Terrible Sufferings of General Lumsden's Force.

Thames Star, Volume XVII, Issue 5169, 11 August 1885, Page 2

Terrible Sufferings of General Lumsden's Force.

The correspondents of the Indian Press with the Afghan Boundary Commission, famish pitiful accounts of the Buffering endured by Sir Peter Lumsden's little force duriog the retreat from Gulran (remarks the St. James' Gazette). Here is an extract from one of their letters:— " Starting from Gulraa at half-past 7, the cavalry reached Cuaama-i-Sabz early in the afternoon. Arrived there, they and all the officers, the natives attaches and others with them, found themselves without servants, without food, without tents, and nothing to drink but muddy water. Captain Heath and Lieutenant Wright started back with some sowars and ponies to bring in helpless straggler*. They went back three or four miles, and having then picked up as many men utterly powerless and some dying, as the ponies could carry, they returned to camp. Such servants and syces as had -; come in were either prostrate and numbed —'in fact ' crumpled up' with cold, or, as it was graphically expressed, shivering and chattering idiots. After some search it was found that a few mules with tents had struggled in. Two or three of them were given to the sowars and Persian mule drivers and farashers, and in two small mountain-battery tents a dozen officers huddled. For food they had half-a-dozen biscuits, quarter loaf of bread, and a piece of tinned beef. That is all ' the food they tasted from 8 a.m. one day till 2 p.m. the next. Any small quantity - of wine and spirits that was available was reserved exclusively for the use of .. the exhausted and benumbed natives. The cold was intense, the floors of i the tents were puddles, and the violent winds repeatedly drew the pegs. It is needless to say sleep was out of the ques« tion. Almost every dog in camp died. " Nine, it is said, took refuge in one of the officers' tents,; thereby preserving their own lives and keeping their owners warm. As for those poor fellows who, had no tents, they lay down anywhere in a blanket or anumdah, or in their ordinary clothing, and passed the night as best they could. The animals stood starving and shivering without jhool; some wandering away in the night in search of food and getting lost. Those that were picketed turned their tails to the snovr ' and biting blast; next morning their, tails were a bunch of icicles. In the morning those poor fellows who had to pass the night in the «pen air were found covered with snow. General Lumsden was out at 5 a.m. on the sth to see what could be done both to aid and rescue stragglers, and to succour those who had lain all night in the cold. As one of the officers said, when they first went round in the early morning the figares lying motion*. less on the ground, some silent, some Moaning, they shuddered to think that half of these might be dead."