The tribesmen held a position on a big spur running down from the mountains, and meeting an unfordable river with a steep cliff.  Round the face of this cliff a narrow causeway led to a fairly open valley beyond.  It was the business of the infantry to clear this spur, or ridge, and this they accomplished after some severe climbing and hard fighting.  As the defeated enemy were seen streaming across the valley, making for a further ridge two or three miles in the rear, the Guides’ cavalry were let loose in pursuit; but before debouching into the valley they had to pass along the causeway, some three-quarters of a mile in length, in single file.  As everyone knows, who has experience of single file work, even a moderate pace in front means inevitable straggling behind.  The officer leading, in his eagerness to get at the enemy, lost sight of this fact, and so soon as he made the valley, with the first few men set off at a round pace after the enemy.  At the head of the pursuit was also Lieutenant R.T.  Greaves, of the Lancashire Fusiliers, who was acting as war-correspondent to a newspaper.  After traversing a mile, and leaving the men further and further behind, the two officers saw the enemy passing through a wooded graveyard and on to a spur some eighty yards in the rear.

Colonel Adams, who was coming up fast with the main body, shouted to the two officers to stop, but owing to the noise of firing could not make himself heard.  He at once saw that the place to seize was the graveyard, cavalry pursuit up a rocky hill being naturally impracticable, and from there to open fire on the retreating enemy.  He therefore at once seized the graveyard with dismounted men.  To describe the events of the next few minutes it had best be done in the words of an officer who was an eye-witness and whose account appears in A Frontier Campaign: 

On Palmer and Greaves approaching the hill, they were subject to a heavy fire from the enemy.  Palmer’s horse was at once killed, whilst Greaves, having been shot at close quarters, fell, some twenty yards further on, among the Pathans, who at once proceeded to hack at him with their swords.  Seeing this, Adams and Fincastle went out to his assistance followed by two sowars, who galloped towards Palmer, at that moment engaged in hand-to-hand conflict with a standard-bearer.  Palmer had been shot through the right wrist and was only saved by the opportune appearance of these two men, who enabled him to get back to the shelter of the ziarat in safety.  Meanwhile Fincastle, who had had his horse killed while galloping up to where Greaves lay, tried to lift Greaves on to Adams’s horse, in the process of which Greaves was again shot through the body, and Adams’s horse wounded.  They were soon joined by the two sowars who had been to Palmer’s assistance, and almost immediately after by Maclean, who having first dismounted his squadron in the ziarat, had very pluckily ridden out with four of his