The Valley of Death

by Garry Douglas Kilworth

  Eggerton whirled his sword about him, creating a space for himself. Brackish, who also disliked being in the press, kicked out with his back legs, ensuring that no attack would come from the rear. A lancer came at him from the right flank, but Eggerton put his sword between his teeth and found his carbine, shooting the man in the face as he approached. Then, sword in hand, he galloped off to the assistance of a corporal who was besieged by a dozen Russian hussars.

  Sword striking at the helmets and shoulders of the hussars, Eggerton managed to put the Russians to flight, though he received a severe wound on the left shoulder. There was also a dent in his helmet, which was now askew on his head. Unfortunately for the British cavalry, they were not wearing greatcoats and their thin coatees did not stop the slashing cuts from the swords of the Russians.

  Eggerton began to bleed profusely. He looked about him, wondering whether to leave the field. Then he saw Lieutenant Elliot, who was bleeding from a dozen wounds, still fighting furiously with the Russians. The rough-rider stopped feeling sorry for himself immediately and went back into the fray.

  ‘Damn me, let me get in there,’ said a voice by his elbow. ‘I an’t goin’ to miss this one, Albert.’

  Eggerton looked on amazed as two butchers from the camp rode by in their shirtsleeves and aprons. They were both wielding swords, but one still had a meat cleaver stuck in his belt. Laying about them, they were like a team of carvers, slicing through hanging joints of meat.

  The Russians were experiencing shock waves all around as, moments before the Royals hit them, the 5th Dragoon Guards had smashed into their column from the front. The Cossacks and hussars, unable to retreat, accepted the files, moving sideways to allow this wedge of muscle, bone and flailing steel entry into their mass.

  At the same time the 1st Squadron of Inniskillings pitched into their east wing, whose unfortunate cavalrymen had their backs to the Skins’ charge and were helpless to do anything to avoid the crush.

  Finally, the 4th Dragoon Guards struck the Russian right flank, driving the Cossacks and hussars sideways and inwards with cheers and yells. Many Russians were bowled from the backs of their mounts, to fall under the hooves of their comrades’ chargers. Terrified horses were knocked from their feet and rolled over, kicking at the sky with their legs.

  Now the struggle was in earnest as the Russians, though still vastly superior in numbers, were being attacked front and sides. The only way out of the confusion was to the rear and many of them were taking that route. They began to fragment and break up, groups of them seeking ground out of the battle area.

  The charge of the 4th Dragoon Guards was so successful they forced their way through the thick mass of Russians to break out of the far side, splitting the Russian column in two.

  Eggerton was fighting like a madman now, hacking at every Russian who came past him. He vaguely heard the call ‘Rally the Inniskillings!’ and looked about him for the rallying officer, but could not see him through the thickets of lances. The other regiments were rallying now – the Greys, the Royals, the 4th and 5th – as the Russians broke ranks and scrambled away. While he was turning, searching for his squadron, Eggerton saw a flash of light above his head and instinctively ducked forwards and sideways.

  A hussar’s sabre came swishing down, grazing his spine, to slice through the back part of the saddle. Brackish lurched on, receiving the blow, though luckily the leather saddle was not quite severed right through. Eggerton swung back and out with his own weapon, catching his assailant in the teeth with the flat of the blade. The Russian let out a peculiar grunt and peeled away, to ride off after his comrades, who were now pouring away from the battleground.

  Finding himself without opponents, Eggerton dismounted and inspected the damage to the saddle, discovering to his relief that Brackish had not sustained a cut. He remounted, his bottom balanced awkwardly on the two parts of the saddle.

  The wound to his left shoulder was beginning to ache badly. He glanced at it once and then, on seeing a gaping gash and what looked like the whiteness of bone, immediately turned his head again. Pulling a kerchief from his pocket, he pushed it inside the cut to his coat, wedging it there to stanch the blood whose flow had slowed almost to a mere seeping.

  I troop of the RHA was now sending shot into the fleeing enemy, assisted by W Battery at Kadikoi.

  ‘Hurrah!’ cried Eggerton, on trotting over to his comrades. ‘Hurrah! Hurrah!’

  They were all cheering and waving their swords in the air, exhilarated to be alive after such an encounter, happy beyond measure to be the victors of such a glorious charge.

  ‘Everything went so splendidly,’ said an excited cornet, who now took out his pocket watch and studied it carefully.

  ‘Less than ten minutes,’ he gasped, clearly astonished. ‘The whole action took only about eight or nine minutes. Can you believe that? It seemed like an hour at least.’

  ‘Time plays funny tricks in a battle,’ said an older man, a troop sergeant. ‘It slows right down when you’re in danger of death. You could drink a quart of ale in between each heartbeat, I swear.’

  ‘Now that’s when time gets speedy,’ said another man, ‘when you’re at the canteen, drinking, and expecting to be called out for duty at any time.’

  The others laughed.

  Eggerton began to feel weak and a little giddy, but he did not want to leave his comrades just yet. He wanted to savour the fruits of their shared victory. It was his first charge at an enemy – indeed the first charge of most men there – and these few moments after the action were to be cherished. He was alive and virtually whole and he was never going to experience the same emotions again.

  Looking round him, he saw the men who had fallen, their horses standing over them or wandering aimlessly among the corpses. These men had made the charge but could not enjoy the afterglow of such a feat. They had routed an enemy of superior numbers, yet they were unable to reap the benefits. Eggerton found that infinitely sad. Fancy going through all that and not being able to appreciate it.

  His shoulder was seriously stiffening up now. The arm below it was going numb. He felt for the hole in his cheek and stuck the point of his tongue through. That was not so bad. That one was merely interesting and would heal by itself. The shoulder was different. Though the bleeding had stopped the wound needed cauterizing, a painful business in itself.

  ‘Hey, Rough-rider Eggerton!’ exclaimed one of the privates, noticing him shivering with the shock. ‘You’re badly wounded – get you to the doctor, man.’

  ‘Others are wounded too. There are some with worse,’ he said, more to cheer himself than to state a fact. ‘It won’t carry me off, that’s certain.’

  ‘It might if you don’t get attention,’ said the private. ‘Go on, get you over there.’

  So Eggerton rode off to find the surgeon’s tent in the camp ahead. On the way he passed the Light Brigade, who were still standing, waiting for orders to move. For the moment he could not see his cousin, Feltam, but he could sense an impatience amongst the cavalrymen. It then struck Eggerton as odd that the Light Cavalry had not charged the enemy when they were in disarray. It seemed to him sensible that, once the Heavies had broken the ranks of the Russian horsemen, the Lights should have gone in and taken advantage of the situation, preventing the Russians from rallying, routing them for good and all.

  ‘We’ve got some strange commanders here,’ he told himself. ‘Even a simple man like me can tell when the going’s good for a charge. I bet Feltam’s feeling bad about this. He would have wanted to go in, I know. What are them officers thinking of, that they should wait and do nothing?’

  It seemed an opportunity missed and Eggerton began to feel terribly angry about the affair. After all, he and his comrades had done the hard work. It needed but a charge by the Lights to complete it all. What a sorry state of affairs. What a waste of a good opening. What a fat chance missed.

  18

  From her vantage point on a ridge, Mrs Durham was beside herself wi
th excitement, having witnessed the charge of the Heavy Brigade from start to finish.

  ‘Oh well done, Heavies,’ she cried rapturously. ‘So very well executed, boys.’

  Watching the charge had been the most electrifying experience of her life so far. She could not imagine anything would surpass it. Seeing the colourful brigade of eight hundred horsemen in their short red coatees fling themselves at the sombre mass of two to three thousand Russians wearing their sober grey overcoats, had been spectacular. It had been small vivid bands against a large dull horde, and the bright boys in their scarlet coats, with their splendid verve and style had won.

  It had been all trumpets, and clashing swords, the cheers of the Skins and the ecstatic moans of the Greys, fences of lances, the zuzzing of the Russians, banging carbines, rattling bridle rings, energetic cries, shouts of despair, and finally the booming of the guns to put a period mark at the end of the conflict.

  The Greys had been so easy to distinguish, on their white horses, it was no wonder they received the majority of the adulation and applause from the spectators. But Mrs Durham had seen it all, had been able to follow each squadron as it went into the mêlée. She thought the Inniskillings had fought supremely well; the 4th and 5th Dragoons had surpassed themselves in bravery; the Royals had covered themselves with glory; and the Greys were wonderful, courageous and so, so handsome.

  ‘Bravo!’ she cried, clapping her hands together. ‘Oh, so very well done, my brave, brave warriors.’

  One would have thought from her words and demeanour that she was the commander of the day, had personally ordered the attack, and was experiencing the most pleasant feeling of being both in the right and victorious. They were her warriors and hers was the credit for the outcome. One by one they would go to her and pay homage to her generalship, grateful that they were under her leadership, and not that of any other. God forbid they were under the authority of some wishy-washy commander who was more concerned with good manners than winning a war.

  Captain Nolan, a young ex-Indian army cavalryman, stood by her and grimaced at her exuberance.

  Well, I agree that was a fair show, ma’am, but for the best you have to witness a charge by the finest light cavalry in the world – those men you see down there. What a pity it is that it’s led by the Noble Yachtsman. He should have charged, damn the man. He could still do so. Why don’t they use the Light Brigade now and turn that retreat into a rout?’

  She could see the man was simmering with rage. Captain Nolan, she knew, was passionate about light cavalry. He had written a book about its many advantages over other types of cavalry, and other infantry and artillery. She owned a signed copy, which he had presented to her himself. That the Light Brigade was allowed to go stale was infuriating and brought out the nervous, excited warrior in him.

  She stared where he was pointing and saw Lord Cardigan pacing his horse up and down in front of a restless and frustrated Light Brigade. Most of the men had dismounted. Some were smoking their pipes and drinking a little rum. Others looked as if they were on a picnic, biting on hard-boiled eggs and crunching on apples. They seemed lacklustre and in want of something to relieve their idleness.

  ‘I might agree, Captain,’ she said, ‘if only they were to do something.’

  ‘That is not their fault, ma’am. Lord Raglan sees fit to keep the Light Cavalry in a bandbox. They must await his orders,’ seethed the captain.

  ‘When will he let them out?’

  ‘That question, ma’am, can only be answered by Lord Raglan himself.’

  The handsome young captain with his neat little moustache attached to his small neat face on his tight neat body, gave her a curt bow, as if to indicate the end of the conversation. He still stood by her side, however, staring out over the valleys below, watching the movements of the battle with a keen eye. While thus engaged, he offered her a cigarello, which she refused, then lighted one for himself.

  The Russians appeared to be formed up in a kind of open square now, their troops on both sides of the North Valley. They lined the Causeway Heights on the one side and the edge of the Fedioukine Hills on the other, so that they commanded the whole length of the valley apart from the west end. There were infantry, cavalry and guns on the Fedioukine side and at the east end, and infantry and cavalry on the Causeway Heights side.

  Mrs Durham glanced again at the Light Brigade, which was at the eastern end of the South Valley, separated from the North Valley only by the Woronzoff Road. The two valleys ran parallel with each other and met at that point at the termination of the Causeway Heights. The French cavalry in the form of the Chasseurs d’Afrique were on the other side of the road, at the head of the North Valley.

  Lord Cardigan still looked unsettled, walking his charger up and down in front of his troops, glaring first at the enemy, then in the direction of Lord Lucan, there not being much difference between the two so far as he was concerned.

  ‘Captain Nolan!’ called a staff officer. ‘Lord Raglan wishes you to take a message to Lord Lucan.’

  ‘What will they have me do?’ he said, blowing out smoke in an irritated manner. ‘Shall I be ordered to tell the Light Brigade they must on no account become embroiled in a fight in case they get their cherrybums dirty?’

  ‘Please go, Captain, or you may be in trouble. You have been given an order. I should put out that cigarello if I were you. It may upset the senior officers to see you smoking.’

  ‘I see a number of them with cigars,’ said Nolan, but he put out his smoke just the same.

  ‘Captain Nolan!’ came the cry again.

  Captain Nolan saluted Mrs Durham, saying, ‘They obviously need my superior horsemanship. Calthorpe’s next on in the rota but he can’t ride for a penny, like most of these other staff officers. Such a bore. Excuse me, ma’am.’

  She nodded, giving him leave to go, thinking him a rather silly puffed-up man.

  ‘You must do your duty,’ she said.

  Captain Lewis Edward Nolan, General Airey’s ADC, attired in the splendid uniform of the 15 th Hussars, mounted his horse and rode off astride his tiger-skin saddle to answer the summons.

  Moments later Captain Nolan was slipping and sliding down the steep slope on his mount. He was indeed a superb horseman: Mrs Durham had to give him his due. Horse and rider were as one as they skidded on loose stones to arrive at the bottom of the escarpment as a complete pair. Any other man, she admitted to herself, might have been unhorsed by that slope.

  The captain went galloping off towards Lord Lucan waving a piece of paper.

  What a fuss he makes of everything, that man, Lavinia Durham thought.

  She looked across the South Valley to Kadikoi, where stood the man who had recently made love to her.

  Now he was one of the heroes of the battle. She would congratulate him later. The red-coated infantry regiment were still there, ready for any new attack which might come their way. Theirs had been a magnificent stand, the 93rd and their extras, against four squadrons of cavalry.

  She knew that normally a battalion formed itself into a square, or at least went four lines deep, when being attacked by cavalry. It was standard practice, in order to prevent being outflanked. But the Sutherland Highlanders had not the time for these niceties and had still routed the enemy.

  ‘Hello, my dear, enjoying the spectacle?’

  A rotund little man was approaching her.

  It was her husband, Captain Durham, Quartermaster. She was very fond of Bertie too, in her way. He was her provider and her safe harbour from which she could venture out on her little escapades and then return to haven.

  ‘Yes thank you, Bertie. It was good of Lord Cardigan to loan me this horse. He simply flew here.’

  ‘I say, wasn’t that a magnificent charge the Greys did down there? Did you see it?’

  ‘Not just the Greys, Bertie,’ she admonished. ‘There were others there too. The Inniskillings, the Royals and the 4th and 5th Dragoons.’

  ‘Yes, but,’ he expostulated, �
��they took their lead from the Greys. The Greys went in first you know.’

  ‘And one squadron of Inniskillings.’

  ‘But the Greys, my dear! You saw them. Sir Colin Campbell approached them afterwards. I don’t know what he said but he looked full of admiration.’

  Mrs Durham stared down at the battlefield again. That silly Captain Nolan was with Lord Lucan, the commander of the Cavalry Division. Lucan was, on paper at least, his brother-in-law, Lord Cardigan’s, superior, Cardigan being commander only of the Light Brigade. In truth the two were so haughty neither would take orders from the other, no matter who gave what to whom.

  Captain Nolan was gesturing wildly, flinging an arm out to indicate something. Both men were red in the face. She could not imagine that Captain Nolan was insulting an officer as senior as Lord Lucan, a major-general, but it certainly looked like it.

  ‘What are they supposed to be doing, Bertie?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, as I understand it, my dear, they intend the Light Brigade to attack those Russians who are carrying off the guns from our redoubts. You see that little bunch of grey figures over there, hitching up a cannon? And another group there, further along? Shouldn’t be too much trouble for our cherubims and their chums,’ he added, using the polite form of the nickname for the 11th Hussars.

  ‘Lord Raglan said the cavalry is to attack immediately,’ repeated Captain Nolan. ‘Immediately.’

  ‘I heard you the first time, Captain,’ growled Lord Lucan, looking down the valley now and shaking his head. ‘I’m not deaf y’know. Keep a civil tongue in y’head, sir, if you please.’

  Lucan read the note which Nolan had given him. It was written in General Airey, the quartermaster general’s, almost indecipherable scribble.

  Lord Raglan wishes the cavalry to advance rapidly to the front – follow the enemy and try to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns. Troops Horse Artillery may accompany. French cavalry on your left. Immediate.