I was feted and feasted to almost an alarming extent, considering that for nearly two years I had been restricted to campaigning diet; but it surprised me very much to find that the kind people, by whom I was so greatly honoured, invariably appeared to think the march from Kabul to Kandahar was a much greater performance than the advance on Kabul the previous autumn, while, to my mind, the latter operation was in every particular more difficult, more dangerous, and placed upon me as the Commander infinitely more responsibility.  The force with which I started from Kuram to avenge the massacre of our fellow-countrymen was little more than half the strength of that with which I marched to Kandahar.  Immediately on crossing the Shutargardan I found myself in the midst of a hostile and warlike people, entirely dependent on the country for supplies, heavily handicapped by want of transport, and practically as completely cut off from communication with India as I was a year later on the march to Kandahar.  The Afghans’ fanatical hatred of Europeans had been augmented by their defeats the year before, and by the occurrences at Kabul, and they looked upon my small column as a certain prey delivered into their hands by a sympathizing and all-powerful Allah.

Before me was Kabul, with its large and well-equipped arsenal, defended by an army better organized and more highly trained than that possessed by any former Ruler of Afghanistan.  On all sides of me were tribesmen hurrying up to defend the approaches to their capital, and had there been on our part the smallest hesitation or delay, we should have found ourselves opposed by as formidable a combination as we had to deal with two months later at Sherpur.  Nothing could then have saved the force, not one man of which I firmly believe would have ever returned to tell the tale in India.  Worse than all, I had in my own camp a traitor, in the form of the Amir, posing as a friend to the British Government and a refugee seeking our protection, while he was at heart our bitterest enemy, and was doing everything in his power to make my task more difficult and ensure our defeat.

The march to Kandahar was certainly much longer, the country was equally unfriendly, and the feeding of so large a number of men and animals was a continual source of anxiety.  But I had a force capable of holding its own against any Afghan army that could possibly be opposed to it, and good and sufficient transport to admit of its being kept together, with the definite object in view of rescuing our besieged countrymen and defeating Ayub Khan; instead of, as at Kabul, having to begin to unravel a difficult political problem after accomplishing the defeat of the tribesmen and the Afghan army.

I could only account to myself for the greater amount of interest displayed in the march to Kandahar, and the larger amount of credit given to me for that undertaking, by the glamour of romance thrown around an army of 10,000 men lost to view, as it were, for nearly a month, about the fate of which uninformed speculation was rife and pessimistic rumours were spread, until the tension became extreme, and the corresponding relief proportionably great when that army reappeared to dispose at once of Ayub and his hitherto victorious troops.