Afghan Regular Army - Infantryman 1878.jpg

4. Infantryman 1878

Travelling through Afghan Turkestan just as war was about to break out between Sher Ali and the British, Grodekoff’s descriptions of the uniforms he saw are particularly valuable. At Mazar-i-Sharif guardsmen at the Governor’s residence were seen wearing red tunics with yellow facings, collars and cuffs, white cotton ‘knee-breeches’ (indicating either short trousers like those of plates 1 and 2, or else native trousers), ‘shoes but no stockings’, and a felt helmet with a metal star on the front, doubtless the native copy of the British helmet referred to in the captions to plates 5 and 8. Belts worn round the waist and over the shoulder, both supporting ammunition pouches, were of white leather.

The garrison at Maimana seems to have particularly struck Grodekoff, since he observes that ‘a greater set of guys [in the mid-19th century dictionary sense of ‘persons of grotesque looks or dress’] than the infantrymen would have been difficult to have found in any European pantomime. Their uniforms were made up of such a medley of colours and shapes, and sat upon them so badly, that it was impossible not to laugh at them.’ He records the uniforms coming in various colours – red with yellow ‘trimmings’ (presumably facings); blue with red or raspberry collars and cuffs; and black ‘with white cuffs, white collars, white buttons, and white facings’. Head-dress consisted of either a turban or a striped cotton ‘helmet’, described as low, with a peak coming down close over the eyes and resembling a Bashkir tubeteika, with ‘a small bunch of feathers on the top’. Yate describes such hats seen at Mazar-i-Sharif in 1886 (where they were being worn by both infantry and cavalry) as ‘imitation Russian caps of dirty black cloth, with a red band and a huge peak, generally wrongly put on; and the cap, being worn well pulled down over the head, looked more like a shapeless nightcap than anything else.’

Other references to infantry uniform colours during the period 1878–80 can be found scattered through contemporary British official documents and accounts of the Second Afghan War. An official report, for instance, records that one of the mutinous regiments in Kabul in 1879 wore black; R. Gordon-Creed saw at Gandamak a company ‘dressed in khaki with black facings, and small black caps’,(12) while Ayub Khan’s regulars at Maiwand are described by an officer of the 66th as having been dressed ‘in red and blue’ – doubtless meaning red jackets and blue trousers.(13) Waller Ashe records two prisoners taken in July 1880 as wearing ‘the ragged remains of what was once a picturesque and workmanlike uniform consisting of dark purple turban, grey tunic, and well-worn knickerbockers’,(14) while at the Battle of Kandahar in September Howard Hensman saw some soldiers wearing ‘dark-coloured jackets, and turbans surmounted by small yellow pompons, such as were worn long ago by European armies’, and others ‘clad in khaki’ who, since they were almost mistaken for Indian infantry, presumably all wore turbans (the use of which steadily increased from this time on).(15) Shoulder-straps, incidentally, at least sometimes bore a regimental number, Joshua Duke recording the numbers ‘2’ and ‘3’ being seen on the shoulders of Afghan casualties at Charasiab in October 1879.(16)

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