They were very happy years, except in the one circumstance that the
climate having seriously affected his wife's health, and she having been
brought to death's door, partly by illness, but still more by the drastic
medical treatment of those days, she was imperatively ordered back to
England by the doctors, who forbade her return to India.
Having seen her on board ship, Yule returned to duty on the canals. The
close of that year, December, 1845, brought some variety to his work, as
the outbreak of the first Sikh War called nearly all the canal officers
into the field. "They went up to the front by long marches, passing
through no stations, and quite unable to obtain any news of what had
occurred, though on the 21st December the guns of Ferozshah were
distinctly heard in their camp at Pehoa, at a distance of 115 miles
south-east from the field, and some days later they came successively on
the fields of Moodkee and of Ferozshah itself, with all the recent traces
of battle. When the party of irrigation officers reached head-quarters, the
arrangements for attacking the Sikh army in its entrenchments at Sobraon
were beginning (though suspended till weeks later for the arrival of the
tardy siege guns), and the opposed forces were lying in sight of each
other."[31]
