‘My Grenadiers, sir,’ said Hume softly.
‘Ah, very good, your stalwarts.’ Smith positively chortled at the idea. ‘That’s that Irish lad, Morgan, ain’t it? Giving him a chance to make up for things after Rowa, are you? Bit of a “forlorn hope”: death or glory, is it? Take me to him, if you will, Hume.’
By the time Smith reached the Grenadier Company, the roads and alleys leading to the Kettonpore Gate were crushed full of troops. With all three columns now converging on just one exit, over fifteen hundred infantry as well as the artillery – who were to hand-wheel their howitzers and extra ammunition into the assault – were packed tightly together. Nor was the situation made any the easier by the thunder of their own guns overhead and the occasional round-shot from the mutineers whining high over the walls in front of them.
‘Well, Morgan, are you all set?’ Smith and his staff, with Hume in close attendance, had pushed their horses through Bombay regiments, a couple of sombre-looking companies of the 83rd, boisterous Highlanders of the 72nd, gunners, artificers, signallers and, most crucially, the Sappers, whose demolitions would signal the start of the assault.
‘Set as we’ll ever be, General.’ Perhaps Morgan didn’t deliver the line with quite the thrilled pleasure that Smith expected; certainly, McGucken cast his officer something of a sideways look when he said it.
‘Well, I hope you know just how important the job is that’s been entrusted to you?’ Smith was obviously not pleased with Morgan’s manner.
‘I do, sir, and you can depend on the Ninety-Fifth’s Grenadiers to do it.’ Morgan knew that this reply sounded much better.
Sadly, Lance-Corporal Pegg undid things: ‘Just like we did at Alma, Inkermann and The Quarries, sir – you remember.’ Pegg’s observation wasn’t intended to annoy the general; indeed, it was said in such an open manner that Smith paused for a moment, weighing the words for an intended slight.
But any doubt was cast from his mind when a faceless brogue came from the rear of the throng: ‘How would he remember? He wasn’t there at all!’
Smith’s face flushed puce with anger. For a second Morgan considered turning on Private Matthew McGarry – for there was no doubt that’s whose voice it was – but he knew, as Smith did, that it would be impossible to prove.
‘Sirs, would you get back as far as you can, please?’ Luckily, a scurrying Sergeant Hamilton of the Engineers intervened. ‘We’ve got about four hundred pounds of powder ready, gentlemen, but your troops is awful close. Please get ’em back, sir.’
‘Aye, Morgan, get your men as far away as possible, but once the charge has gone, you mustn’t hang back: get straight through the gate and amongst the Pandies,’ roared Smith above the noise of the overhead fire.
‘There’ll be no hanging back from this company, sir, you may be sure of that,’ Morgan replied, making no attempt to hide his anger.
‘Well, be sure there isn’t,’ Smith almost snarled back as he pushed his horse through the press of men, getting himself to a place of safety.
Things weren’t helped when the same anonymous voice piped up, ‘It’s that way to the rear, your honour!’ Followed by a peel of derisive laughter from the rest of the men.
‘Right, shut yer rag-holes, yous.’ McGucken’s bellow hushed the mockery. ‘Check your pouches; hammers at half cock, an’ any twot whose spike falls off in the rush will have me to answer to.’
The men busied themselves with final preparations whilst Morgan pulled his sword from its scabbard and his watch from his pocket, and glanced to see how close they were to the appointed hour of eleven o’clock.
‘You’re late, Sar’nt Hamilton.’ Morgan immediately regretted heaping any more pressure on the man as he paid out a long spool of fuse, but it distracted him from the brusqueness of his brigade commander.
‘Sir, an’ if you’d just ’elp me by getting your blokes into some form of cover, we can get a move on things.’ Hamilton was equally testy.
‘Yes, get the men back as far as possible, Morgan.’ Hume had appeared silently out of the crowd, smiling slightly, speaking calmly, patting the men gently on their backs as he passed. ‘Then at ’em with the steel as you always do and, Morgan…Godspeed.’ Hume had obviously heard the exchange with Smith and realised how unsettling Morgan had found it. Now he, the colonel, was right here at the front, rubbing balm into his men’s wounded pride, setting exactly the right example.
But even as McGucken and the NCOs harried the men back behind rubble and any bit of wall or masonry they could find, Hamilton was tinkering with a fat, green-tipped match that eventually sputtered, flared into life and set the fuse burning with a racing plume of blue-tinged smoke.
‘There, y’are, gents…’ Hamilton looked with satisfaction at the spluttering fuse, ‘…’bout twenty seconds. Put yer fingers in yer ears an’ keep low.’
Morgan hunkered down next to McGucken behind a low bank of dirt and bricks and, self-consciously, lay his sword down and clamped his hands over his ears. He was glad he did, for in much less time than the promised twenty seconds, the light was blocked out by a tearing cloud of smoke and grit that ripped his breath away. At the same time the earth shook with a violence that he’d never expected, still less experienced, which left him sprawled on his back, McGucken draped half on top of him.
For several seconds both men lay there, enveloped in the cloud and dust, ears ringing, heads bursting with the concussion.
‘Jesus, we was too close…’ McGucken was the first to regain his senses. ‘You all right, sir?’
Both men looked as though they’d been dipped in flour, so thick was the dust that clung to their clothes, skin and hair.
‘I…I think so, Colour-Sar’nt.’ But Morgan’s concern for himself evaporated as Sergeant Hamilton came staggering back through the reek towards them. Every bit of him was grey with dust except his eyes, which blinked in shock from a dirty mask. His hat was gone, his hair seemed to stand on end, thick with grit.
‘Are you hurt, Sar’nt Hamilton?’ Morgan heard himself asking, but it was as if he was talking underwater, so numb were his ears.
A thin trickle of blood came from one of the tattered NCO‘s nostrils; he shook his head as if trying to clear the stunning effects of the explosion. Finally, he answered, his speech slightly slurred: ‘Sir…ahm all right…’ he swayed slightly, flexing his fingers, ‘…must indeed have bin another mine by the gate.’
It certainly looked that way to Morgan. As the dust and smoke cleared slowly, where once the Kettonpore Gate and towers had stood, there was nothing now except heaps of shattered stone and fallen masonry that smoked slightly in the sun. The great teak gates, built by the Moghuls, were now nothing more than matchwood, whilst a telltale crater and collapsed trench showed where the mutineers had laid their mine.
‘Come on, sir.’ McGucken picked Morgan’s sword up and pressed it into his hand. ‘Them bastards’ll be even more shocked than we are. Let’s use the advantage.’
And with that, at a stumbling shuffle over the heaped debris, Morgan set off, doing his best to shout, ‘Follow me, Grenadiers,’ through a mouth that felt as though it had been punched raw.
As he topped the piled obstacle in front of him, Morgan gulped, expecting a storm of enemy fire – but none came. As he paused he stared down onto a rubbish-strewn junction surrounded by shot-torn houses, improvised barriers at the mouth of every street, but of the enemy there was no sign. Suddenly lonely, he looked round to see who was following. At his elbow was McGucken, who was frantically waving and shouting at the others to close up – but there were remarkably few. Instead of a reassuring mass of beefy lads, there were just a few men carefully picking their way forward over the broken mound – all new boys, he noticed, for the older hands had learned to keep a cautious score of paces to the rear.
‘There, sir, look.’ McGucken pointed at a barricade no more than thirty paces away. ‘A fuckin’ gun; that’s ours!’
And he was right, for a brass muzzle stared unblin
kingly at them, obviously sited to eviscerate any sally that came from behind the gates.
A gun, goddamit, thought Morgan. Instant glory, there for the taking.
There’d be no mistaking who’d snatched this prize. Greed and ambition overcame any lingering shock, and Morgan found himself positively scampering down the slope of rubble, a crazy shout on his lips and his sword oustretched.
He was over the breastwork of spoil and sticks of furniture in an instant, ignoring the pair of concussed gunners who moaned harmlessly below the gun’s carriage, desperately trying to scratch ‘95’ into the wooden trail. But a sabre was designed for no such work, so he rummaged in his haversack, produced the clasp knife that he’d bought in Cork four years ago and started to whittle away. The wood was hard, though he was determined that there would be no arguments over who’d captured it.
By the time he’d made even a passable impression on the timber, a gaggle of men were around him, the enemy gunners had been dispatched without hesitation and McGucken was issuing rapid orders.
‘Get ’ere with that spiking nail, ye great jessy.’ Private Beeston was the butt of McGucken’s impatience, yet again. ‘Go on, get it in the touchhole.’ Beeston was groping around the unfamiliar breech of the gun. ‘You’d find it soon enough if it had hairs on it. Gi’ it here,’ and with that the Scotsman seized the nine-inch iron needle and banged it home with a handy lump of stone.
‘Look at this lot, sir.’ Pegg was distraught; one of the other soldiers had beaten him to the pockets and purses of the dead sepoy gunners. But in his search around the area, he’d found three earthenware pots full to the brim with a mixture of nails, iron studs, lead pellets and all manner of other scrap. ‘The bastards were going to fire this lot at us – mek yer bloody eyes water, that would. Right, you lot…’ Pegg turned to his men, ‘…put that one on the slate as another score to settle.’
But even as the troops tutted with outrage, a bullet sang off some broken masonry close by, pricking Sharrock and Coughlin’s faces with a dozen tiny shards of stone and sending the rest of the party scuttling for cover.
‘Where’s he at, Colour-Sar’nt?’ Morgan looked down the closest road. It was lined with two-storey mud and brick thatched houses with a shallow drain running down the centre.
‘There, sir, ’bout two hundred, puff of smoke by that upper window just—’ Even as he said it, a further volley of shots erupted from the same house, jets of smoke coming from all the upper windows, lead balls humming and whining all about them.
‘Bugger me…’ Private James, who had thought himself safe behind a wall after the first single shot, was amazed to find that he was wrong, ‘…they’ve shot me water bottle!’ A round, distorted by hitting the brickwork, had skimmed off at an angle, clipping James’s big, blue-painted canteen and splintering a hole through the wood, out of which his precious water now poured.
‘There’s a gang of ’em in there, Colour-Sar’nt.’ Morgan looked round but saw no sign of the companies that were supposed to be following them. ‘We’ll have to deal with it.’
‘Aye, sir, you fire us in from here an’ I’ll take some lads round the flank and flush ’em out,’ said McGucken.
‘No, Colour-Sar’nt. You stay here with Mr Fawcett and show him how to give covering fire. I’ll come at ’em from behind the building and try to drive them towards you, then cut ’em down.’
‘Sir, ain’t it time that Mr Fawcett took an assault in?’ McGucken looked at Morgan intently as he made the suggestion.
Why the hell does he not want me to lead the attack? thought Morgan. He doesn’t think I’ve turned sticky, does he?
‘No, it’s too soon to tell him to do that…just get me half a dozen lads, please.’ But even as Morgan said it, he knew that Lance-Corporal Pegg and his men would be detailed off for the job. He just hoped that the lad would be in the same fighting fettle as he had been the last time they met Pandy together.
Under the constant hammering of their own guns, McGucken took Fawcett, showed him where to place his riflemen to best advantage, and then shepherded the attacking party towards Morgan, who was crouched behind a breastwork, checking the chambers of his pistol.
‘Ah, Corporal Pegg and the heroes of Rowa.’
‘Aye, sir, that’s us,’ Pegg answered and then, more softly, ‘The only names the bloody officers know.’
‘We’re going for that building from over on the left.’ Morgan pointed to the objective. ‘Loaded and ready? Right, single file, last man cover the rear, follow me…’ and the line moved off bent almost double, staying under the cover of the walls as Morgan led them through a gate and into an unknown alley.
They trickled forward cautiously, running past gaps, eyes roving over windows and doorways. Another volley came from the house, confirming for Morgan precisely where it was, for, seen from an angle, it was suddenly so much more difficult to recognise. But a steady rhythm of fire was now coming from Fawcett’s party, McGucken’s shouted orders just audible over the din, whilst balls chipped at the masonry and richocheted away, showing him exactly where his enemy lay.
On they pushed, rifles level at waist height, ready for any unexpected enemy interference when, just as he passed a sunken doorway, screams pierced the din of musketry.
So close was the noise that Morgan whirled automatically, pulling his pistol back to his waist and taking first pressure on the trigger. But there, no more than two feet away, were two girls, great kohl-painted eyes showing white and terrified from above the veils they had pulled across their faces.
‘Jesus, you silly bints, d’you want to die?’ Morgan pulled back as the pair cowered against the wood of a yard door. ‘Go on, be off with you.’
‘Shall I deal with ’em, sir,’ asked Coughlin even as they skittered out into the lane, little bells jingling at their ankles.
‘Deal with them, Coughlin?’ Morgan realised that this normally decent, quiet young Dubliner was asking if he should kill them. ‘Jesus, no; they’re only girls,’ to which Coughlin just shrugged in reply as the pair made their escape.
Within minutes the Grenadiers were below the windows of the mutineers’ stronghold.
‘Here, you two, help me get this out the way.’ Morgan enlisted a hand to get a pile of furniture and rolled curtains full of earth out through a ground-level window, whilst the rest of the group protected them.
Just as they pulled at a stave of wood, however, Pegg fired his rifle deafeningly at the upper window just above them.
‘Fuck, missed the sod.’ He went into the automatic routine to reload his rifle, whilst his eyes never left the space. ‘Some twat in a turban just shoved ’is ’ead out for a look-see…eh, tek care.’ Pegg suddenly yelled, ‘Geddown!’
Morgan just saw a grubby hand reach out and release a wooden pot from which stuck a spitting fuse. It fell foursquare at his feet, rolled a little, then lay there fizzing before he found himself pushed hard in the back by Private James, who hoofed the spitting demon away across the street on the toe-end of his grimy boot.
The flash and hollow boom of the home-made grenade threw Morgan against the wall of the house as long, rusty nails spun harmlessly past him.
‘Get in here, lads, lend a hand.’ Morgan could see how carefully the mutineers had prepared themselves for this battle and knew that if they stayed outside the stronghold that they would be treated to more of these horrid, dangerous things. So, by dint of boots and shoulders, they eventually managed to force their way into the lower storey of the building.
‘This must ’ave been the stable, sir.’ Pegg looked around at the straw, ropes and rude, wooden mangers that lined the place. ‘They’ve tekken the ladder out so we can’t get at the trapdoor.’
‘Come here, Coughlin, get on my shoulders.’ Morgan selected the lightest of the men and staggered with him to a point below the trapdoor. ‘Get a round or two in there if the door gives,’ and with rifle barrels covering them, the pair tried to push open the trap in the ceiling. But it was no use, the ene
my had blocked it and, sensing something going on below them, hurled another bomb, which exploded noisily but safely in the street outside.
‘Right, we’re in a bit of a fix here.’ Morgan could hear the rest of the company keeping up a desultory fire at the floor above them. ‘Pandy knows we’re here but can’t get at us unless we run for it into the street, but we can’t get at him.’
‘Set fire to the bastards, sir.’ Pegg was kicking the straw that lay around the floor into a great bundle. ‘Get these ’urdles down, lads,’ and in no time the men had pulled the tinder-dry wooden byres down, splintered the timber with hefty kicks from their boots and garlanded the lot in yards of old rope.
‘Bit o’ ghee ’ere, sir.’ One of the other men began to sprinkle the fat from a jar onto the pyre.
‘Aye, lads, but we’ll fry ourselves before we smoke that lot out above.’ Morgan could see that the pile would catch fast and burn well, but the floorboards would give some protection to their enemies from the flames and smoke, whilst the room they were in would very quickly become overwhelmed.
‘Naw, sir, it’ll work a treat. See ’ere…’ and before Morgan could forbid it, Pegg had split open one of his cartridges, scattered the contents on the heaped junk and set light to it with a lucifer, the whole thing catching with a whoose of flame and a white puff of gunpowder smoke.
But that was as nothing compared with the conflagration that followed. In seconds flames had caught the straw and vast billows of acrid yellow smoke, tinged with an oily black, filled the room, a tongue of fire flicking six feet in the air and tickling the seams of the boards above.
‘Pegg, you bloody idiot…’ Morgan struggled to find a handkerchief to press to his face, amazed by the speed of the fire. ‘Quick, get outside,’ he coughed and mumbled, immediately seeing that it was better to brave whatever the sepoys might throw at them than the flames in the building.
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