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There are few books that can truly be said to be unique, but this is one. Afghanistan has been a battleground since man has occupied its hostile landscape and others have sought to control it as the corridor between great continents. The British-conquerors of the Indian sub-continent-have found themselves fruitlessly bleeding into its dry soil on several occasions. The first was in the mid-nineteenth century as they attempted to secure an unpopular puppet ruler on its throne. Error compounded error as Elphinstone, the British army's incompetent commander, compromised his strategic position in the capital and then, to extricate himself, instigated a forced retreat in winter as hostile tribesmen pressed in on all sides. History knows that this resulted in the annihilation of the entire army. Only a handful of people survived. One of these was Lady Sale, the formidable wife of Robert Sale whose brigade was fighting its own war locked inside Jellalabad. Incredibly Lady Sale kept a daily diary of her experience of the entire appalling catastrophe. It illuminates the events of the retreat uniquely and provides an inspiring view of a woman rising to the demands of extreme adversity that has no parallels.
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The review mentioning missing pages is actually rather mis-leading. I thought it meant the book, in actual fact it seems to be just that Lady Sale appears not to have had time to fill in her diary every single day, which was probably a hard thing to do when one is worried about staying alive rather than stopping to write anyway. I didn't find it took away any of the enjoyment of the book written by somebody who survived through the war. If you do enjoy the true survival stories such as this I would also recommend another two in the Leonaur Women in Conflict series that I have read "Memsahib and the Mutiny" and "Ladies of Lucknow" which I also found to be very rivetting, amazing stories.
Added postscript-I notice the previous reviewer has now ammended the part about missing pages which makes mine seem rather nonsensical in mentioning it, but heigh-ho leastways they have now given a more accurate point to a very enjoyable book.
It is a pity that the publisher has not got someone to do a map of Kabul at the time, so that you can follow where the fighting is. As a result I could not get a sense of what was happening and place names meant nothing. Lady Sale uses a lot of words no longer in use, such as "ottah", "sirdar" and "bhoosa", which I suspect are her version of local words, but an explanation would have helped. A bit of time and money spent putting it into a more readable form would have made it a brilliant read rather than a struggle.
Very interesting book although it is in effect a 'diary' book and can go on a bit, I therefore found myself skipping many pages. Extremely interesting if you are or have read other books on the historical aspects of Afghanistan. Particularly interesting if you are in Kabul and gives you a first hand account of the events of that period.
