far as possible with the poles.

All was now ready for the final act of the drama. The FC riflemen made certain that their weapons were ready and a few handfuls of burning straw were thrown down to mass in the cave’s mouth. In a minute smoke and flames must have made the air within the cave unbearable. The raiders who, it was found later, had been sheltering in a side chamber of the cave and had clearly intended to hang on until nightfall when they would have a better chance of getting away, had to get out or be suffocated by the intense heat and fumes. The leader came out first, running towards the right, while the rest of the gang made off to the left. None of them had the slightest chance of escaping the hail of bullets which was directed against them and within a second or two all lay dead.

We heard the details of the above encounter from Handy, who came to our Mess for dinner on our next guest night. Of stocky build, with a mass of dark hair flaked with white, he had a quiet unassuming manner and no one meeting him for the first time casually would think that he was anything but just an average officer serving on the Frontier. But, when in mess kit and wearing his miniatures, one would notice his Police Decoration and bars, and realize that here was no ordinary officer. If, after dinner and the wine had gone round two or three times, he could be persuaded to tell of some of his adventures and encounters with raiders, his narrative, reluctantly told, would make us young subalterns hold our breath in awe. Such a man was ‘Handy’ of the Police, and with Sir George R.K. and Sir John Donald,¹⁶ was famous on the North-West Frontier of India in those days, famous from the Black Mountains in the north to Dera Ghazi Khan in the south.

But to return to the story of that particular raiding gang which met with deserved disaster just outside the cantonment of Bannu. At lunchtime we heard about it and the CO suggested that we go along with the Adjutant after lunch to the Bannu market square to see the result of the encounter.

On arriving at the bazaar market we had to elbow our way through a dense crowd until we got to the edge of the circle which the spectators had formed. We saw seven bodies lying sprawled on the ground, most of them faced upwards, all stripped bare except for their partoogai (loose-flowing pants). Seven Mahsuds lay there with unseeing eyeballs turned to the sky and half-open mouths, in and out of which swarmed disgusting looking bluebottle flies. Small red circles on the bodies indicated the bullet marks. The obvious leader was a great bull of a man. Surely it had been he who had been the first to run out of the cave to the right, to draw the fire of the FC rifles. The youngest of the gang could not have been more than sixteen years of age and, I must admit, I felt a twinge of remorse as I looked at his strong but lightly built young body. Never again would that boy feel the wind rushing past his ears as he bounded from rock to rock down some mountain slope. And his mother, for even Mahsud raiders had mothers, who looked forward to the return of her brave young son from his first raid with his share of the spoils, would wait in vain, perhaps never knowing what had happened.

Our first day with our own 77th Regiment found us ‘blooded’. An old friend of mine, who had served on the Frontier during the First World War, told me the following story:

We arrived at the village shortly after dawn, the Mahsud raiders had made off a few hours before we arrived. The women of the village were still screaming from fear and pain at the ghastly handling they had all received at the hands of the gang. The Mahsuds had torn and ripped the gold ornaments out of the noses and ears of the owners and in one case a woman’s finger had been cut off to get a gold ring. Some of the men folk who had shown resistance had been shot out of hand and their bodies flung out on to the roadway while their dwellings were pillaged.

A true story and not the only such story I’ve heard. Sometimes...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introductory Reminiscences
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 - The Making of a Frontiersman
• Chapter 2 - War Clouds over Waziristan
• Chapter 3 - Slugging it out at Ahnai
• Chapter 4 - Getting to Know Thy Enemy
• Chapter 5 - Out of Waziristan, Into the Fire
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index