The age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1897-1902, 1897-12-05

leaps to join the garant Gordors and
fight for his queen.
How Paddy won his medal and glo-
riied his village has been partially told
in newspaper dispatches; but every fresh
report from the sat of war brings fresh
details of how the Gordons and the
Gurkhas saved the day.
The British army lay before the Cha
CRU Kotal, the first of three great noun
tain ranges that stretched across their
path, swarming with Afridis. Between
the British position and the Kotal was
an open plain, swept by a hail of bullets
from the tribesmen concealed in their
s1ngars along the prscipitous mountain
side. A sangar is a stone heap thrown
up hastily, but it prevents q trfbesman
from being hit If he keeps carefully be-
hind 1T, and lpe can shoot his enemies in
the open as a sportsman shoots ducks
f,om a blind.
BEEN UNDER FIRE BEFORE.
There was a regiment of Gurkhas,
regiment of Derbyshire, one from Dor
sstshire and the Gordon Highlanders.
There were five pipers in the Gordon
Highlanders, and the brightest, nigh
the youngest, and the most anxious to
make his pipes skirl i'm the stronghold of
the heathen, was Patrick Milne, of
Insch. Hal he not been in the Chitral
campaign with the Gordons and had not
a tribesman's bullet pierced the bellows
of his pipes once just as he was going
into battle, so that he had to see his
regiment go on. to victory while his pipe
could not inspire them with dts breath :?
He was % years old, ami as fine a lad
and ais good a piper as ever sounded a
pibroch. Up on the hillside across the
open the little puffs of smoke here and
there and little sptts of dust on the plain
below told that the trlbesmen were cov-
ering with their rifles that broad and
: open place over which the troops must
pass before they could win to the heights
and get a chance to do some return fir
ing The field guns were to have been
brought up to shsll the Afridi position,
but somehow "the nature of the ground
was unfavcraI5le' or something else was
the matter, and never a gun had opened
on the sangars to throw them about and
dsmorali2a the natives hiding by many
thousands there when the order came to
storm the heights.
The Gurkhas wlent first and the two
English regiments followed. AS they
moved out on ths plain all the mountain
side began to pour out lead which fell
on the plain as hail falls driven by a
northern gale. The black. wicked little
GurlShas rushed across as fast as 1.-THE
legs could carry them, leaving a long
trail of turbaned oorpses behind as Piper
Mines scythe used to leave the hay
behind when he moved his fathers field.
THE GORDONS MUST TAKE TT.
The regiment from Derbys1llfe and THE
one from Dorset were part way across,
but the Afrdis had got their range now
and the men were going down right and
left. 1t was against human nature to
go into that storm cif lead. Their rush
slackened. In vain the officers strove
to urge them on. Many of the officers
were down and the two regiments first
falterei and them began to fall back.
The Gurkhas had got to the foot of the
mountains, where they were fattening
Themselves against the rocks to keep
cut of the fire OF the Afridfs, but unsup-
ported they could not storm the Afridf
position and it was death to retreat
across the plain.
Then Col. Matthias caFled to his Gor1on
Highlanders. men of the Gordon High
1anders, the general says that the posi-