From: Adam <""4thwormcastfromthemolehill\"{at}the field.near
the bridge">

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/6176805.stm

"Documents and papers shown to the BBC by a relation of the commander
of British troops during the 1897 siege of Malakand - in what is now
Pakistan's North West Frontier Province - provide a fascinating new insight
into the struggle for South Asia.

The papers belong to Ben Tottenham, a relation by marriage of William Hope
Meiklejohn, who commanded British and Indian troops at the Malakand
garrison, which was besieged by thousands of tribesmen for 10 days before
it was successfully relieved.

Colonel Meiklejohn's four-year-old daughter, Meg - Mr Tottenham's
mother-in-law - was in the garrison throughout the siege in the scorching
heat of the high summer of 1897. She would almost certainly have been
killed by the tribesmen - not renowned for taking prisoners - if it had
fallen.

The tribesmen were led by Mullah Mastun, known by the British as the
"Mad Mullah of Malakand". He roused them against British rule and
decreed that it was their duty under Islam to remove foreigners from what
was then India. "

""We are attacked by fanatics almost every night," wrote Col
Meiklejohn in one of his daily letters to his wife."

"According to one history book - Frontier Ablaze by Michael Barthorp -
Col Meiklejohn found himself facing "wave after wave of close-packed
tribesmen who flooded out of the darkness, scrambling over defences and
yelling and screaming while their war-drums thundered to encourage
them".

The attackers were urged into action by their mullahs who promised the
delights of paradise for those who paid the ultimate sacrifice.

Among those who wrote about the siege was a young Winston Churchill, whose
description of it shows that in some ways little has changed for British
troops today in similar terrain not far away across the border in
Afghanistan.

Then as now, British troops faced a determined enemy described by Churchill
as people who "fight without passion and kill without loss of
temper".

"The inhabitants of these wild but wealthy valleys are of many tribes,
but of similar character and condition. Except at times of sowing and
harvest, feud and strife prevail," he wrote in an account of the
siege.

"The strong aboriginal propensity to kill, inherent in all human
beings, has in these valleys been preserved in unexampled strength and
vigour."

Brave assailants

The tribesmen - who were able riflemen - attacked the garrison almost every
night, but on each occasion were repelled by the "skilled
musketry" of British and Indian troops.

"The Mad Mullah himself had been wounded - contrary to earlier
assertions that he was invulnerable - and another influential mullah was
killed," historian Michael Barthorp wrote.

"These losses, together with their own heavy casualties, caused the
tribesmen to lose heart.

"Over successive nights of heavy fighting, the British army and its
Indian battalions stood their ground successfully against thousands of
fanatically brave assailants who did not count the cost." "

""No-one knew, though many were wise after the event, that these
tribesmen were as well armed as our troops, and that they proved to be
brave and formidable adversaries," Churchill wrote.

"Never despise your enemy is an old lesson but it has to be learnt
afresh, year after year, by every nation that is warlike and brave."
"

& you may have thought that Georgie boy took Churchill as a role model.

Adam

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