The Last Stand of the 44th Regiment at Gundamuck, 13 January 1842 - William Barnes Wollen (1898)
At the beginning of the First Anglo-Afghan War, British and East India Company forces had defeated the forces of Afghan Emir Dost Mohammad Barakzai and in 1839 occupied Kabul, restoring the former ruler, Shah Shujah Durrani, as emir. However, a deteriorating situation made their position more and more precarious, until an uprising in Kabul forced Maj. Gen. Elphinstone to withdraw. To this end he negotiated an agreement with Wazir Akbar Khan, one of the sons of Dost Mohammad Barakzai, by which Elphinstone’s army was to be guaranteed security as they fell back to the Jalalabad garrison, more than 140 kilometres (90 mi) away.
No sooner had the British left Kabul than Afghans loyal to Akbar launched attacks against the column, continuing to harry it as it made slow progress through the winter snows along the route that is now the Kabul–Jalalabad Road. In total the British army lost 4,500 troops, along with about 12,000 civilians: the latter comprising both the families of Indian and British soldiers, plus workmen, servants and other Indian camp followers. The final stand was made just outside a village called Gandamak on January 13.
Out of more than 16,000 people from the column commanded by Elphinstone, only one European (Assistant Surgeon William Brydon) and a few Indian sepoys reached Jalalabad. Over one hundred British prisoners and civilian hostages were later released. An uncertain number of the Indians, many of whom were maimed by frostbite, survived and returned to Kabul to exist as beggars or to be sold into slavery elsewhere. About 2,000 sepoys returned to India after another British invasion of Kabul several months later, but others remained behind in Afghanistan.
In 2013, a writer for The Economist called the retreat "the worst British military disaster until the fall of Singapore exactly a century later."