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Updated: May 25, 2025
This he did at 12.30 P.M., four and a half hours after leaving the Surkh Kotul. As the length of his march was about ten miles, it may be assumed that he encountered difficulties in the rugged track by which he moved, for Macpherson was not the man to linger by the way when there was the prospect of a fight.
After an artillery duel which lasted for three hours the Afghan fire was partially quelled; Cobbe's infantry pushed on and up from ridge to ridge, and at length they reached a crest within 800 yards of the guns on the Kotul, whence their rifle fire compelled the Afghan gunners to abandon their batteries.
His mountain guns shelled with effect the Kohistanee tribesmen, and then he moved forward from the Surkh Kotul in three columns. His skirmishers drove back the forward stragglers, and then the main columns advancing at the double swept the disordered masses before them, and forced them rearward into their intrenched position in front of the Karez village. There the resistance was half-hearted.
Where the spur quits the main range, due north of the city, the Murcha Pass affords communication between the Candahar plain and the Urgundab valley. The spur, its summit serrated by alternate heights and depressions, is again crossed lower down by an easy pass known as the Babawali Kotul.
Further reconnaissances proved that the Afghan line of defence extended along the crest of a lofty and broken mountainous range from the Spingawai summit on the left to the Peiwar Kotul on the right centre, the right itself resting on commanding elevations a mile further south. The position had a front in all of about four miles.
Macpherson, marching from the Surkh Kotul toward Urgundeh, had observed parties of Afghans crossing his front in the direction of the Chardeh valley, and when the sound reached him of Massy's artillery fire he wheeled to his left through a break in the hills opening into the Chardeh valley, and approached the scene of the discomfiture of Massy's force.
Reaching Habib Killa on the morning of the 28th, he received a report that the Afghan force which he knew to be opposed to him had abandoned its guns on the hither side of the Peiwar Kotul, and was retreating in confusion over that summit. Roberts promptly pushed forward in two columns.
The country being held unsuited for the action of wheeled artillery and cavalry, Macpherson left his details of those arms at Aushar, and marched on the morning of the 10th on Karez with his infantry and mountain guns. As his troops crowned the Surkh Kotul they saw before them an imposing spectacle.
Here, however, Major White commanding the advance of the 92d, found himself confronted by great masses of the enemy, who appeared determined to make a resolute stand about their guns which were in position south-west of the Babawali Kotul.
General Gough was to take the cavalry of the Cabul column across the Urgundab, so as to reach by a wide circuit the anticipated line of the Afghan retreat. Soon after nine A.M. the forty-pounders on the right of Picquet hill began a vigorous cannonade of the Babawali Kotul, which was sturdily replied to by the three field-guns the enemy had in battery on that elevation.
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