The halt over, we push on again and shortly after daybreak reach our camping site. As some of our tents have been struck the day before and sent in advance we find them pitched. All hands now turn in for a sleep. Breakfast at eight, after which most sleep again but I always make a point of reading and writing.75
Assistant Surgeon Dunlop described the same scene:
Then comes an extraordinary assemblage of men, women and children, ponies, mules, asses and bullocks and carts laden with all sorts of conceivable and inconceivable things: grain, salt, cloths, sweetmeats and tobacco, silks, garlic, shawls, potatoes, stockings and slippers, turners’, carpenters’ and blacksmiths’ shops and forges, tailors and cobblers, saddlers and perfumers, fiddlers, nautch-girls and jugglers which help to make up an Indian bazaar … What a sea of camels! What a forest of camels’ heads and humps, and grain bags! What plaintive moanings of anxious mothers, and lost, bewildered cubs! What gutteral, gurgling groanings in the long throats of salacious and pugnacious males! What shouts of men! What resounding of sticks! as the vast mass is driven slowly along, browsing as they go, and leaving not one green leaf behind them.
Dunlop added Charles Napier’s wonderful summation: ‘Such is the picture of the baggage of an Indian army: Smithfield market alone can rival it.’76
Although men often grew attached to their horses and elephants, the baggage camels were rarely companionable creatures. In 1880 Brigadier General H. F. Brooke and a companion received six camels and one driver long before dawn on a chilly Afghan morning. The driver not only ‘seemed perfectly ignorant of everything connected with camels’, but was ‘a wild villager from the neighbouring hills’ who spoke (and, it seemed, only understood) an unintelligible tongue. When, after much time and endless difficulties, just two of the camels were ready:
a demon entered the two loaded camels (camels sit down to be loaded) and kicked the whole of their loads off. In the first instance this was rather ludicrous, and we laughed at it, and began again; but when 4 o’clock came, and daylight (which means intense heat) began to appear, and yet not one camel could be induced to let the load remain on their backs, things looked serious, and we despaired of getting off at all.
They had not gone a mile before the loads were on the ground once more, and they had to be repacked again and again.77
The 3rd Light Dragoons went off to the First Afghan War in January 1842 with 576 fighting men in its ranks, but with ‘upwards of a thousand camels laden with treasure, arms, ammunition, clothing and stores of every description’. On 7 March Captain Walter Unett told how:
We crossed the Sutlej on the 22nd ultimo, by a bridge of boats, and were obliged to pass over in single file, which took two whole days … We were detained seven days crossing the Ravi … This is a great misfortune, as we were ordered to do the 31 marches to Peshawar in 21 days. You can have no idea of crossing a river in boats. We have camels with us and many have actually to be lifted into the boats. They are the most obstinate devils alive … 78
Private Tubb Goodward of HM’s 16th Lancers did not even have the luxury of boats in December 1843:
Commenced to move long before daylight to get the tents and baggage packed in good time for fording the river, thinking from the immense quantity of baggage that had to pass over, there would be great confusion … The Infantry who passed over first was at the ford by 6 o’clock where they had to ford, to do which they had to pull off their trousers, the water in parts being full four feet deep, which was anything but pleasant this cold morning. However, they reached the opposite shore in safety. Following close to them was the Artillery … The Cavalry … passed over without any casualties but a few wet legs particularly those who had low horses … On reaching the opposite bank had to wait a full hour for the Artillery, who previous to fording had to take all the ammunition boxes off the wagons to keep them dry and send them over in a boat and reload them, which being done again resumed our march, the road running for about three miles in a deep ravine.79
John Pearman of the 3rd Light Dragons forded the Sutlej in early 1849:
We received the order to undress, take off our boots, draws and trowsers, tie them round our necks and then mount our horses to take the ford, which we did by file or in twos, a row of camels above stream and a row below us. So into the water we went, and cold it was, most of it snow water from the Kashmir mountains.80
These marches were being conducted in wartime, but even a routine change of garrisons in peacetime looked very similar. Albert Hervey warned his readers that:
To a thousand fighting men there are about four to five thousand camp followers, and upwards, the families of officers and men, the servants of the former with their respective families, the bullock-drivers and bandy-men, the coolies, palankeen-bearers and others.81
At the appointed time the General Call to Arms was beaten, tents were struck and breakfasts eaten. About half an hour later the drums beat the Assembly:
and the troops fall in; the column is formed right or left in front; the advance and rear-guards are thrown out, and all move off on the sound of the ‘quick march’ from the orderly bugler; upon which the men generally give a shout and a huzzah, and away they go, leaving their old encampment, and looking forward with anxious expectations to reaching their next stage, and meeting with their families whom they have sent on in advance.
After clearing the old ground, the taps sound ‘unfix bayonets – and – march at ease’, when officers sheath their swords and mount, while the men march as they like, the pivots of sections, however, preserving their distances, and the whole push along as fast as they like, conversing with each other, the Joe Miller of each company telling his yarns, or cracking his jokes, some of the fellows singing, and others laughing. It very often happens that the officers are made subjects of mirth, or of panegyric by the latter, as they are liked or disliked by the men.82
For most of the period soldiers and the armies of which they formed part needed access to hard cash, and travelling military treasuries were a feature of marching armies. Lieutenant Reginald Wilberforce of HM’s 52nd Light Infantry marched on Delhi from Sialkot in May 1857.
The most irksome duty we had was treasure guard; the troops before Delhi had no money, and so we brought them down a considerable amount. This treasure, all in rupees, was carried on camels, and a guard of 100 men with a captain and a subaltern had to march with the camels. Now, a camel is a useful beast of burden, but … his pace is two miles an hour, the most wearisome pace in the world … The treasure guard always started first and got into camp last. Then, all day long, sentries had to be visited, guards inspected, until the happy time came when the relief came and the boxes of rupees were handed over to some one else’s custody.83
Captain Crawford McFall of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry found himself acting as field treasury officer with the Zhob Valley Field Force in 1890, responsible for half a lakh of rupees, carried in fourteen boxes. Nine boxes contained whole rupees, 5,000 in each box in five bags of 1,000 each. There was one box of small silver totalling 4,500 rupees; two boxes of single pice to the value of 150 rupees each, and two boxes of double pice at 100 rupees each. The money boxes were loaded into oak chests, two to a camel. They had their own escort on the march and were secured by the column’s quarter-guard at night. McFall was glad to be rid of the responsibility when the proper field treasury officer arrived.84
Private Henry Metcalfe of HM’s 32nd Foot spent half his first two years in India on the move. He left Chinsurah for the 500-mile march to Allahabad on 14 January 1850, and
remained in the