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The British involvement in Afghanistan reminds many of the earlier British involvement in Afghanistan which led to an unmitigated defeat for the United Kingdom. The lessons of those defeats at Maiwand are lost to the new generation that is facing the same type of problems in the graveyard of empires.
The lost battles of the Union Jack remind many of the British Charge of the Light Brigade which described the British defeat in the Battle of Balaclava, October 25th, 1954.
On Oct. 25, 1854, during the Battle of Balaclava, the British army suffered staggering losses that were quickly etched in history — and myth. School children who have never heard of the Crimean War remember the Charge of the Light Brigade. Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s famous poem. Tennyson, the British poet laureate at the time, described the battleground as “the Valley of Death.”
But however brave it may have been, the charge was a military mistake. Following the wrong orders, a light cavalry brigade of 600 to 700 men attacked enemy forces despite being surrounded on three sides by heavy Russian artillery. In seven minutes, 110 men died.
A new book by historian Terry Brighton, Hell Riders: The True Story of the Charge of the Light Brigade, documents the events that led to the charge. NPR. Weekend Edition Saturday, October 23, 2004
The folloy of the British Charge of the Light Brigade has happened again–this time in Afghanistan: Unfortunately the lessons of the unmitigated disaster of “Auckland’s Folly”, (First Anglo-Afghan War 1838–42) have not been taught to the Oxbridge students.
Tennyson’s poem, published December 9, 1854 in The Examiner, praises the Brigade, “When can their glory fade? O the wild charge they made!”, while mourning the appalling futility of the charge: “Not tho’ the soldier knew, someone had blunder’d… Charging an army, while all the world wonder’d.” According to his grandson Sir Charles Tennyson, Tennyson wrote the poem in only a few minutes after reading an account of the battle in The Times, . It immediately became hugely popular, even reaching the troops in the Crimean, where it was distributed in pamphlet form.
Each stanza tells a different part of the story, and there is a delicate balance between nobility and brutality throughout. Although Tennyson’s subject is the nobleness of supporting one’s country, and the poem’s tone and hoofbeat cadences are rousing, it pulls no punches about the horror of war: “cannon to right of them, cannon to left of them, cannon in front of them, volley’d and thunder’d”. With “into the valley of Death” Tennyson works in resonance with “the valley of the shadow of Death” from Psalm 23; then and now, it is often read at funerals. Tennyson’s Crimea does not offer the abstract tranquil death of the psalm but is instead predatory and menacing: “into the jaws of Death” and “into the mouth of Hell”. The alliterative “Storm’d at with shot and shell” echoes the whistling of ball as the cavalry charge through it. After the fury of the charge, the final notes are gentle, reflective and laden with sorrow: “Then they rode back, but not the six hundred”.
Tennyson recited this poem onto a wax cylinder in 1890 (see below). Jamie Renell and various volunteers at Librivox have also made recordings of the poem. All of them are available online. Wiki
Alfred, Lord Tennyson 1809-1892: This poem was written to memorialize a suicidal charge by light cavalry over open terrain by British forces in the Battle of Balaclava (Ukraine) in the Crimean War (1854-56). 247 men of the 637 in the charge were killed or wounded. Britain entered the war, which was fought by Russia against Turkey, Britain and France, because Russia sought to control the Dardanelles. Russian control of the Dardanelles threatened British sea routes. Many in the west best know of this war today because of Florence Nightingale, who trained and led nurses aiding the wounded during the war in a manner innovative for those times. The War was also noteworthy as an early example of the work of modern war correspondents.
[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&q=Charge+of+the+Light+Brigade&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=RYzFScqRLcrlnQfU2uXqDg&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&resnum=4&ct=title#]
The Charge Of The Light Brigade<span by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Memorializing Events in the Battle of Balaclava, October 25, 1854
Written 1854
Half a league half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred:
‘Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns’ he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
‘Forward, the Light Brigade!’
Was there a man dismay’d ?
Not tho’ the soldier knew
Some one had blunder’d:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do & die,
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley’d & thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.
Flash’d as they turn’d in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army while
All the world wonder’d:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro’ the line they broke;
Cossack & Russian
Reel’d from the sabre-stroke,
Shatter’d & sunder’d.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
While horse & hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro’ the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder’d.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!
[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&q=Charge+of+the+Light+Brigade&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=RYzFScqRLcrlnQfU2uXqDg&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&resnum=4&ct=title#]
When your last general left the Subcontinent, Pakistanis and Afghans thought that you would really leave, we would remember you for trains started by Lord delhousie’s. But your Generals keep coming back to the Middle East and South Asia.
Lord Delhousi did not favor anyone except the Opium traders of the British East India Company and the military cantonments. According to Lord Delhousi the main purpose of introducing railways was to “immensely increase the striking power of the military forces at every point of the Indian empire, to bring British capital and enterprise to India and to bring into the ports the produce from the interior.”
The mighty railway system of the British empire could not save them from defeat in Afghanistan. Even in the 19th century, technology was not the panacea that prevented defeat. Unfortunately the lessons of the unmitigated disaster of “Auckland’s Folly”, (First Anglo-Afghan War 1838-42) have not been taught to the Oxbridge students of the United Kingdom.
Perhaps former Prime Minister Blair and current Prime Minister Brown never saw Lady Butler’s famous painting of Dr William Brydon, the sole survivor, gasping his way to the British outpost in Jalalabad. This painting codified Elphinstone’s retreat from Kabul and established Afghanistan’s reputation as a graveyard for foreign armies.
The lessons learned from the defeat of Lord Curzon’s (1878-1893) “On to the Oxus” policy are not taught to the Eaton and Harrow graduates.
Will Britannia learn her lessons ever? Does no one in Britain read Robert Fisk anymore? The minority Northern Alliance led non-Pashtun government has been a total failure. The only way out of the Afghan quagmire for NATO is to negotiate with the Talibaan and the Pashtuns. Pakistan’s vital interests in Afghanstan have to be taken into account, and the Hindu Kush mountains cannot be used to launch terrorism into Pakistani Baluchistan.
An American led “Marshall Plan” for Pakistan and Afghanistan will reduce tensions, and provide employment to the disaffected youth of the area.
Those that the gods will destroy they first make mad…
http://rupeenews.com/ideas-on-afghanistan/bugti-karzai-vs-pakistan/
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Appendix A–Background of the war
The ostensible cause of the Crimean War developed some years earlier, when a group of Russian Orthodox Monks argued with French Catholics over the keys to various Holy Places in Jerusalem and Nazareth. Violence followed, people were killed. The affair became a pretext for Czar Nicholas I to occupy what is now Rumania in the Balkans, then part of the Ottoman Turkish Empire, and to subsequently sink the Turkish fleet in the Black Sea. Great Britain, long suspicious of Russian movements in Afghanistan, Central Asia and in the Dardanelles, supported the Turks, and Napoleon II of France, hoping to emulate his illustrious (or infamous) uncle, declared his intention to protect the French Monks in Jerusalem. He joined the British and Turks in a coalition against Russia. The war went well for the Coalition in early 1853, as two expeditionary forces drove the Russians back in the Balkans. They did not leave well enough alone, however, and on September 14, 1854, over 60, 000 allied soldiers were landed on the Crimean Peninsula with orders to occupy Sevastopol, Russia’s Black Sea base, which potentially endangered British and French sea routes,
