Afghan Regular Army - Cavalry Guardsman 1885.jpg

11. Cavalry Guardsman 1885

This man is from sketches in The Graphic of 9 May 1885 and the Illustrated London News of the following week, depicting Abdur Rahman’s escort at the durbar at Rawalpindi. The colours come from a description in the latter, which also shows that the huge sheepskin hat had an extension shaped somewhat like a beaver’s tail hanging down the back. Infantry guardsmen at much the same date are described by a Russian traveller as wearing white or khaki trousers; red jackets with white piping, white or yellow collars, yellow or red shoulder-straps, and buttons ‘bearing the English State emblem’; shoes with turned-up toes; and ‘leathern helmets’ with a brass ‘English emblem’ on the front.(27) Though obsolete British equipment was therefore still in widespread use, an English officer present at Rawalpindi noted that Afghan uniforms seen there ‘bore a decidedly Russian cut’, contemporary pictures showing numerous Russian features such as bandoliers, round fur caps and the widespread use of tall boots by infantrymen. (Kipling, however, tells us that their knee-high boots were abused so badly by the men – who only pushed their feet halfway in, or ‘wrenched the heels sideways’ etc – that he wondered how on earth they had managed to struggle all the way from Kabul in them.)

• Источник: Ian Heath. A most villainous-looking cavalcade: The Afghan Regular Army in the 19th Century / Wargames Illustrated №№93 - 95