Ian McKay appears as an adjunct to the story told in the above references and as the creator of this young engineer, the author would hope that this young man's adventures blend well with the story of the Army of the Indus and their march to Kabul, Afghanistan.

If ever a war was ill-conceived, badly managed, unnecessary and disastrous it was the invasion of Afghanistan which was ordered by the Governor-General, Lord Auckland, in 1839. The plan of campaign violated all the principles of strategy; the leaders for the most part were mediocre in ability, and were bound hand and foot by political control. The country was far from British India, mountainous, barren and almost unknown, arctic in winter, torrid in summer and unreachable except through narrow passes. The lines of supply were badly organized, the artillery and transport unsuitable and the troops inexperienced in mountain warfare and encumbered by hosts of non-combatants. Henry IV of France once said of Spain; "Invade with a large force and you are destroyed by starvation; invade with a small one and you are overwhelmed by a hostile people." Such was the problem of Afghanistan.

I finally arrived with my little cavalcade in late November and reporting in to the army was quickly accomplished. Our arrival at Ferozepore and the sprawling great army camp was most impressive. The tents stretched to or heard of in my young life. Looking upon this great example of the power of my native land, and I was filled with a great over-pride in my country and her great military establishment. It is well I suppose, that I was so proud and so filled with admiration at first, because what later occurred was a great disappointment, which to some extent modified my first close look at the mighty but sometimes lacking military machine to which I now belonged. immediately sought out the Commanding General and reported myself and my companions as present and ready to start duty. In short order I was introduced to Colonel R.H. Sale who was the Command Duty Officer of the Day. General Cotton being absent on business to Shah Sujah's encampment. Col. Sale was busy with some problems of weapon repair and quickly summoned Captain Thomson to his tent. It was to this man and his body of Engineers that I was attached as the junior officer. The engineer that was supposedly ill and for whose position I had been dispatched to fill, had recovered his health, but the reporting of that change had been slow in being forwarded to Calcutta. I was somewhat apprehensive in regard to my reception, but I need not have been concerned, as I was received most cordially by Captain Thomson and for the moment was assigned to him as an Asst. Engineer. A place was made for me within the staff line and Iqbal was continued in my service, during the march to Kabul. My other companions (it was difficult, after all we had been through together, to think of them as servants) were accepted willingly into our force. Most of the officers that I met had many more servants than I and so little notice was taken of my modest three additions to the army.

For the most part, the job of Assistant Engineer consisted of listening carefully to the plans being laid out for the advance to Kabul, and later committing to paper all the arrangements being made. It was apparent from the first that Captain Thomson was an experienced field engineer and most of the Engineers who were in the contingent had no allusions about the march to Kabul. It would not be an easy march, and the engineers spent their days in organizing what field equipment that was available, seeking out additional material, tools, and transport that would be useful during our march. All through the day I was with Captain Thomson as he moved in a familiar manner through the morass of the army camp making lists, searching out materials and people who could aid the engineers in their coming task. In the evening, in our mess we had many a jolly dinner, led by our young commander who ever was ready with a joke, toast or story to enliven our party. He worked hard to create the feeling of camaraderie in our officer's mess and in my eyes he succeeded brilliantly. Indeed, in my eyes, the man could do no wrong and I realized in short order that this was indeed an ideal place and the ideal command in which to start my career. Later I was to realize that perhaps we could have looked for better leadership from our senior officers, but for the moment I was totally immersed in the military world for which I had so long trained. After supper in the mess, each night, and a last chota peg (literally small glass--in this usage an alcoholic toast or drink) we all retired to our respective places of business to continue for and hour or two readying our reports for presentation to the Chief Engineer in the early morning. In the morning our jolly companion of the night before was all business, and one learned early that "The Morning Report" was not to be treated lightly, or done sloppily. The Chief Engineer then met with General Cotton and made his report to the General about the engineer's progress. General Cotton was a merry soul and his attention to duty was at times hard to define or judge. He seemed to respect Captain Thomson, however, and was always attentive to his reports and ideas. There was also the matter of my Journal. Capt. Thomson hit upon the idea that it would be good to have a record of that which we did day by day, and it fell to me as the junior with no assigned specific duty or body of men, to keep that record. I labored long and hard over this document, as it was my very real desire to please my commander. Through this medium, both Captain Thomson and Captain Sanders passed their knowledge and experience on to me, and I have always considered their efforts to be of great value. It was in this school that I began to learn my business, and I will say at this point that I have never served with a finer group of companions. In retrospect, one could not have learned his craft under two better senior engineering officers. The work was demanding, but the camaraderie in that group was outstanding and much of my present success, such as it is, was due to those gallant officers, as we moved toward the Northwest Frontier. It may be that, as I look back upon it, this was the Lord's way of softening the long road ahead as well as for what he was to extract from our company in service and suffering at a later time.

Shah Sujah's force started from Ferozepore on December 2, 1838. On December 10th, of that year, Major-General Sir Willoughby Cotton began the march of the first division of the Army of the Indus, toward the distant Kabul, Afghanistan, in five columns. This eastern division consisted of three brigades of infantry, and one of cavalry. Some artillery was attached to this force together with the 2nd and 3rd Companies of Bengal Sappers and Miners under Captain Edward Sanders of the Royal Bengal Engineers. The Chief Engineer was Captain George Thomson of the same Corps.

This division of the Army of the Indus was to join with a second division from Bombay under the command of Major-General T. Wiltshire. This division consisted of one brigade of infantry, one brigade of cavalry, some light artillery, and the 1st Company of Bombay Sappers and Miners under Captain Alexander Peat of the Royal Bombay Engineers.

There was a mixed force of British and Sikhs assembled at Peshawar to operate in the Khaibar Pass, and some attempt was made to strengthen and organize the soldiery in Shah Shujal's Military. The whole was placed under the command of Lieutenant-General Sir John Keane, Commander-In-Chief in Bombay who was expected to join his command on the Indus where he would be at the head of 39,000 men including reserves.

Although the final objective of the Army of the Indus was to be Kabul, Afghanistan, and the direct route to it lay through the Punjab and the Khaibar (Khyber) Pass, Lord Auckland, then the Governor - General of India, rather than offend the Sikh's of the Punjab sent the army down to Rohri and Sukkar on the Indus River, up to the Bolan Pass to Quetta, through the Khojack Pass to Kandahar, and so by Ghazni to Kabul.

About a week before the Army marched into Rohr!, Captain's Thompson, Sanders and the other Engineers, with the 2nd and 3rd Companies of Bengal Sappers and Miners, had arrived there and were soon collecting and preparing materials for a bridge. The Indus River, at this point, ran in two channels separated by the fortified island of Bukkur, the width of the western channel being 133 yards, and the Eastern 367 yards. James Broadfoot one of the Engineering staff commented that the river at this point had a "torrent like a mill stream." The main current was rapid to say the least, and the bottom was rocky and uneven. Given trained men, good boats or pontoons, and plenty of material to hand, to bridge such spans would not be difficult. But Captain Thomson had every handicap. He had no pontoons, and could only find eight boats at Rohri when he arrived, though he managed to collect 120 more by the time they were needed for the bridge. All the good timber had to be floated 200 miles downstream from Ferozepore, and we were obliged to supplement that timber with local stuff, as poor as it was. There were several groves of date paIM3 near Sukkur, which the Sappers felled and split to provide necessary timbers for the bridge. No rope was available so the Sapper Companies were detailed to weave 500 cables of "a peculiar kind of grass" fetched from a hundred miles away. Anchors were made of small trees joined together and loaded with a half ton of stone. Timbers from upriver were collected and sawn into beams and planks, nails were made on the spot, as none were available. The beams were lashed to the boats, placed twelve feet apart and the planks were nailed to the beams to make a roadway.

The engineers had no experience with large floating bridges and could not speak the language of the local boatmen who assisted them. Floating trees coming downriver often out the grass anchor cables and floods on several occasions endangered the entire structure. Yet the narrower of the two channels was bridged with 19 boats in four days, and the wide channel with 55 boats in sixteen days. With remarkable skill, the sappers in 20 days, had produced an improvised pontoon bridge, and everything was ready by February 3rd. It was a fine achievement and proved of great service to the army, enabling about 38, 000 tr oops, and camp followers, 30, 000 came I s, the artillery and ordnance carriages, and a long train of bullock carts to cross the Indus River rapidly, easily and safely. By the 18th, every man, beast and wagon, was on the right bank, and the eastern section of the bridge was then dismantled so that the boats could be uses as ferries. The engineers who assisted Captain Thomson in building the bridge were Capt. E. Sanders, and Lieutenants J. Anderson, H.M. Durand, J.L.D. Sturt, N.S. McCleod, James S. Broadfoot, and R. Pigou, as well as myself, all of the Royal Bengal Corps.

You may imagine that at this period, I was kept busy. In addition to my task as an Assistant Engineer to Capt. Thomson, T was also known as "George" because of my junior status, and inherited many of the myriad of jobs that are assigned to junior officers in such a situation. I was, in addition to the other areas of duty, which Captain's Thomson and Sanders kept me hard at work on, the mess caterer and collected the dues of the officers and mess and was responsible for the menu, foodstuffs and limited wine cellar of the meals provided in our mess. Also I was often in the field helping with the gathering of the special grass for cable weaving, collecting and bringing the river boats to our little harbor, and the shaping and stockpiling of the timber balks and planks that would make up our bridge. Captain's Thomson and gander believed that the way to learn the duties of a field engineer was to do the work and I was included in all the work parties and was the pupil of many a hard-bitten NCO as the mysteries of being a good Sapper not taught at the University or at Addiscombe , were revealed to me by these experienced men in the Engineering Companies. During these field lessons there was no special privilege of rank or position displayed or allowed and I was hard put to it at first to match my instructor's virtually limitless endurance. However, slowly I learned and adapted. This period proved very advantageous to me later, with my natural ear for languages. I picked up much more than just engineering lessons, which stood me in good stead when I was finally appointed to my first platoon.

The history of the First Afghan War shows that, whatever the mistakes and miscalculations in the operations, the Engineers at least proved their worth. Indeed, it is remarkable how junior officers such as Thomson, George Broadfoot, Sturt and Peat became constant advisors of their divisional and brigade commanders. There were many clever heads on young shoulders in this unfortunate campaign: the trouble was that there were also several stupid ones on old shoulders.