John Shelton (British Army officer)

Colonel John Shelton (1790/91 – 13 May 1845) was an officer of the British Army who commanded the 44th (East Essex) Regiment of Foot during the First Anglo-Afghan War and was second-in-command to Major General Sir William Elphinstone.

He was widely disliked as a tyrannical and ineffective commander whose failures led to the annihilation of his regiment and whose accidental death was cheered by his men, but he also had a deserved reputation for great physical bravery.

[1] In late 1840 Shelton was temporarily promoted to the local rank of major general when his regiment was combined with two Indian units to create a relief for the British force in Afghanistan.

During the first half of 1841 the brigade went first to Jalalabad before mounting a punitive expedition into the Nazian valley, opening the Khyber Pass to enable Shuja Shah Durrani's family to cross into India, and finally reached Kabul on 9 June.

He never gave me information or advice, but invariably found fault with all that was done and canvassed and condemned all orders before officers – frequently perverting and delaying carrying them into effect.

Captain George Lawrence wrote: "Brigadier Shelton's conduct at this crisis astonished me beyond expression ... [he] seemed almost beside himself, not knowing how to act, and with incapacity stamped on every feature of his face.

[2] Shelton's force evacuated the citadel and moved into a cantonment outside the city, though as he recognised, it was poorly fortified with a "rampart and ditch an Afghan could run over with the facility of a cat.

The Kashmiri Mohan Lal, who had been Burnes's munshi or secretary, wrote later that Shelton "appeared from the commencement to despair of success, which produced a baneful effect in every fighting man.

[1] This second attack proved disastrous; the Afghans' long-barrelled jezails had a longer range than the British Brown Bess muskets and Shelton made no attempt to entrench his men to protect them from enemy fire.

[7] To make matters worse, Shelton adopted a formation that was wholly unsuited to the situation, as Lieutenant Vincent Eyre recalled: All have heard of the British squares at Waterloo, which defied the repeated desperate onsets of Napoleon's choicest cavalry.

[8]Captain Colin Mackenzie, who took a bullet in the shoulder during the battle, wrote: The front ranks had been literally mowed away ... Our ammunition was almost expended and by one pm the men were faint from fatigue and thirst.

On Shelton's refusal to retire, Colonel Oliver, who was a very stout man, remarked that the inevitable result would be a general flight to cantonments, and that, as he was too unwieldy to run, the sooner he got shot the better.

George St. Patrick Lawrence, who had watched helplessly from his post in the cantonment during the battle, wrote of his horror at witnessing how "our flying troops [were] hotly pursued and mixed up with the enemy, who were slaughtering them on all sides: the scene was so fearful that I can never forget it.

"[9] He was bitterly critical of "the total incapacity of Brigadier Shelton, his reckless exposure of his men for hours at the top of a high ridge to a destructive fire, and his stubborn neglect to avail himself of the several opportunities offered to him throughout the day" which, in Lawrence's view, showed him to be "incapable to command.

Shelton's small band was attacked by horse and foot, and although the latter were fifty to one, not a man dared to come close ... We cheered him in true English fashion as he descended into the valley, notwithstanding we, at the time, were acting as targets for the marksmen of the enemy on the hills.

[11] Shelton was one of 32 British officers and a larger number of captured soldiers, women and children who were detained by Akbar Khan for several months after the battle.

He soon came to be detested by his fellow captives for his quarrelsome nature[2] and Captain Souter, one of his regiment's officers, wrote in a letter home: "We all wear Affghan dresses of one sort or another, except Shelton, who has not adopted them; he looks the picture of misery, with a great big grey beard and mustaches; he meets with little courtesy, every one thinking himself on an equality with the other.

[2] Although the court opined that Shelton had given proof "of very considerable exertion in his arduous position, of personal gallantry of the highest kind, and of noble devotion as a soldier", he was roundly condemned by some of his fellow officers.