Hungry Harry: An Orphan in the Ranks

by Andrew Wareham

  Harry took his platoon to the butts for their firing practice and then, unusually, stood them down for half an hour rather than utilising the time on the drill square.

  His men had been made up to a full dozen again by the addition of three new soldiers, townies, not the preferred boys from the villages, and dubious characters by definition. Young men rising twenty, none of the three claimed a skilled trade or apprenticeship and had no lesser occupation to their names either; they had been casual labourers at best, in a small town where there was almost nothing for that sort to do. They had, in fact, almost certainly been petty thieves, a small gang, who had found the going hot and joined up before the local magistrates had decided to send them down on general principle.

  A man could be hauled before the Bench on grounds of ‘vagabondage’, in effect of being unemployed and not starving and therefore having an unlawful income of some unspecified but very likely nasty nature. Arundel was close to Portsmouth and the navy was expanding; the three would probably have found themselves landsmen on board a man of war and off to see the world, not to be discharged until the end of the coming war, and not then if it was inconvenient. They had probably joined the Sussex Regiment in the unlearned belief that they would at least stay within reach of home.

  “Right, listen good! We ain’t going to the Sugar Islands, that’s for sure now.”

  There was a sigh of relief; the Sugar Islands might not have been as bad as rumour had it, but they would still prefer not to find out for themselves.

  “We are being sent north, to a place called Lancashire, seems likely. It’s a good twenty days on the march. Take us the better part of four weeks. Long old way. Lots of chances to run, so you might reckon. You’re bloody wrong, if that’s what you thinks! Every place we stop for a night, the local constables are going to be watchin’ us, acos of they all hates soldiers. They reckons we’re likely to steal the booze and rob their shops and screw their girls – all of which is as likely as not, or has been in past times. They know we’re coming, acos of the adjutant’s and quartermaster’s people going in front of us by a day or two to arrange billets, so they’re going to have extra constables hired on for the time we’re there. So, you steps out of line, they’re going to be down on top of you, and the regiment ain’t going to do nothing for you! You gives them the chance, they’re goin’ to see you hanged! If they can’t get you into a noose, then they goes to the colonel and he’s got no choice but to listen to ‘em and hold a drumhead court on the spot and deal out a hundred or two there and then. If he don’t, then the local lords and whatever is bashing on the doors at Horse Guards and making a nuisance of themselves with the generals – so the colonel’s got to deal hard with you buggers if you do a thing wrong! Got it?”

  They agreed, very gloomily, that they understood.

  “Right! We’re off marching to this Manchester place, so they says. Like I said, it’s a month on the road. So, what do you need?”

  There was a blank silence; the wise man never answered that sort of question because he might be volunteering himself to do something.

  “Got enough sense to keep your mouths shut. Well, you’ve learned the first thing of how to be a good soldier. Don’t say nothing! Don’t moan, don’t say the food’s bad, don’t open your mouths at all, acos of why? Acos of the officers ain’t tucked up nice and comfortable in their Mess and so they ain’t happy and they’re just lookin’ for the chance to make you unhappy too. Got it?”

  They grunted; they understood.

  “Right! Next thing, your shoes is going to take a hammering – fifteen miles a day, five or six, even seven days a week if the weather’s right and the orders say get a move on. Get a new sole on your shoes if you need one. Get a spare pair of shoe-strings and check the ones you got now. Put an extra polish on ‘em as well. You’re going to march in rain and you want ‘em dry, if so be you can keep ‘em that way. Bound to be fords to cross as well, so what do you do then?”

  “Take ‘em off, Corporal Belper?”

  “That’s right, so long as the officer lets you stop for five minutes to get them off, and your stockings and gaiters as well, and then put ‘em back on again on the other side. If they gets wet, then look after ‘em at night. You all got two pair of shoes. Keep one lot for parade, so long as you can, but use ‘em if you got to on the march.”

  They did not like the sound of that; life was much easier if they could keep their parade dress unused for everyday existence. A scratch in the leather caused by a stone on the unpaved roads could take hours of work to hide, and would never look exactly right, and it was easy to be charged for being improperly dressed on parade.

  “Other than that, don’t do anything stupid. Don’t try to pinch eggs from hen roosts or that sort of thing, acos of, like I said, they’ll be watching you. Be silly to get five hundred for a dozen of eggs, or get your neck stretched for picking up a piglet what strayed across your path!”

  They knew he was not exaggerating and reluctantly decided they must be good.

  “When we gets there, it’ll be what they calls ‘aid to the civil power’ – what means keeping the riots down. From what I hear, they been breaking shops open and things in the towns – so you might end up guarding the places at night, to make sure nothing more gets pinched from ‘em. Don’t let the provosts find you with full pockets or bottles in your knapsacks!”

  They perked up as they realised that they were being told not to get caught; that sounded as if there might be far more pleasant possibilities ahead of them.

  “Last thing, I don’t need to tell you not to forget how to behave in the presence of an officer, do I? Proper salutes and attention and uniforms exact – at all times! New officers have their own ways of doing things, what you’ve got to be wise to.”

  They nodded thoughtfully, those who were in the habit of thinking; later they explained what Harry had meant, for the benefit of the less bright.

  “What ‘e was sayin’, you dim bugger, was that this new ensign, Mr Bloody Turner, is a right bastard, so watch ‘im! Couldn’t say it straight out, not without riskin’ ‘is stripe, but ‘e’s warnin’ us not to take any chances around ‘im. ‘Yes, sir; no, sir; three bags full, sir’ – you knows what to do. It ain’t goin’ to be for long; they reckons we’re goin’ to be to war afore the year’s out – and bad officers gets caught by a bullet more often than not!”

  “Why’s ‘at, Mick?”

  “Christ but you are thick, nipper! They gets dead acos of we’re there with loaded muskets and the balls are flyin’ every which way and no bugger knows who fired what! Get it?”

  “Oh! Oh, yeah, I knows what you means now. They don’t do that, do they? Not really?”

  Mick nodded, safer than saying the words aloud and far wiser than saying that he would do it himself, given the opportunity.

  They marched, smartly at first, in town, more relaxed later in the lanes, but keeping to their strict fifty minutes at full pace, ten minutes of rest, fifteen miles to the day, more or less, depending on the location of their night’s billets. Towns and villages were not spaced out conveniently at an exact five hours apart and a full battalion demanded a lot of space each night. They had no tents and expected to sleep under a roof – every public house had an obligation under law to provide beds for soldiers, or a space in a hayloft above the stables at minimum; every bench of magistrates had the duty to enforce billeting and provide alternatives if there were insufficient pubs to hand.

  In most villages there was an old tithe barn or something like where the bulk of the men could lay out a blanket for lack of anything better. It was possible always to get them out of the rain overnight, but the villagers did not like it and the parish constables were on the watch for any private who stepped an inch out of line, exactly as Harry had forecast.

  The better NCOs had warned their men and, generally, had been listened to, but there were fools at all levels and some companies had been badly served by their sergeants and corporals. The battalion
formed a hollow square on the fourth morning out, on a village green in Berkshire, and watched in silence as the triangle was set up.

  Theft from a village shop; alcohol stolen from the bar of a pub; an attempt to ‘insult the honour’ of a village girl, unsuccessful and hence only a flogging. The charges repeated for a dozen men, one incompetent villain caught three times over and sentenced separately for each offence.

  The pair of would-be rapists received three hundred apiece and were dumped aboard a cart under the uncaring eye of the Surgeon; they could not march and would have been quickly killed if they had been left behind. The others received their two or three or four dozens and were put back into the ranks, to keep up or straggle, and if they fell out they could expect to be charged again, and flogged as soon as their backs had healed…

  The most of the watching men were unmoved by their comrades’ suffering; they were fools and had got all that they deserved. The rule was rigid and unvarying – ‘don’t get caught’. If you wanted to thieve – well and good, that was what civilians were for, to be victims to soldiers – but do the job properly. There was stolen bacon and butter and ham and more than one bottle of spirits in the knapsacks of the watching men, and they knew that their sergeants would not search them, for they had adhered to regulations and had kept their noses clean, in their own delicate phrase.

  The main objection to the floggings was that they had delayed the battalion by nearly two hours so that the bulk of the day’s march was made in the late morning and early afternoon, the hottest part of the day, and that was a damned nuisance!

  The officers rode their chargers – they did not walk in the nature of things. Generally, they kept together in gaggles of men of similar rank and experience; in time of war they would stay with their companies but on a march in peacetime there was no need for their presence. They were not wanted, in fact, because minor regulations could be broken in their absence, ignored by their sergeants but probably noticed by officious and inexperienced ensigns and lieutenants. The field officers actively discouraged the younger men from harassing their companies, not wanting more floggings and more invalids unable to keep the pace. Within the week the majority of the ensigns discovered that they had not ridden fifteen miles a day, every day, in their previous existence and the less energetic and town-bred of them found themselves saddle-sore, to the entertainment of the men, who had all fallen into the routine by that time. Some of the young officers showed rueful grins; a few of them displayed bad temper.

  Ensign Turner was an idle youth, plump rather than fat, but not in the habit of taking exercise if he could avoid it. He rapidly came to suffer from cramps in his thighs and inflammation of their skin, worsening a little every day as he sweated in the saddle; his natural irritability increased as he itched and ached the more.

  Each company took guard twice on the march, at ten-days intervals. The duty was not arduous, involving no more than platoons keeping awake for two hours at a time, one walking patrol while the other manned a makeshift guardroom, and slept fully clothed for the remainder of the night, instantly on call. The officers rotated as well, two hours apiece through the night, their duty differing only in that they held a parade of their platoons on take-over and hand-over at the beginning and end of each two hours. The parades were intended to be brief, over in three or four minutes, more in the nature of roll-call than for a full inspection of the men. Ensign Turner used the opportunity to play the tyrant, charging men for dull buttons, for crossbelts inadequately pipe-clayed, for any infringement he could spot or imagine. He presented the men to Captain Weightman in the morning, listing their infringements of discipline.

  The captain had no choice; he had to accept his subordinate’s word and punish the men – an officer must be supported. He stopped each man two days’ pay and warned them for their future conduct. He dismissed the men to join the column as it formed up for the march and asked Ensign Turner to remain for a while.

  “That will teach them a first lesson, sir. I thought, myself, that a dozen might have been more appropriate, sir, to remind them of their duty.”

  “It is difficult to keep the uniform up when sleeping in a hay barn, Mr Turner.”

  “Of course it is, sir. They must make the effort, and their sergeants and corporals should keep them on their toes. I shall speak to that damned Sergeant Muldoon and tell him to watch his duty if he wishes to keep his rank! Arrogant brute with his pretence to speak like a gentleman! I do not know why you tolerate him, sir!”

  Captain Weightman’s patience snapped; he had intended to offer no more than quiet, kindly advice; he changed that to an abrupt order.

  “I do not know why I tolerate you, Mr Turner! You are a very poor excuse for an officer, sir! You are lazy and do not understand your duty, and especially, you cannot recognise a good soldier when you see one. I ‘tolerate’ Sergeant Muldoon because he is useful to my company, unlike you, sir! I shall expect better of you in future, Mr Turner – particularly, you must sit your horse like an officer and a gentleman, not ride slumped over like a sack of potatoes. And stop rubbing at your crotch as you ride, sir! A disgusting habit! If you itch, then see the Surgeon; he can prescribe mercury if that is what you need!”

  Turner protested that he was unused to riding any distance, he was saddle-sore, no more. He certainly was not diseased as Captain Weightman implied.

  “Whatever the cause, you make yourself a laughing-stock with your nasty habits, sir! Do not bullyrag the men, Mr Turner. You will perform all further night duties with me, as you may not be trusted on your own. That means I must perform duty for four hours rather than two, so you shall accompany me for the whole of that period. If you wish to take a lieutenant’s commission in this battalion, sir, you will improve your behaviour most markedly. I shall report to the colonel that you are as yet incapable of performing the duties and functions of an officer and a gentleman; I may well say ‘or’ a gentleman, Mr Turner!”

  Turner did not think that was fair and was so foolish as to say so; he shrivelled under Weightman’s stare of contempt.

  “Dismissed, Mr Turner. Go away and ready yourself for the day’s march. I suggest you spend some time observing the conduct of Sergeant Muldoon, or of Corporal Belper. Both are soldiers. Watch them and you might possibly become a soldier yourself.”

  Turner was outraged; he had been insulted and was unable to make a reply; it was an abuse of the Captain’s position, he was sure. He could not issue his challenge to Captain Weightman because junior officers were forbidden to call their seniors out; he knew that Weightman was hiding behind that protection, for fear of him.

  Turner played out the scenes of the duel that might have ensued - in his imagination. He would have put a ball through Weightman while he cringed and shivered in terror; perhaps he would have deloped in brave and chivalric fashion while Weightman wet himself in fear; even more likely, as he took his manly pose Weightman would have turned and shot him before the call, showing his dishonour, taken up for court-martial as Turner died pitifully in his seconds’ arms. The last possibility was certainly romantic, but he did not quite fancy the dying bit; possibly that was not what he would have wanted. But none of it mattered – he could not protect his honour as a gentleman should. To add insult to injury, he was told that he must observe the conduct of a pair of rankers; as if a man of birth and breeding could learn anything from the merest of commoners!

  Turner’s grandfather had been a Viscount; his father was a second son with a small inheritance which was to fall to his elder brother. He could expect little more than his current income of two hundred a year, his for life, and a promise to buy him his lieutenancy and a muttered half-commitment towards his captaincy ‘if times were good’. He was, however, fifth in line for the title, a fact of which he reminded himself every day. If his cousin died, followed by his son, then Turner’s father became heir; if his brother died unwed then Turner stepped into his shoes. It was not an immediate prospect, but more unlikely things had happened and his
uncle, the Viscount, had married late and his son had only just produced an heir, and small children died frequently enough…

  A man who was almost a Viscount should be treated with the respect his position deserved, so Turner was convinced, and he could not comprehend why Weightman had insulted him so, why he must favour a Sergeant and a gutter-crawling corporal in so marked a fashion. Then the answer occurred to him – it was obvious, must be true! Weightman was not married! In a man of his age – he was ancient, not less than thirty – there could only be one explanation; he was unorthodox in his affections and held a secret and disgusting passion for one of the pair, or even for both! Turner wondered whether he should seek audience of the colonel and explain the matter to him; perhaps when they were settled in their billets in Manchester. For the while, he would simply observe the three and collect evidence, and he most certainly would not be modelling his conduct upon theirs, the vile beasts!

  Turner mentioned his suspicions to others of the ensigns and was disappointed that they would not applaud his genius in making such a discovery; they were dull brutes who lacked his savoir-faire, he was convinced.

  The battalion marched into Manchester and were rapidly sent out of the town; they were neither needed nor wanted there but there was unrest in all of the smaller, rapidly-growing cotton towns. They were directed to the west, to the area between Manchester and Liverpool where the new workshops and the few, but expanding, spinning mills were located. There was growing disorder there, the colonel was told, as agricultural workers pushed out of their villages by enclosures competed with each other and with the original inhabitants for jobs. Earnings were being forced down and the men blamed the bosses, the machines, the mills, everything other than their own numbers.

  There were coal mines opening, more every year, most of them small operations and employing men by the score rather than the hundred; there were iron foundries as well, growing rapidly on the back of the coals. There were still too many men.