Just Finished Reading: Drums Along the Khyber by Duncan MacNeil (FP: 1969)

Young James Ogilvie had little choice if he’d given it much thought. His Grandfather and now his Father had commanded the 114^th Highlanders, the Queen’s own Royal Strathspeys and family tradition demanded he follow in their substantial footsteps. After graduating from Sandhurst Military Academy he began his expected long apprenticeship in the regiment learning its traditions and its way of doing things. But only months into his training as a fresh subaltern the call comes out from the North West Frontier that a rebel chief, Ahmed Khan, has arisen in Afghanistan and is becoming a potential risk to the Empire in India. The 114^th are needed earlier than expected to crush any possible insurgency. So, in 1894, Ogilvie finds himself at the very edge of the Empire, falling in love with another officer’s wife, disturbed and a little disgusted with the treatment of Indian natives and facing the greatest challenge of his life to date – passage through the fabled Khyber Pass to fight on the plains of Afghanistan. Whatever happens it’s going to be quite a baptism of fire.

I’ve been searching for books like this for a little while now and was delighted to pick up this first book in the series comparatively cheaply. Unfortunately – unless I want to buy a Kindle – the following books are either difficult to acquire or horrendously expensive. I will, however, persevere and try and get them eventually. Naturally comparisons with the Sharpe novels were quickly made. The most obvious is that James is already a (admittedly newly minted) officer at the beginning of the story and not only comes from a military family but whose father is the Divisional Commander, Sir Iain Ogilvie. Which means, of course, that young Ogilvie has LOTS to live up to and naturally worries that anything good that comes his way is because of the connection with his father – so both sides need to prove that this is not the case. If that wasn’t bad enough there is the character of Captain Black [as soon as I saw his name, and from then on, I could only see the baddie in the Gerry Anderson puppet series ‘Captain Scarlett and the Mysterons] who deeply resents Ogilvie’s position and does everything he can to undermine his subaltern. The story itself is fairly standard stuff with good set piece engagements, some interesting discussion of Imperial India of that time and of the ‘Great Game’ between the British Empire and Russia for control of Afghanistan and the protection of India from ‘foreign’ interference. There was a bit of a lull near the end which dragged on a bit but overall this was a solid read. I look forward to (eventually) reading the sequels. Reasonable. Oh, one more thing… the cover did set my pedant alarm off. The character holding the sword in one hand and the gun in the other is presumably the main character James. Unfortunately I haven’t managed to find who (or when) drew the original artwork. The gun in particular intrigued me. It looks like a C96 Mauser ‘Broom-handle’ – which I think makes the holster wrong – that, as the name suggests, was manufactured from 1896. As the novel is based in 1894 it’s rather doubtful that James could have procured this gun 2 years ahead of its mass production. Interestingly in the novel he does indeed fight with sword and handgun – but the gun is described as a ‘pistol’ which was probably a Mk 1 Webley .455 (in production from 1887) which looks nothing like the Mauser.