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With cool intrepid courage, with a deliberation which appeared almost exasperating to the onlookers, Colonel Battye and his men took up the challenge. Little parties of soldiers could be descried slowly sauntering back, a few yards only, then disappearing amongst the rocks with a rattle of rifle-fire.
Battye" Battye was Lady Tressady's ordinary medical adviser "doesn't believe all the other man said. I knew he wouldn't. And as for making an invalid of me, he sees, of course, that it would kill me at once. There, my dear George, don't make too much of it. I think I was a fool to tell you." And Lady Tressady struggled to a sitting position, looking at her son with a certain hostility.
At one moment he said to himself, "eighteen months she will live eighteen months," and at another, "Battye was probably right; Barham took an unnecessarily gloomy view she may quite well last as long as the rest of us." Suddenly he was startled by a movement beside him.
Major Wigram Battye was commanding the squadron of the Guides' cavalry launched to the attack, but ere he had proceeded a few hundred yards a bullet hit him in the left hip, and the squadron, under Hamilton, swept on, leaving him still in the saddle, though in great pain and supported by his orderly.
Other roads bear the names of Bob Hutchinson, who, as above recorded, was killed in the night attack on Malandrai; Walter Hamilton, killed in defence of the Kabul Residency; Hector MacLean, who earned the Victoria Cross and died to save a comrade at Landaki, in Swat; Quentin Battye, who, mortally wounded, passed peacefully away at Delhi with the words Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori on his lips; Wigram Battye, killed bravely charging in Afghanistan, and Fred Battye, killed at the Panjkora.
It is not intended to follow the Guides through all the phases of the Afghan War, but only to tell the story of some of their gallant adventures. One of the earliest of these was at the little battle of Fattehabad, where Wigram Battye was killed, and Walter Hamilton earned the Victoria Cross.
Colonel Battye then formed the five companies of the Guides, which constituted his force, into three small columns, and was proceeding to carry out more extended operations, when, from the high ground now occupied, dense masses of the enemy, afterwards officially estimated at from seven to ten thousand, were seen rapidly approaching his right flank.
This naturally was the most difficult part of the operation, and in executing it Colonel Fred Battye, the fourth of the heroic brothers to be killed in action, fell mortally wounded.
During the night a freshet came down, the river rose fourteen feet, and the newly finished bridge was swept away. The Guides were thus isolated on the far bank, but getting no orders to the contrary, and very possibly thinking that to remain inactive was to invite unwelcome attention to their condition, Colonel Battye decided to adhere to the original programme.
The assertion is not supported by facts. In 1895, when Lieut.-Colonel Battye was killed near the Panjkora River and the Guides were hard pressed, the subadar of the Afridi company, turning to his countrymen, shouted: "Now, then, Afridi folk of the Corps of Guides, the Commanding Officer's killed, now's the time to charge!" and the British officers had the greatest difficulty in restraining these impetuous soldiers from leaving their position, and rushing to certain death.
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