THE HORRORS OF THE AFGHAN1 WAR.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 2, Issue 139, 21 April 1879, Page 2

THE HORRORS OF THE AFGHAN 1 WAR.

The special correspondent of the Standard, who has accompanied General Roberts in Afghanistan, in a letter dated January 11, states that after Koondie had been captured, and the Mongols had been driven from the cantonments of . Khost, General Roberta issued' art order that the village which had been taken should be first looted and. then destroyed. When the time for looting had expired, the order for burning was given. In ten minutes, as many villages were in a blaze. From Koondie, on the west, to Mahomed Klieyl, on the far south-east, ..the horizon was marked by masses of flame. The correspondent goes on to relate that some time after the burning of the villages the prisoners taken by the British force endeavored to effect an escape, Several of thorn tried to gain possession of the rifles of the Sepoys, whereupon the guards loaded their rifles and shot or bayonetted every man who persisted in struggling. The prisoners had been ranged in lines, each line being fastened by a rope, which was passed round each man, and fixed in the ground by wooden pegs. After the Sepoys fired the scene of the tragedy was appalling. The dead, the living, and the dying, and the wounded were still tied together, and all were lying huddled up in one confused mass of bodies. The dead could not bo told from the quick, except when some suffering wretch, sitting in a pool of his own blood, and looking ghastly in the moonlight, groaned beseechingly for help. "I shall never forget," adds the Standard's correspondent, ".the appearance of the swart face of one of thoso wounded men. He wore a blue turban, a long blue shirt, and dirty white pyjamas. He was young. He was leaning back on a dead body. As I passed, ho turned his face full in the light of the moon. His jet hair had fallen from beneath his turban, and formed a weird frame around his features, which were haggard with agony. In his own language he addressed me. His tones were low and pitiful. I did not know what he was saying, but it was as easy to see that the poor fellow was asking for relief as if 'he had appealed to me ' in the dear name of God.' Ho had been bayonneted through the chest, and I fear that the wound was beyond all mortal help. The uninjured men knelt and bent forward their heads, terrified to raise them up; and they were in this position so quiet that they ap-' peared to be simulating death in order to escape from molestation, Therefore as visitor after visitor came to the scene, and. asked how many had been killed and how many wounded, it was impossible to give a correct answer. There lay all the bodies tied together, but which had life in them no one could tell until some examination had taken place. The Sepoys were now busy untying the ropes, and separating the,dead from the living. Each dead body was placed in the centre; wounded men wore left to sit as they were, Hied to other men. It was ascertained that ten men had either been shot dead or bayonneted dead, and that twelve others had been wounded more or less severely. Nothing could be done that night with the wounded, except rough bandaging. They were gathered together, a large tarpaulin was thrown over them to keep them somewhat from the biting air, and they were left on the ground until the following morning. The agony of some of them as they lay there, thinly clothed, and almost unsheltered, and with a thermometer falling below freezing point, must have been terrible. In short, the whole affair was as horrible as unfortunate and unavoidable.. Death at no time is a pleasant spectacle, but when it is seen in many dreadful shapes, as it was in the camp of the 21st Regiment, it is appalling.