Battle of Maiwand

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Battle of Maiwand

Date	July 27, 1880
Location	Maiwand, Afghanistan
Result	Pyrrhic Afghan Victory

Combatants

Great Britain

Afghanistan

Commanders

George Burrows

Ayub Khan

Strength

2,566

25,000

Casualties

1,123
962 dead
161 wounded

7,000+
5,500+ dead
1,500+ wounded

The Battle of Maiwand was one of the largest battles of the Second Anglo-Afghan War. The battle ended in a serious defeat of the British Army but was also very costly to the Afghans. In fact, the Afghan victory at Maiwand was at a cost of over 7,000 Afghan warriors and 1,123 British and Indian soldiers - a pyrrhic victory.

Before the battle the campaign had gone well for the British. They had previously decisively defeated Afghan tribesmen and troops at Ali Musjid, Peiwar Kotal, Kabul and Ahmed Khel. Furthermore, they had managed to occupy countless towns and villages including Kandahar, Dakka and Jellalabad.

Ayub Khan, Shere Ali's younger son, who had been holding Herat during the British operations at Kabul and Kandahar, set out towards Kandahar with a small army in June 1880, and a brigade under General Burrows was detached from Kandahar to oppose him. Burrows advanced to the Helmund, opposite Girishk, to oppose Ayub Khan, but was there deserted by the troops of Shere Ali, the wali of Kandahar, and forced to retreat to Kushk-i-Nakhud, half way to Kandahar. In order to prevent Ayub passing to Ghazni, Burrows advanced to Maiwand on 27 July, and attacked Ayub, who had already seized that place. The Afghans, who numbered 25,000, outflanked the British, the artillery expended their ammunition, and the native portion of the Brigade got out of hand and pressed back on the few British infantry. The British were completely routed, and had to thank the apathy of the Afghans for escaping total annihilation. Of the 2476 British troops engaged, the British and Indian force lost 21 officers and 948 soldiers killed. 8 officers and 169 men were wounded. The Grenadiers lost 64% of their strength and the 66th lost 62%, including 12 officers. The cavalry losses were much smaller. Regimental casualties were:

E/B Battery, Royal Horse Artillery: 14 dead 13 wounded

3rd Queen’s Own (Bombay Cavalry) 27 dead 18 wounded

3rd Scinde Horse (Bombay Army) 15 dead 1 wounded

HM 66th Foot 286 dead 32 wounded

1st Grenadiers 366 dead 61 wounded

30th Bombay NI (Jacob’s Rifles) 241 dead 32 wounded

2nd Company Bombay Sappers and Miners 16 dead 6 wounded

One estimate of Afghan casualties is 3,000, reflecting the desperate nature of much of the fighting [1], although other sources give 1,500 Afghans and up to 4,000 Ghazis killed [2].

This defeat necessitated Sir Frederick Roberts' famous march from Kabul to Kandahar. Further casualties were incurred on both sides in the aftermath of the battle, the retreat and a follow-up action a month later - perhaps accounting for the variance between the two sources.

While dealing with some mutinous Afghan troops about fifty miles from Kandahar, George Burrows, a British brigadier-general, was confronted by a large Afghan army en route from Herat. What followed was a lengthy and bloodthirsty battle of attrition, which saw the 66th Regiment (later called the Royal Berkshire Regiment) almost destroyed due to a combination overwhelming Afghan numbers, superior Afghan artillery, use of terrain, an inexperienced Indian regiment, and the debatable leadership of Burrows.

This battle dampened morale for the British side, but was also partly a disappointment for Ayub Khan, Governor of Herat and commander of the Afghans in this battle, because he had lost so many men to gain a small advantage over his imperialistic enemy. Ayub Khan did manage to shut the British up in Kandahar, resulting in General Frederick Roberts' famous 314-mile relieving march from Kabul to Kandahar in August 1880. The resulting Battle of Kandahar on September 1 was a decisive victory for the British.

Rudyard Kipling, who had researched this battle in 1892, had submitted this small yet dramatic poem about the action at Maiwand ('That Day', extract):-

"There was thirty dead an' wounded on the ground we wouldn't keep -

No, there wasn't more than twenty when the front began to go;

But, Christ! along the line o' flight they cut us up like sheep,

An' that was all we gained by doing so.

I 'eard the knives be'ind me, but I dursn't face my man,

Nor I don't know where I went to, 'cause I didn't 'alt to see,

Till I 'eard a beggar squealin' out for quarter as 'e ran,

An' I thought I knew the voice an' - it was me!

We was 'idin' under bedsteads more than 'arf a march away;

We was lyin' up like rabbits all about the countryside;

An' the major cursed 'is Maker 'cause 'e lived to see that day'

An' the colonel broke 'is sword acrost, an' cried."

Poems of the victory at Maiwand have passed into Pashtun and Afghan folklore. As Afghan legend would have it, the battle created an unlikely hero in the shape of an Afghan woman called Malalai, who on seeing the Afghan forces falter, used her veil as a standard and encouraged the men by shouting out

Young love if you do not fall in the battle of Maiwind;

By God someone is saving you as a token of shame;

A cast iron statue of a lion (Maiwand Lion) was built by George Blackall Simonds in Reading and unveiled in 1886 to commemorate those who died in battle. A monument was built in the 1950s on the Maiwand Square in Kabul in commemoration of the battle by an Afghan architect Is-matulla Saraj.

[edit] Fiction

Dr. John H. Watson, fictional companion of Sherlock Holmes, was based upon the regiments Medical Officer, Surgeon Major A F Preston, who was wounded in the Battle of Maiwand (as described in the opening chapter of "A Study in Scarlet") and invalided out of the British Army. [3]