Hungry Harry: An Orphan in the Ranks

by Andrew Wareham

  Sergeant Muldoon sighed, spoke out of the corner of his mouth, long experience allowing no officer to notice as he stood ramrod straight at attention.

  “Sodding gaol-deliveries is what the man is saying, Corporal Belper.”

  Harry thought about the words he had just heard, ‘the right way’ and ‘setting them straight’; he realised just what the colonel meant now. He was stood immediately to the sergeant’s side, out of sight.

  “Off the prison hulks, Sergeant Muldoon?”

  “Just that, Corporal Belper. With your experience of dealing with the recalcitrant, you must expect to play a large part in bringing them to an understanding of their duty. I see the hangman is having a problem setting the noose, you having broken the horrible object’s jaw in process of subduing him. I hope you did not hurt your elbow!”

  Harry shook his head, watched in silence as Hedges was turned off and slowly strangled, the knot in the wrong place to break his neck; he kicked for nearly fifteen minutes.

  “I ain’t never seen a firing squad, Sergeant Muldoon, but it’s got to be better than that, ain’t it?”

  “Don’t you believe it, Corporal Belper! Half of them miss and the rest don’t hit square and the provost officer generally finishes the poor fellow off with his pistol – and I once saw a lieutenant who was shaking so much at the mess and the man screaming that he needed two rounds to do the job, and he had but the one pistol and the devil of a job to make his reload, scattering his powder all over the shop! Hanging ain’t very nice, but it is tidier as a general rule!”

  “Maybe, Sergeant Muldoon, but I don’t like it. Flogging’s one thing, this is different. You beat a man so the pain makes ‘im want to do better next time. Chokin’ a bloke slow like this don’t do no good to any bugger!”

  “It ain’t meant to do good, Corporal Belper – it is offering bad for bad, in my opinion. You do not join the Army to do good; you go into the Church for that!”

  Harry wondered what the Reverend Quaque, the only churchman he had ever spoken to, would say to that; he realised he had no idea.

  Hedges was dumped into his box – it was too roughly made, too cheap to call it a coffin – and was taken out of sight on a handcart to be dumped in a hole on the ground behind the butts. It was unconsecrated soil and there was no priest in attendance; the expectation was that when the Last Trump sounded, he would not notice, would remain lost for all eternity. It was explained to Harry by those of the Company who had an understanding of such matters; they gave a shocked titter when he said he could not care less.

  “We’re soldiers, ain’t we. Heaven’s for bloody officers, not for the likes of us. Anyway, I don’t want him ‘anging about after I die – I’d just ‘ave to put the bugger down again!”

  The hanging was too much for Chandler and Potter, the clumsiest and least soldierly of the special squad. Both were quite willing to turn themselves into useful men, but Chandler could never remember precisely which foot was left and habitually dithered at the command ‘By the left…’, looking to see who moved which foot in the rank beside him, while Potter was naturally unhandy and dropped his musket more often than not when bringing it to the present. Both knew that sooner or later they would be flogged, to see if that might wake them up. They suspected that if two dozen was not successful then the captain would certainly suggest four to see if the extra dose might do the trick; they knew, for example, that the Surgeon always doubled his prescriptions of rhubarb or senna if his first treatment did not work.

  Two nights after the hanging the pair crawled over the wall at the far side from the gate, easily climbed for being old and in disrepair, ten feet high and full of foot- and hand-holds.

  They were on the outskirts of Chichester with the dawn, red coats off and shivering in shirtsleeves. They sidled into the market square and spent some of their very few shillings on warm second-hand overcoats, and then bought a pie apiece for a hot breakfast. They had been paid just a few days before and still had a little money, enough to last for two or three days, provided they slept in the hedgerows; it was cold at night. They had made no plans beyond making best speed into the nearest town; neither had a trade, having been farm labourers and without any special skills. A cowman, for instance, might be able to find a job, but an ordinary hind had nothing to offer in the new world of farming, which was why they had become soldiers.

  Talking to the pieman while they ate made it clear there was nothing in Chichester.

  “Fifty mile to London Town, and you might not be finding owt there, lads – I ain’t never heard it to be much of a place. Portsmouth be just down the road a ways. Drop a tanner to a wagoner and he’ll take you up that far. Then all you got to do is go down to the Point and look about you and say what you ain’t got no job. There’ll be no end of fellows wantin’ to help you lads out, even some of the officers will do their best for you.”

  They noticed the pieman to be chortling as he told them this, thought he was a fine happy sort of chap and took his advice; they had only been young when they had joined up, were not very old now and knew little of the wicked ways of the world.

  They reached the Point and stared at the sea, which was full of ships hereabouts, not like at Arundel where there were only a few small fishing boats. They saw a man in blue, wearing an officer’s three-cornered hat and tugged their forelocks to him, most politely.

  “Beg pardon, sir, but they tells I that a man can find work round ‘ere…”

  The lieutenant stared in amaze, began to smile – another kindly chap.

  “Why, that is quite correct, my man. If you just come with me a moment…”

  He shouted to the boat that had just put him ashore for the day from the two-decker on which he was First Lieutenant. The petty officer coxswain turned back to the steps, assuming the officer had forgotten something.

  “These two men, Jenkins, are looking for work. Farmhands, I suspect. Landsmen in any case. Take them out to the ship, if you please, I am sure we can make arrangements for them there.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  They were ushered into the boat where they clung tight to the gunwales, never having been afloat before. The men at the oars were laughing and nudging each other as well – they had met so many friendly souls this morning; the Army had never been like this.

  Disillusionment set in when they were informed that they had volunteered and were now jack tars in the service of His Britannic Majesty; they tried to explain that in fact they had only come aboard in search of jobs which they had been told could be found for them, but they received no sympathy at all. They then had the problem of giving their names and villages and last place of work; they did not think it would be a good idea to say they had been at the barracks in Arundel but had left on the sly.

  They became Smith and Brown who had left a farm on the hills outside Chichester when the master had changed from wheat to sheep. Both had experienced that within the year and knew it was a common tale.

  Their ship sailed two days later, and the battalion never discovered what had happened to them, the navy not publishing the names of its volunteers, but as many as one in twenty of soldiers deserted every year and the majority were not taken up, so it occasioned little surprise.

  “Thought those two were so bloody daft they’d never get away, Sergeant Muldoon!”

  “Probably made their way up to London, Corporal Belper. Not a chance of finding them except by luck in that great big hole of a place! No great loss when you consider the matter; neither would have been worth his rations on campaign. The news from France is worsening, and the likelihood of war is growing. Next year almost of a certainty; then we shall be called into the field, or so I must imagine.”

  Sergeant Muldoon was mistaken in his prognostications on this occasion; orders arrived within the month and the Adjutant immediately placed a marching guard on the wall at night and set pickets of reliable men on the roads along the coast and inland to London. The word spread among the ranks.

  “Sugar Is
lands! We’m posted to bloody Jamaica!”

  Most of them had heard of Jamaica – stories of Captain Morgan, the low-born pirate who became King’s Governor of the island, still being favourites in England – and it was the sole town of the Sugar Islands as far as they knew.

  They had heard of the fevers as well, knew them to be almost as destructive as those of the Slave Coast.

  Twenty men made it over the wall in the first week, eighteen of them picked up and brought back again. A long punishment parade ensued, one hundred lashes apiece taking up half of a morning.

  The colonel addressed them.

  “You will not be hanged for deserting, have no fear! You will be well flogged and will still take ship for the Sugar Islands, do not doubt that! Two men have yet to be taken up – they will be, and if needs be will be put aboard a transport at a later date. The battalion is to go to Antigua and, like it or not, that is where you will find yourselves!”

  The men moaned and groaned and reluctantly accepted that they had no choice; they must make the best of it.

  “You been to the Bight of Benin, ain’t you, corp?”

  Harry admitted that he had and said that, if you lived, it was not too bad.

  “Thing is, it’s cheap. Rum or arrack or toddy comes in at almost nothing – if you wants to drink then you can buy a bottle there for the cost of a nip of gin ‘ere.”

  The men brightened up instantly; most did not only want to drink, they needed to.

  “Same for the women, or it was on the Slave Coast. Cost me less than a bob a week to keep me own girl in ‘er own room, just for me. I never fancied boys, but I knows one or two did and paid out no more, and no bugger said a word one way or the other.”

  They started to think that just possibly the Sugar Islands would not be as bad as they had been told.

  “Of course, you got to stay alive to enjoy it, and it ain’t so good for weather, sometimes. The fevers are always there – you’re goin’ to get one or other of ‘em for sure. The recurrent fever, what they calls mal-aria, for bein’ caused by bad air, is a bugger for a week, but if you lives, and most blokes do, it’s only real bad the once. I ‘ad it, was dosed with bark, and it ain’t done me no ‘arm, so far as I knows. For the rest, it’s luck, all joss. You gets typhoid there, maybe you die – but we gets typhoid in England most years, and it kills the young ‘uns more than the grown men and women. Same with the scarlet fever and the smallpox. I got to say that Yellow Jack is a bit of a bugger, but that only comes sometimes, it ain’t there every year. Down on the Slave Coast they reckoned that three men in four didn’t ever come back; the Sugar Islands ain’t nowhere near so bad as that.”

  Harry’s audience had grown very silent with his last words, glancing at each other and wondering who among them might be the unlucky ones.

  “Got to remember as well that there’s lots of Frogs out in the Sugar Islands, what lives on rich plantations. Got to be loot there, what there weren’t in the Slave Coast. Only blokes we fought there lived in villages what was poorer than our places ‘ere; they ‘adn’t got nothin’ to lay our bloody ‘ands on!”

  It was a mixed bag, they thought. They might get rich; they might get dead; they would get drunk very often. It could be worse.

  The word spread through the battalion and the panic subsided. The Sugar Islands were no piece of cake, that was for sure, but they had points in their favour as well. A man didn’t join the Army for the fun of it, after all, and you had to take the rough with the smooth; they repeated the old saws to each other and came almost to believe their own words. It would not be that bad… probably.

  “Word to the wise, Corporal Belper?”

  “Yes, Sergeant Muldoon. I am always glad to ‘ear your advice.”

  “Make yourself useful to Captain Weightman over this next few weeks, before we take ship. Do a little bit extra, you know the sort of thing. Make good and sure he knows that you are one of the best of his corporals. There will be deaths among the sergeants within a year of our getting to the Sugar Islands. Ten companies, twenty sergeants – how many of them do you think are forty years of age or more?”

  Harry ran through the list of sergeants in his mind, picking out those with grey in their hair.

  “Got to be eight at least, Sergeant Muldoon. Queer thing, though, there ain’t any in the middle – there’s the most of them what’s your age, not thirty yet, and then them eight what is ten years older or more.”

  “That is well observed, Corporal Belper. Twelve sergeants were lost in the last years of the American War, and youngish corporals were made up, some of them men no older than you.”

  Harry had not thought of promotion; sergeants were older men normally, but if they were to die off in the fevers then they would need replacement, and the new men would be bound to be chosen from the existing corporals.

  “We was all new soldiers in the ranks in the Fusiliers, Sergeant Muldoon, so I never got to see whether the fevers killed the older men more than the young’uns. What do you reckon?”

  “From what I have seen, Corporal Belper, the youngest soldiers die first, for not having grown their full strength, or so I suspect. But then the older men follow; a man pushing forty will not do very well in fever country. Men of your age, twenty to thirty, say, do best. How old are you, Corporal Belper?”

  “Don’t know, Sergeant Muldoon. We worked it out I was about sixteen when I joined up first, so that made me nineteen when I got back to England, more or less, so I’m somewhere about what, two and twenty now, maybe.”

  “Put your mind to it and you can be sergeant before you are four and twenty, Corporal Belper!”

  The battalion had just brought itself to accept that the Sugar Islands would not be too bad when the rumour suddenly rose that they were not to go; the orders had been changed.

  Chapter Eight

  “The North Country, Corporal Belper, that is where we are to go, and with slight delay! Forget about the Sugar Islands, we shall not go there now. There is unrest among the miners of coal and weavers and spinners of cotton, in the County of Lancashire. They have burned their places of work and have threatened to destroy the steam engines that pump water from some mines.”

  Sergeant Muldoon made no attempt to disguise his disdain for the mob, for those working men who would not attempt to better themselves by saving their money and living abstemious lives until one day they had sufficient to make their own little business, which they could then slowly grow into something great. Men who produced large families with hungry mouths were equally as irresponsible as those who drank their wages; as for those without work, words failed him!

  “What’s it to do with us, Sergeant Muldoon?”

  “Assistance to the civil power, Corporal Belper. Where the constable cannot keep order, and in the new towns where there are no parishes and hence no constables at all, we must restore the peace.”

  This seemed a strange idea to Harry; soldiers were not ‘peaceful’ sorts of people by their very nature. He suggested that men with muskets and bayonets were good for killing folk, but of very limited use when it came to pacifying them.

  “Did you never hear of ‘the peace of the grave’, Corporal Belper?”

  “You mean we are goin’ up there to kill ‘em off, Sergeant Muldoon?”

  “Only if they won’t mind their manners, Corporal Belper! If they behave themselves properly and do as they are told, then none of ‘em will be killed. If they won’t stand back and be calm, then upon their own heads be it!”

  “I worked in a mine, Sergeant Muldoon. Didn’t ‘ave no steam engine, but it was up on the moorside, so you might say, so it didn’t ‘ave no water either. Should I ever get a chance to take a shot at those two fat bastards what owned it, well, I might forget what side I’m on.”

  “You might be the only man in this battalion what has seen a mine, Corporal Belper. That’s why they are sending us north. Any money you care to wager, Corporal Belper, there will be a battalion from Lancashire sent out to the Sug
ar Islands in our place. The generals up at Horse Guards have got some knowledge of what is right, they won’t send men who know the mills and the mines to keep order there.”

  Harry nodded slowly; it made sense.

  “Won’t be any fevers to kill off the officers and bring promotions, Sergeant Muldoon.”

  “We shall be at war within months, Corporal Belper. There will chances and to spare then. You keep your people up to the mark and see what may happen. There will be a senior sergeant to each company and probably two others, when we go off to war. The battalion will need to make up ten more sergeants over its peacetime establishment. Show bright and willing – but don’t crawl – and the officers will see you as a good man. Make an effort with your speech, Corporal Belper – speak properly, not like the officers do, but like me. As well as that, keep an eye on that new ensign we’ve got, watch him!”

  “Mr Turner? He’s no more than a schoolboy, Sergeant Muldoon.”

  “So he is, one of the nasty sort that pulls the wings off flies and drowns kittens for fun. I’ve met his sort before, and he will see his first flogging and enjoy it so much that he will go out of his way to watch some more! That is a bad little boy and will be a vicious man, you see if I’m not right. Captain Weightman will try to pull him up short, but if he has a choice of support an officer or protect a private soldier, what do you think he will do?”

  “The soldier gets his fifty, Sergeant Muldoon. Then the captain gives Turner a bollocking where we can’t hear it.”

  “That’s right, Corporal Belper. Then what happens?”

  “Maybe Turner behaves himself… but more like he’s goin’ to be angry acos of bein’ treated bad, or so he sees it, and then he takes it out on us even more.”

  “Just so, Corporal Belper. Exactly that! Watch your ‘ing’ sounds, Corporal Belper make sure you have a ‘G’ on the end!”