Soldiers In Action At Thal (Present Day District Hangu) During The 3rd Afghan War in 1919.
In early May 1919, the point of the central theatre most threatened was Parachinar, isolated from Thal up the Kurram Valley.
Reacting to initial reports of Nadir Khan’s concentration at Matun, the Kurram Militia, part of the British-Indian force, pushed forward picquets (advanced guards) to the border in the vicinity of Peiwar Kotal, Kharlarchi and Lakka Tiga. There, they observed Afghan movements and tried to identify the direction of Nadir Khan’s main attack. Khan moved on May 23, heading south-east, down the Kaitu, threatening both Bannu and Thal.
In the face of this threat, the Waziristan Militia evacuated the Spinwam border post the next day, as well as other garrisons along the Upper Tochi River in North Waziristan. Then a number of the militia deserted the British while the Wazirs rose up and joined the Afghans. Nadir Kahn occupied Spinwam on May 25 with a force of 3,000 Afghan infantry, field howitzers and pack guns, and a large force of tribesmen from Khost and Waziristan. He was now equidistant from Thal and Bannu.
The British reinforced Thal from Kohat, diverting forces which might otherwise have been used to continue the invasion of Afghanistan through the Khyber. On the morning of May 27, Nadir Khan then appeared to the north-west of Thal, invested it and opened fire with his artillery, cutting off the forces in Parachinar and the Upper Kurram.
The British had prepared for such an eventuality by improving the defence lines. However, the water supply was a potential weakness. Despite being bombed by the RAF, Khan's artillery outranged that of the British and was causing considerable damage, and he started to push the defences in towards the water supply. At the same time, the skirmishes on the frontiers increased in intensity, particularly around Peiwar Kotal, Kharlarchi and Lakka Tiga.
Meanwhile, at Kohat, Brigadier General Dyer (the same man who’d ordered the aforementioned massacre in India) assembled a column of infantry, guns, machine guns and a few lorries for the relief of Thal. Dyer marched with his men on May 31 and successfully relieved Thal the following day (lorries aside, most men went on foot.)
In early June, he drove Khan back into Afghanistan. Gregory Fremont-Barnes quotes Dyer’s biographer in his book ‘The Anglo-Afghan Wars’, giving a glimpse into what the fighting conditions must have been like. In many ways, they were much the same as they are today:
“At Togh, the General addressed his troops, exhorting them to make a great effort to rescue their comrades at Thal. His words touched the hearts of that strangely assorted force of veterans and war levies, Punjabi peasants and London men of business so that they marched to the last of their strength, some of them dropped in their tracks. At four o’clock in the morning on 31 May they set out along a fairly open valley between steep hills. There was no wind and but little water, and as the day advanced the stony hillsides became a furnace, the naked rocks throwing back the sun so that it seemed to strike from the ground as from the sky.”
Source - Action At Badama Post: The Third Afghan War, 1919 By Paul Macro.
