A Call To Arms

by Allan Mallinson

  ‘No, you may judge it for yourself, Sir Ivo. There’s no point in waiting for my off when you’ll see the vedettes signalling as well as I shall.’

  A sensible decision, thought Sir Ivo, if late in the day.

  The general reined about and trotted to the centre of the brigade.

  ‘Captain Rose and Mr Assheton-Smith, please.’

  The commanding officer’s voice was raised no higher than if he were speaking to his charger, but the word was passed at once to A Troop’s leader, nearest the guns, and the adjutant in the supernumerary rank.

  ‘Gentlemen, the brigadier has determined a change in the manoeuvres,’ said Sir Ivo as they rode up. He explained the intention.

  ‘I’ll take a look then if I may, Colonel,’ said Rose.

  ‘Yes. But do it covertly.’

  Rose saluted and returned to his troop.

  ‘A pity we did not have more time before today,’ said Sir Ivo to the adjutant. ‘It would have been a fair question of E Troop.’

  Bands played for the entertainment of the spectators meanwhile, as the ‘enemy’, a regiment of native infantry, advanced to the ridge in full view of the pavilions but concealed from the brigade. The design was that when the infantry reached a bullock-cart track which ran obliquely across their front, some five hundred yards short of the ridge, the vedettes would start to signal their approach. The general, a prudent man, had also placed a galloper to observe from a flank so that he could be warned independently. The infantry had rehearsed the manoeuvre twice, but in the early morning; the heat was now unexpectedly slowing their advance, so that the general was becoming anxious. When he saw his galloper approaching, dust rising behind him and exaggerating his speed, he was half convinced that something was amiss.

  ‘The infantry have reached the track, sir,’ said the lieutenant, saluting, pleased that he had been able to bring the report his general wished to hear.

  But General Massey was disturbed by the news. He turned to his brigade-major. ‘Why in heaven’s name aren’t the vedettes signalling, Neville? Can’t they see?’

  Brigade-Major Neville could have no more idea than the general. He turned to the galloper. ‘You saw with your own eyes they had reached the track?’

  ‘Sir! With my own eyes.’

  The general looked about anxiously. He saw Hervey’s troop standing dismounted a furlong away. ‘Good God, Neville. What’s Sir Ivo doing? He’s not moved that troop into the nullah yet!’

  The brigade-major turned round in the saddle to see for himself. ‘If the vedettes haven’t reported anything, General, Sir Ivo has no notion he should move them.’

  The general, now very agitated, turned back to his galloper. ‘Go and tell Hervey’s troop to get into that nullah at once!’

  ‘What are they to do there, sir? I did not know of this part of the scheme.’

  ‘Tell him, Neville!’ snorted the general. The brigade-major obliged them both.

  The galloper lost no further time. Hervey saw him approaching, the trail of dust indicating more speed than his descent from the ridge. ‘Hallo, Shawe,’ he said, returning the salute, bemused by the apparent urgency. ‘Who are you looking for?’

  ‘You, sir! The general says you are to get into the nullah at once. The enemy are approaching the ridge.’

  Hervey looked astonished. ‘Shawe, I haven’t the faintest idea what you mean!’ He looked again towards the ridge, then lowered his telescope. ‘And the vedettes are stock-still.’

  Lieutenant Shawe, his artilleryman’s coat more earth-coloured now than blue, was equally perplexed. ‘You have no orders at all for the nullah?’

  ‘No! We’re to stand here looking alert, that is all.’

  Lieutenant Shawe rattled off the brigade commander’s intention.

  Hervey understood perfectly. ‘But those were not Sir Ivo’s orders, and I am under his direct command. I think you had better go and see him, and then hare back to the general.’

  The galloper saluted, reined about and kicked up even more dust than before as he spurred away.

  Hervey turned to his trumpeter. ‘Storrs, bring me the officers and sar’nt-major, please.’

  It took less than a minute to assemble them. Hervey told them of the exchange, and what they would have to do if it came to it. He had no idea what the nullah was like, how wide it was or how steep its banks. They would have to lead the horses and mount at the last minute, though how much time they would have he couldn’t say.

  The officers had just retaken post when another cloud of dust signalled the return of the brigadier’s galloper. ‘Looks like you were right,’ said Armstrong.

  ‘I wish I had not been,’ replied Hervey, handing his reins to Johnson and taking his telescope from the saddle pouch again. ‘There’s no sign of movement in those vedettes.’

  ‘Captain Hervey, brigade-major’s compliments, and would you execute the orders at once.’

  With no sign from the vedettes, Hervey could not see the necessity of such urgency. ‘Have you spoken with Sir Ivo?’

  ‘Captain Hervey, sir, those are the brigadier’s express orders, and they were most imperative.’

  ‘Yes, but have you spoken to Sir Ivo?’

  ‘The general himself has, sir. Really, Hervey, there’s no time to lose!’

  Hervey had received an order, in front of his troop, and he was not in possession of more information than was the brigadier.

  ‘Very well, Mr Shawe.’ Johnson handed him back the reins. ‘E Troop, right incline for column of route!’

  Dragoons shortened reins to lead, and Hervey took post at the head of the column.

  ‘Forward!’

  It took only a few minutes to reach the nullah, and as they began to descend the shallow bank, Hervey glanced at the ridge. The vedettes were circling.

  Once the troop were all safely down, Hervey shortened his reins again and called, ‘Double march!’ for the enemy was supposed to gain the ridge ten minutes after the vedettes began signalling their approach, and he had no idea how difficult the bed of the nullah would get.

  E Troop sweated and blew as they struggled over the shingle bed but they made progress, a good hundred yards in the first minute. Hervey thought they must be in line with the squadrons in another two. If they could keep this up they would make the ridge with a couple of minutes in hand.

  But in two more, with no warning whatever, Hugh Rose’s troop plunged into the nullah in line, checking not the slightest from a fast trot, so that neither A nor E Troop could do anything to evade collision. Men shouted, horses squealed. Many of both fell, for the most part Hervey’s. Dragoons cursed each other, some lashed out. NCOs bellowed to regain order. Loose horses raced back down the nullah and knocked over dragoons who had survived the first collision. They would have floored Armstrong had he not already sprung into the saddle. Officers looked stunned. Over to their left the horse-gunners opened blank fire, and in a few seconds smoke was pouring into the nullah to add to the confusion.

  ‘What the deuce are you about, Hervey?’ shouted Rose, as he came on him struggling to get his mare up.

  ‘Trying to follow orders!’ Hervey almost spat the words. ‘What are yours?’

  ‘To get up to the ridge and take them in the flank,’ coughed Rose, the smoke engulfing them.

  ‘Mine too. But there’s damn little chance of that now. You’d better get on!’

  Hervey looked back down the column. He could not recall any greater disorder by daylight. There was nothing for it now but to lick their wounds, real and imagined.

  *

  The brigadier was first on the scene, a quarter of an hour later. By then Hervey had the troop back in column, but two horses, with a broken leg apiece, lay with bullets in their brains. Private Mole sat supported in the saddle, his leg splinted with his sabre, harelip accentuating his sorry state. Private Parkin, one of the ‘pals’, stood holding a bloody bandage to his right eye. Half a dozen others had burst lips, missing teeth or broken ribs. And two horses were
still bleeding severely from severed arteries.

  ‘Hervey, what in the name of God …?’ The brigadier looked about incredulously.

  ‘Your orders, sir,’ said Hervey.

  Seton Canning and Cornet Vanneck looked away.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘We were executing your orders, General, when A Troop plunged on us – with the same orders, it seems.’

  General Massey had not the faintest idea what he was talking about. ‘What do you mean, “with the same orders”?’

  Hervey knew at once what had happened. Perhaps he had the advantage of a quarter of an hour on the brigadier, but he was not sure that that was Massey’s handicap. His anger he kept in check, but only just. ‘Sir, I surmise you gave Sir Ivo orders to send a troop into the nullah.’

  ‘Of course I did. But not two!’

  ‘But that, indeed, was the effect. You assumed Sir Ivo would order my troop to the nullah. Had you sent the hastening order to him, General, there would have been no confusion.’

  ‘I don’t like your tone one jot, Hervey!’ The brigadier sounded more dismayed than angry.

  Hervey’s anger now matched the brigadier’s dismay. ‘And, I, with respect, sir, do not like having my troop cut about like this. Had we been in action—’

  The brigadier had heard enough. ‘Captain Hervey! You exceed yourself, sir! I imagine you lay this blame on me, but I might remind you there is a level of command between the two of us!’

  Serjeant-Major Armstrong had closed to Hervey’s side soon after the exchange began. He now grasped his captain’s arm from behind and squeezed hard.

  Hervey made no reply to the brigadier.

  ‘I fancy we shall have all this out on return to the lines,’ said General Massey gruffly. ‘You had better take your troop back, Captain Hervey.’

  Armstrong released his grip, and Hervey saluted.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  EXTRA DRILL

  Next day

  ‘I do not say the brigadier is an unreasonable man, Eustace.’ Sir Ivo paused and then sighed. ‘But I do believe he might have had the grace to withdraw on the matter, for the nonsense was his doing – no one else’s.’

  Late in the evening, after stables and the colonel’s preliminary inquiry into the affair of the nullah, the brigade-major had come to the Sixth’s headquarters bearing unwelcome news. While, he said, the brigadier did not hold Hervey to be responsible for events, he held his manner to have been insolent, and required his apology in writing at once. Sir Ivo, having no means by which he might dispute the brigadier’s judgement, had had no option but to instruct Hervey to comply. Hervey had received this order by protesting that he did not believe a general officer ought to take refuge in his position when attempting to discover the truth of a misadventure. He might have added that neither did he think it fitting that a general officer should imply that his – Hervey’s – commanding officer bore the responsibility. But Sir Ivo had persuaded him to write, for, as he explained, he saw no merit in giving the brigadier a cause which might in the end eclipse the issue of culpability in the botched orders. And Hervey had acquiesced because he saw the logic and held Sir Ivo in absolute respect.

  But the letter of apology had not requited the general. ‘Does the brigadier say in what measure he considers Hervey’s letter to be insufficient?’ asked Major Joynson, reading again the fair copy.

  ‘It would seem that his “necessity for establishing the lessons of the affair” and his reference to a “real not imagined enemy” are the offending portions.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Joynson, nodding. ‘I can see that would go hard with Massey. And he presumably is not best pleased with you for forwarding it in the first place?’

  Sir Ivo raised his eyebrows. ‘That much was implied, yes.’ He sounded philosophical, but everyone knew that his pride was still hurt by the rebukes which had followed the review; the squadrons had manoeuvred well, and even the brigade-major had reported that the fracas at the nullah had remained unseen by the spectators.

  ‘If I may speak, Colonel,’ said the RSM.

  ‘Of course, Mr Lincoln.’

  ‘It is causing a deal of resentment in the ranks. Even though they all know Captain Hervey’s troop were ordered into the nullah, they know too it was never your intention that they be there. I am afraid, Colonel, very contrary though it is, the view is that E Troop should not have gone into the nullah. And it does not help, of course, that they are largely so raw.’

  Sir Ivo sighed. ‘It is quite perverse. But thank you, Mr Lincoln. You will, no doubt, be speaking to your mess on the subject?’

  ‘Yes, Colonel. Directly after orderly room.’

  ‘Good. Armstrong behaving well?’

  ‘Exemplary, Colonel. I gather he was a model of restraint in the nullah.’

  ‘Perhaps he can stroll through the lines at evening stables with Serjeant-Major Bowker, and Hervey and Rose the same. A comradely show?’

  The RSM returned Sir Ivo’s ironic smile. ‘Indeed, Colonel.’

  Sir Ivo turned to the adjutant. ‘Thomas, my compliments to Captain Hervey, and inform him that he’d better pick up his pen again.’ He nodded to the RSM. ‘And that will be all, too, Mr Lincoln. Your counsel, as always, is appreciated.’

  The RSM, matchless in his turnout, even though the heavy air would have made sweat-scrapes busy on them all, saluted and left the office. As he closed the door, Joynson took off his cap and sat down.

  ‘Colonel, I worry about Hervey. He seems his old self a lot of the time, but the anger burns still.’

  Sir Ivo nodded. ‘It can sometimes be a powerful force for action, Eustace. I saw many an angry man in the Peninsula carry a place with the bayonet or the sabre.’

  The major knew that if he himself had had more anger he might have remained with the regiment longer in Spain. He nodded slowly. ‘Of course, of course,’ he said, as if still measuring the proposition. ‘But, I wonder, is it conducive always to good judgement, in hot or in cold blood? Hot blood is probably the lesser to worry about. It’s the slow-burning anger, the brooding, the resentment, the loss of reason which sets all the factors in a decision in their proper perspective.’

  The Earl of Sussex had warned Sir Ivo that his major would serve him at all times faithfully, and in matters of administrative detail well, but that beyond this he should expect nothing. Yet Sir Ivo had a growing regard for Joynson’s general wisdom, not least his modestly perceptive estimates of character in the Sixth’s officers. They might all still call him ‘Daddy’ Joynson, but Sir Ivo had observed that his opinion was sought increasingly by them, and that was ever a sure sign – as, indeed, was the virtual absence of sick headaches. ‘A glass of Madeira, Eustace?’

  ‘Thank you, Colonel.’

  Sir Ivo took a decanter and glasses from a cupboard. ‘You don’t think Hervey has lost anything of his touch, do you? I mean, it just occurs to me that the Hervey of whom I’d heard might have seen that confusion before it happened.’

  The major took his glass and considered the proposition. ‘In truth, I’ve thought the same. I know that I should never have seen it.’

  ‘Nor I,’ said Sir Ivo, with a wry smile. ‘Indeed, the notion’s probably absurd. But I, too, worry. We must keep a special eye. Who are his friends, though? Eyre Somervile, I suppose.’

  ‘Hervey would count all the officers his friends, but none would own to knowing his thoughts, not even Strickland. And I dare say that Somervile, neither, has ploughed too deep; but he’s a shrewd man.’

  ‘A good man. I’d have him with me in a fight any day. I’ll speak with him – unless you think it better it came from you?’

  The major thought about it for a moment. ‘I think, let me try first. It might not do for Somervile to think he were being asked to spy on him in some way, which it might well seem if you approached him.’

  Sir Ivo smiled. ‘Quite so.’ He pushed the decanter back across the desk. ‘Tell me, Eustace, to change to happier matters, how is France
s? I have not seen her these past two weeks.’

  The major smiled too. ‘She is more the attention of the garrison officers than ever it seemed in England!’

  Sir Ivo nodded. ‘It was ever thus, I’m told, Eustace!’

  At ten that evening Serjeant Collins, the regimental orderly serjeant-major, entered the wet canteen, as his orders required, to instruct the sutler to close it. It was always a tricky moment, a time when abuse had to be differentiated from good-natured banter in a split-second. Collins never looked forward to the duty, but he was one of the more practised ROSMs in the art of dealing with bibulous dragoons who fancied themselves as wits. His art was tested this night, however, by a barrage of opinion from A Troop men on the question of E Troop’s proficiency; it was taken up in turn by groups from B, C and D Troops. Collins stood his ground perhaps a little too long, as if challenging one of them to more than words. He looked about to see where were the E Troop men, to nod to them to beat a retreat before it was too late, but a swaying pug from A Troop was already making his determined way towards the bar.

  ‘I want another fookin’ nog, and thou’s not gooin’ to stop me.’ The jabbing finger left no doubt about who was not to do the stopping.

  Collins braced himself.

  ‘E Troop?’ continued the pug. ‘I wouldn’t piss on ’em!’

  Lance-Corporal McCarthy, sitting in direct line between the pug and his objective, put down his tankard and stood up. ‘Time for bed, Brummie.’

  The pug looked at him in disbelief. What was a piece of tape compared with his brawn? ‘Fook off, yo’ thick Paddy.’

  Corporal McCarthy sighed wearily, clenched both fists, feinted with his left, then drove his right into the pug’s nose.

  It was the last thing that Serjeant Collins would be able to give any clear account of to the RSM the following morning.

  ‘Major’s compliments, sir, and would you attend on him at once.’ Scarcely had first parade finished but that Hervey was being summoned to regimental headquarters on account of the wet canteen. He thought it a little unfair that he had not yet had advantage of his serjeant-major’s reports in their entirety – Armstrong had been summoned to the RSM’s office even before muster – but in any event he did not expect to be given much of an opportunity to speak.