At the Front.

Hastings Standard, Issue 489, 30 November 1897, Page 4

At the Front.

. A PICTURE FULL OF INTEREST AND ANIMATION. An interesting letter from " A Young Officer," dated Malakand, in the early part of last month, appeared in the Dailv Telegraph. The writer is proceeding to the front, and says : " The first incident that suggested the great mobilisation on the frontier happened as I was leaving Bangalore. The Gth Madras Infantry were going to the front. It was a striking and, in some ways, a moving spectacle. The Madras Army is a much-married one. The Madras Sepoy is a domesticated person. Women of every age and class hung weeping, to the departing soldiers, their husbands, or sons, who were going to some mysterious danger, perhaps never to return. But the sadness was relieved by a striking and—if I may use an epithet adapted to the sentiment of the year —an Imperial thought. For hundreds of years the waves of conquest have swept across India from the North. Now the tale was to be different. The despised and often-conquered Madrassi, under his white officers, would be carried by the railway to teach the sons of those who had made their fathers slaves that at last there were fighting men in the South- As RaAval Pindi is neared the scene displays more significant features. Long trains of transports show the incessant passage of supplies to the front, One. in particular, of camels, presented a striking picture. Six or seven of these animals are crowded into an open truck. Their knees are bound to prevent them moving on the journey, and their long necks, which rise in a cluster in the middle, have a strange and ridiculous aspect. Sometimes, I am told, curiosity, or ambition, or restlessness, or some other cause induces a camel to break his bonds and stand up, and as there are several tunnels on the line the spectacle of a headless " oont " is sometimes to be seen when the train arrives at Rawal Pindi. Everywhere are the tracks of an army. A gang of prisoners chained hand to hand, escorted by a few Sikhs, marched sullenly by in the blazing heat, suspicious characters, 1 am informed, being deported across the frontier into British territory until things are more settled. Some dead transport animals lay by the roadside, their throats hurriedly cut. The different stages—Mardon, Jelala, Dargai—are marked by rest camps and small mud forts, while droves of slaughtered cattle and camels and scores of mules attest the necessary but unpicturesque business of the Commissariat. After Dargai the Malakand Pass is reached, and henceforth the road winds upwards, until a two hours' climb brings Jhe tonga to rest beneath the hill on which the fort stands. The ground is as broken and confused as can be imaged. A hollow in the middle—a crater—is the camp of the West Kent regiment. The slopes are dotted with white tents, perched on platforms cut in the side of the hill. In front is the signal station—a strong *ower held by a picket—from which all day long the heliograph is flickering and blinking its messages to Noushera, India, and on the tape machines at the London clubs. To the left is Guides Hill, stormed in '95 by the corps who have given it its name, and who are now at Khar, four miles down the valley. To the right is the point from which Sir Bindon Blood, a month ago, delivered that turning and flanking movement one of those obvious moves that everyone thinks of afterwards—which cleared the valley at one stroke from the tribesmen, and opened the way to the relief of Chakdara. Soldiers of many kinds are moving amongst the trees and tents. The tall Sikh, the red in his turban relieving the businesslike brown of the kharki; the British infantryman, with his white pouches and belts, none the whiter for six weeks' service ; an occasional lancer of the General's escort, and crowds of followers of evei'y conceivable costume, beginning at nothing but a rag and often ending abruptly, combine to produce a picture full of interest and animation.