Read TW06 The Khyber Connection NEW for Free Online

clasped behind his back, his eyes Seeming to stare off into infinity as he spoke. He was a Striking, robust figure of a man, dressed in khakis and Highly polished riding boots. He bore himself erect and His slightest movement reflected a charismatic magnetism.
    Even his pacing seemed dramatic. Despite the sweat stains on his uniform blouse, he seemed to be completely unaffected by the oppressive heat. He had either grown accustomed to it or had simply decided it wasn’t going to bother him.
    “As a physician, Father,’ he was saying, “you would Certainly be most welcome to accompany us on the march We shall be traveling with three full brigades, and we can Doubtless expect casualties, not only from hostiles, but From the rough terrain we shall have to cover. Moreover, we shall have to cover it in a hurry. Yet I would dissuade you, if I could, from your plan of leaving us to travel amongst the tribesmen. In that regard, the timing is most unfortunate."
    "How so, General?" said Lucas.
    "We are in the middle of a situation which could lead to a full-scale frontier war, Father." General Blood said. "I have just received a telegram from the adjutant-general in India, appointing me to the command of the Malakand Field Force and instructing me to proceed at once to the relief of the garrison at Chakdarra. They are hard pressed, very hard pressed indeed. The army here on the frontier is continually faced with one insurrection after another. We must hold the Khyber Pass because it is the most direct route into India, and so there is ceaseless fighting in that great rift. Now, word reaches me that some new mullah. an Afridi holy man named Sayyid Akbar, is preaching jehad and recruiting thousands of tribesmen into his Ghazi army to prepare for the Night of the Long Knives. We must also hold the Malakand Pass because we need to keep the road to Chitral open. We must keep the road to Chitral open because some dunderhead decided that holding Chitral was essential to our Forward Policy. And so it goes, one dustup after another, simply because politicians look at points upon a map and make their decisions in utter ignorance of the character of the land or of its people.
    Meaning no disrespect, Father, but I fear you may have made the same sort of mistake. I wonder if you are fully aware of what it is you plan to undertake. I wonder if you know anything of the country.
    "The land we're going to is a savage wilderness. The Himalayas are nearly four hundred miles in breadth and more than sixteen hundred in length. The westernmost ranges of these mountains, the Hindu Kush, are all that divide our Eastern empire from territory controlled by Russia. The land has been cracked by time and gouged by torrential rainfall. It has been ravaged by ice and snow and baked by a merciless sun. Rainfall has cut mammoth gutters called nullahs into the silt deposits of the valleys. Sometimes these arc great dry cracks in the land which form gorges up to one hundred feet deep and several hundred yards wide. Often they have streams flowing through them—not the sort of streams you see in our English countryside, but devilishly cold, fast-flowing mountain rapids which, with the slightest degree of additional rainfall or snowmelt, become roaring and torrential rivers which can sweep you off your feet and dash you to pieces on jagged rocks. The mountains above the valleys are steep and rockstrewn, difficult to climb even for a seasoned alpinist.
    "The inhabitants of these regions are utter savages.
    Tribe wars upon tribe. Khan attacks khan. Bloodfeuds are as common as trollops in Piccadilly. You take the ferocity of the Zulu, add it to the craft of the American redskin and the marksmanship of the Boer, and you have your Pathan, a violent, murderous aborigine.
    Every man jack of them is a soldier. Each one goes about armed to the teeth. And they dearly love to fight.
    We have a sizable number of them in our own forces, a mixed blessing at best, for like as not