Diana Preston III.

This is coolbert:

Bow and arrow.

From a prior blog entry:

"These are reverse engineered British Enfield rifles. They weren't used until the second Afghan-Anglo war. The 16,000 who were massacred were by sword and arrow. Get a damn education you moron." - - Anonymous.

NOT having found ANY reference to the use of bow and arrow by those Afghan harrying that British column attempting to march that ninety miles [145 kilometers] from Kabul to Jalalabad I had assumed there was no such use of such weaponry [bow and arrow].

This may not be correct after all!!

As described in the "Dark Defile":

"The American adventurer Josiah Harlan described how Dost Mohammad appeared 'with fifty thousand belligerent candidates for martyrdom and immortality. Savages from the remotest recesses of the mountainous districts, who were dignified with the professions of the Mohammedan faith, many of them giants in form and strength, promiscuously armed with sword and shield, bows and arrows, matchlocks, rifles, spears and blunderbusses . . ."

Dost Mohammad the warlord  of the Afghan on this particular occasion in confrontation with a Sikh ruler and not the British. This incident occurring prior to the First Anglo-Afghan War.

Combatants armed in such a manner with that variety of odd weaponry during that period of time not so unusual!

That Polish Hussar [cavalryman] of the 1600's carrying an awesome melange' of weaponry to include: lance, six foot long [2 meter] rapier, saber, pistols, musket, war hammer, bow and arrows, all on one person. After discharging the musket and pistols that hussar repeatedly engaging the adversary at long range with bow and arrows.

As can easily be understood, once those firearms discharged, reload slow. Resorting to bow and arrow also now merely an expedient but effective on the battlefield.

coolbert.