Diet.
Clothing.
Duty and
employment.
Marches and
service.
PUNJAB FRONTIER FORCE.
181
IX. Diet and food-supply.— Good atta was easily obtainable and fairly cheap. Vegetable
and milk very scarce. Meat expensive.
X. Clothing.— In winter a poshteen was worn over the ordinary winter clothing, and dur
-
ing the day in the hottest weather white clothing was worn, but winter clothing always at
night. The men have each a good English great-coat, and they wear the ammunition boot.
This, as I have said before, is a good boot, if it is made to fit, and if socks are worn with them ;
but as this is not done, I prefer the ordinary native shoe.
XI. Duty and employment.— The men were on working parties from February to Novem-
b e r
for 6 hours a day. During the sickly season I wanted to have it stopped, but the work
was of such an urgent nature that it could not be done. The guards were very heavy.
XII. Marches and service.— A wing of the regiment and the 5th and 9th companies of
Sappers and Miners marched out on the 29th January to make ramps down the high banks of
the Helmund and means of crossing the river. The next day the remainder of the force followed.
The wing of the regiment and Sappers were encamped close by their work, on the bed of the
river; the remainder were on the high left bank of the river, about 200 feet above the bed. On
the 2nd February, the whole regiment with the Sappers crossed the Helmund, which was about
100 yards wide, and then over an overflow 20 yards wide, to a camp which was on the low,
sandy right bank. This place not being considered healthy, a movement was made to the left
of the Girishk Fort, about 1½ miles from the river, and here the regiment again joined. the
Cavalry Brigade, which had crossed over the river some days before. The camp was on high,
dry, shingly ground; water good and plentiful. Girishk is a large, high-walled, irregularly
built fort, in a very bad state of repair, and filthy in the extreme. Two gates at one side lead
into the place ; one into the fort proper and private apartments, and the other into a large court
-
yard. In this yard are a number of domed-roofed houses; these, after several feet of horse
litter had been taken out and fires had been lighted in them for some days, were made over to
the 32nd Pioneers as a hospital. The ground to the back and on each side of this fort is high,
shingly and uncultivated ; that in front is low, sloping down to the river. It is intersected
considerably by canals and well cultivated, the chief crops being Indian-corn. The ground on
this bank of the river is thickly wooded for 4 or 5 miles. There were numerous villages in this
low-lying land, and great flocks of cattle were to be seen grazing; consequently milk and butter
could be obtained in abundance. The fowls were most magnificent, more like the English ones
in size and taste. The people of the country showed great reluctance in bringing out supplies.
There was always great difficulty in obtaining even half a ration per man of a mixture of
Indian-corn and atta ; it often used to be 9 and 10 at night before the day's ration could be
served out. The men were very frequently served out with an atta and meat ration, viz., half
a seer of atta and half a seer of meat. As there were no scales, the Commissariat officer used to
guess the weight of each sheep and goat as it passed him, his idea of weights entirely depend
-
ing upon the amount of money he had with him, and which was always extremely limited.
The division coffers were, like the country, often very dry. This ration of meat and atta was not
sufficient for the men who were working hard ; the 1 lb of meat (including bone, hair and
skin) was not so filling as the 1 Њ of atta, and I doubt if it was as nutritious. The men in
cantonments manage a seer of atta besides meat and milk, and if I can form any opinion from
my own appetite, I consider the ration was not sufficient. Some atta was obtained from a
mill and issued to some of the troops, who considered it a great luxury. A little time after
eating it they began to stagger and to lose all control over their limbs, pupils widely dilated.
An emetic put them all right. On examining this atta a number of little black particles were
found in the flour, which the natives of the country say is the ground-up seed of a plant which
grows with the corn, and was carelessly ground up with it at the mill. Girishk was very fatal
to us ; we lost 14 men of pneumonia and dysentery. The nights were very cold, and the night
-
work hard.
We halted at Kandahar until the 6th, making arrangements for the Thull-Chotiali expedition.
The sick and weakly men were picked out, and carriage indented for them, and also 7 per cent.
of sick carriage was ordered to be taken with the force, viz., 3½ of doolies and dandies, and
3½ camel kajawas. On the 6th we left Kandahar making a short march to Mondi Hissar, and
on the 7th a cross-country march to Haj-i-deh. On the 8th again, entering the hilly country,
we made a short march over kotul after kotul to Abdul-Rohman, near a small village,
where the supplies appeared plentiful and the water good. On a small mound above this
village a post had been established. In the evening of the same day it rained hard, and con
-
tinued to sprinkle a little the next morning. At the time of marching, our tents being so wet
and the sky looking very threatening, the Officer Commanding considered it advisable to halt
for the day; but General Biddulph, coming up about an hour after, ordered us to move on,
which we did, and a more miserable clay I never spent. The road was fair, along and across
valleys over "kotuls," and after crossing a broad valley, the scene of the recent fight between
the 15th Hussars and the enemy, we entered a ravine; issuing out of this, we went over another
small "kotul," and came upon a broad level valley. Here we came into a most pitiless rain, we
found our camp, Maelmund, on the far side of a swampy nullah, and had to pitch our tents in
the greatest downpour of rain I have ever seen. It rained like this until about midnight, when
a tremendous wind sprang up, which played havock among the tents. The next morning the
camp looked very wretched; tents down, ridge-poles broken, and everybody and everything in a
miserable state. We halted here to dry ourselves. On the 11th we started for a double march,
but after going about 19 miles we came across a deep nullah, with a deep roaring torrent in it.
We halted under some low, rocky hills, Gotai, in a great plain in front of the Khojack Range.
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