Haji's Son Spanked

Under the eaves of Central Asia's towering Hindu Kush Mountains lie the farthermost outposts of the British Raj's power in India, in the Northwest Frontier Province. There last week Britain slapped down with overwhelming force a perilous little rebellion, just north of Khyber Pass, in the land of the Upper Mohmands.

A longtime flea on the British lion is the Upper Mohmand tribe, a wild, haughty, hairy group of Pathans who periodically attack the Lower Mohmands, pets of the British Government, and raise hob generally in the Northwest. Time after time the British have marched into Upper Mohmand Land to protect their pets. Blandly incorrigible, the Upper Mohmands went on kidnapping and selling the women of nearby Swat, raiding the great, heavily-guarded caravan kafilas that wind under the British railway bridges through the Khyber Pass. Lately the British have busily pushed a road for the first time into Upper Mohmand land. To Badshah Gul, son of the Haji of Turangzai, toward whose mountain plain the Gandab Road seemed directly pointed, the road looked menacing. The Haji's son began to pick off the native road laborers from ambush. Last week the British Raj set out to spank the Haji's son.

The biggest of all the expeditions against the Upper Mohmands poured out of Peshawar, farthest north of the hill posts. Against the few hundred rifles of the Haji's son. Britain moved into action the white-turbaned Pathans and Sikhs of the Peshawar and Nowshera Brigades, the tough, kilted Scots of the Highland Light Infantry, to a total of 15.000 men. as well as planes, mountain artillery, light tanks. Commanding was a hardened Scot of a professional British Army family. Brig.-General Claude John Eyre Auchinleck, advised by Acting Chief of Staff Major-General Eric de Burgh and Director of Military Operations and Intelligence Brig.-General Alan Fleming Hartley. This impressive trio and all their men and metal were obviously far more than the Haji's son warranted. Britain was determined, however, to show its power before all the Indian Northwest.

The small tanks streamed last week up the mountain road while Pathans in their little loopholed houses peered out goggle-eyed. The enemy had a natural line of defense, the peaks of Khazana Sar guarding the Nahakki Pass. The Haji's son took them, sniped into the valley at the British outposts.

After nightfall, General Auchinleck sent his Indian sharpshooters up the sides of Khazana Sar, two battalions to a peak. It was a perfect frontier night, cold and clear with a half moon. In the valley the General waited. At dawn he heard his Indian rifles sniping back at the Haji's son's snipers. The honor of storming the Pass went to the white men of the Highland Light. They advanced in deployed formation while their batteries threw metal over the Pass.

No fools, the tribesmen faded away. When the Scots ran out of the Pass, they saw half a dozen Mohmands scuttling up the gorges, a turbaned man in front of a village waving a white flag. It was a British victory. The job ended in the plain hard work of British empire-building. By transferring his supplies from trucks to mule and camel, General Auchinleck advanced his base into the Haji's plain. Then he rushed construction of a water line and the extension of the Gandab Road through the Pass. Said dispatches: "The nature of the territory and the skill of the soldiers as mountain climbers place the operations among the most notable undertaken by the Indian Army in modern times."

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