his journey home.

I remained in the factory four years, but in consequence of my age and
ill health was obliged to resign in May, 1906.

[Illustration: SERGT.-MAJOR EDWIN G. RUNDLE. Age, 71 Years.]

CHAPTER XII.

INCIDENTS IN THE AFGHAN WAR.

[I would like to follow this brief and unpretentious narrative of my
life with a sketch of the operations of a British force, in which my
old regiment was brigaded, in the Afghan war.]

Just before sunset on the twentieth of November, 1878, the 2nd Brigade
of the Peshawur Valley Field Force, consisting of the Guides Infantry,
the 1st Sikhs, and the 17th Foot under Brigadier-General J. A.
Tytler--the strength being forty British officers, 1,700 men, of whom
600 were Europeans--left its camp at Jamrud to begin the flank march
which was to ensure the completeness of Sir Sam. Browne's victory over
the garrison of Masjid. The 17th Regiment had spent the summer in the
Murree Hills, where it had been carefully trained for the work that lay
before it. Evatt, in his Recollections, says: "It was about the last of
the long service battalions of that army which was just then
disappearing before the short system, and better specimens of that old
regime could not be seen than the men of the 17th, who for weight and
space occupied per man were probably thirty per cent. heavier and much
broader than the younger soldiers of to-day." Speed being essential to
success and the difficulties presented by the country to be traversed
very great, tents, bedding and baggage were left behind, to be sent up
later through the Pass; and the troops took with them only a small
hospital establishment, a reserve of ammunition, two days' cooked
rations, and a supply of water stored in big leather bags, known as
pukkals. In addition to their great coats, seventy rounds of ammunition
and one day's cooked rations was carried by each man.

Unfortunately the greater part of the transport allotted to the brigade
consisted of bullocks instead of mules--a mistake which was to leave
the men without food for over twenty-four hours. Darkness soon closed
in upon the column, and when the comparatively easy road across the Jam
plain gave place to an ill-defined track running up a deep ravine,
sometimes on one side of a mountain stream, sometimes on the other,
sometimes in its very bed, even the native guides, men of the district,
familiar with its every rock and stone, were often at fault. The
transport animals b