Alexander Gardner ( soldier ) Alexander Haughton Campbell Gardner ( " Gordana Khan " ) ( 1785 – 1877 ) was a traveller , soldier and mercenary . He travelled to Afghanistan and Punjab and served in various military positions in the region . Biography . By his own accounts he was born in Wisconsin to a Scottish father and an Anglo - Spanish mother . According to Baron von Hügel , who met Gardner in 1835 , he was Irish , but the evidence for that assertion is obscure . Gardner went to Ireland in about 1809 . He returned to America in 1812 , but finding his father dead he returned to Europe and never went back to America . From Europe he travelled to Astrakhan where his brother was working , but when his brother died in 1817 he tried to secure a position in the Russian Army . When that failed he left Russia and spent the next 13 years wandering through Central Asia . In 1823 he was captured in Afghanistan by Habib Ullah Khan , the nephew of Dost Mohammed Khan . Habib Ullah was fighting his uncle for the throne of Kabul , and he recruited Gardner to his cause as the commander of 180 horsemen . After an attack on a pilgrim caravan Gardner married one of the captives and went to live in a fort near Parwan where a son was born to the couple . When Habib Ullah was defeated in 1826 , Gardner ' s wife , a native woman , and his baby boy were murdered by Dost Mahommed ' s forces . Gardner fled north with a few companions and near the River Oxus his party were attacked by 50 horsemen : they lost eight out of their thirteen men and the survivors were all wounded but were able to escape . Their route now lay towards Badakhshan and the valley of the Kokcha ; the Oxus was finally crossed opposite the Shakhdara to reach the valley of Shignan , still in the year 1826 . From this point his narrative is fragmentary and very hard to understand , large parts being highly improbable or impossible . He claimed to have reached Yarkand on 24 September but the year is uncertain , either 1827 , 1828 or 1829 are possible , certainly he was there by 1830 . He returned to Afghanistan , and visited Kafiristan , possibly the first westerner to do so . In August 1831 he left Afghanistan as an outlaw for the Punjab , where he was appointed Commandant of Artillery . He served in this position for many years before he was transferred to the service of Maharaja Ranjit Singh , where he was one of between 32 and 100 Western soldiers in Ranjit ' s army . He was later promoted to the rank of Colonel by Maharaja Ranjit Singh . Gardner was involved in numerous gun fights and sword fights during his career . He was described as being six - foot , with a long beard , an all around warrior and fighter . Gardner was known to have saved the City of Lahore in 1841 when his comrades abandoned him and he fired the guns that killed 300 enemies . He is described by Keay as continuing to suffer the effects of 14 wounds in later life . Gardner remained in the service of the Maharajas as they came and went , and witnessed the fall of the Punjab as a sovereign kingdom . This he vividly described in his book on the Fall of the Sikh Empire . Gardner kept a journal , much of which was lost . Extracts were published in 1853 , and attracted controversy . His exploits were so bizarre that the geographer Sir Henry Yule disbelieved them . In later life , Gardner related his adventures to several prospective biographers , and after his death the surviving material was published in " Soldier and Traveller : memoirs of Alexander Gardner " ; edited by Major Hugh Pearse . Gardner appears as a major supporting character in the novel " Flashman and the Mountain of Light " . Parts of his journey are added into " The Man Who Would Be King " , particularly his visit Kafiristan . Further reading . The full text of Memoirs of Alexander Gardner at Archive . org