Read "A Tale of the Retreat from Cabul" by James Grant online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
'In the month of October -- I won't mention the year, it seems so long ago -- my then regiment, the gallant old 13th Light Infantry, with the rest of Her Majesty's troops who had the ill-luck to accompany us, were in the cantonments of Cabul.
'I can see them yet, in memory, on the plain in front of the mountain city, enclosed by walls and hedges, and bordered by those pretty villas which, in their perfect confidence in the people, among whom we had come to replace Shah Sujah on his throne, our officers had built for themselves and families; on one hand the hills of the Siah Sung, on the other the haunted heights of Beymaroo, for it was affirmed that a demon of some kind did haunt them, and in the distance the city of Cabul, with its walls and streets of sun-dried bricks, the towering outline of its Balahissar, and in the background far away the summit of the Hindoo Kush, mantled with snows that never melt.