by CL Skelton
In Allahabad they were given orders to take a relief column to Cawnpore, and then on to Lucknow. With only 1,200 men hastily assembled, Havelock pushed forward at once, leaving Allahabad on July 12 and heading northwest along the fertile plain along the Ganges, now baked dry in the Indian sun awaiting the monsoon which would flood the river and bring the latent life back to the land. They were in a hurry and proceeded by a series of backbreaking forced marches through the mean little villages and across the now-dusty plain.
They had travelled some sixty miles when they were joined by a force of about 800 men under the command of a Major Renard, bringing their force up to 1,400 British bayonets, eight guns, and about 500 loyal native troops. At Futtehpore, just after Major Renard had joined them, their van fought an engagement with some 3,500 mutineers and took the town. Andrew was not involved in that battle, being in the rear in the company of the general.
It was after this that, without pause, they took to the Grand Trunk road and marched to within eight miles of Cawnpore. Here forward pickets came in with the news that Nana Sahib had taken up positions across the road, entrenched and covered by his artillery.
After Futtehpore, Havelock had pressed on, leaving his mule-drawn artillery, a mixed bag of eight twelve- and eight-pounders, to catch up as best they could, so great was the urgency with which they regarded their task. Tired and weary, they would have been an easy prey to any major ambush set along their path, but apart from minor skirmishes, none came.
It was just before midnight on the fifteenth when they bivouacked, and exhausted men freed themselves from the sixty pounds of oppressive weight of their packs and blanket rolls, shed their ammunition pouches, dropped their rifles, and slept wherever they stopped. But not for long.
At three o’clock in the morning the bugle, which had sounded so sweet only a few hours ago telling them to rest, broke the silence of the night and ordered them to arms. By the flickering light of the dying campfires, General Havelock addressed his men.
‘You all know why we are here,’ he called. ‘There are about two hundred women and children still in Cawnpore. They are British women and British children, and it is our job to get them out. I have little idea of how strong the enemy is, how many men he has, or what cannon he can bring to bear. But I tell you this, if there are a hundred of them to each of us, we will still give them the hiding of their lives. If they have cannon, and I suspect they have, we will take them and turn them on to the mutineers. There will be no pause to mop up isolated pockets. The objective is the city itself and those women and children, and remember that every moment of delay could cost them their lives. I know that we have had little rest, but I pray that the Lord will give you strength for the fight. Keep your powder dry and God save the Queen.’
The men replied with a cheer and then set about the business of checking weapons and striking camp.
Andrew had been at his place at the general’s side during the short speech, and as Havelock got down from the makeshift rostrum from which he had addressed the men, he turned to Andrew.
‘Well, Mr Maclaren, will this be your first battle?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Have you the stomach for it?’
‘I hope so, sir.’
‘Aye, lad, you wouldn’t be a Maclaren if you hadn’t.’ The general paused and became thoughtful. ‘I hope to God that I’m doing the right thing. I wish that those damned guns were here. I know that Nana Sahib has at least three field pieces. They’ll be seven-pounders, accurate up to a thousand yards and still effective for another five hundred. He’ll be sitting across the main road. You see those mango groves just ahead of us?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Andrew looked in the direction the general was pointing. He could just make out in the half-light the groups of tall evergreens with their slender pointed leaves, obviously carefully tended by someone long since fled. ‘Yes, sir, I see them.’
‘We’ll go through there and try and get round his flank. But I fear that we are going to have to shift them with cold steel and pray that we can take his guns quickly. We’re going to lose a lot of men today.’ He took a deep breath, and then, catching sight of something hanging from Andrew’s belt, changed his tone. ‘What the devil have you got there, lad?’
‘It’s a revolver, sir. A Colt.’
‘Let me see it.’
Andrew handed the weapon to the general. ‘It’s called the Navy Belt Model. My father made a present of it to me just before I left for India. He believes that it will revolutionize close combat.’
‘Hrrumph!’ said Havelock. ‘It’s heavy.’
‘Only four pounds, sir, and it takes a thirty-six-calibre bullet.’
Havelock held the gun for a moment, swinging out the rammer and poking it into one of the chambers.
‘How long does it take you to load?’
‘About five minutes, but you’ve got six shots.’
‘And then?’
‘I don’t know, sir.’
‘And then you need your broadsword. I know your father, lad. Damned fine soldier but a bit too keen on newfangled ideas. Wouldn’t trust the damned thing meself. It’ll never replace the bayonet or the broadsword.’
‘Yes, sir,’ replied Andrew dutifully.
‘Go and get yourself a glass of claret from my tent before we start, and good luck to you, lad.’
Havelock watched him go. That was going to be the new army. New young men with new ideas and new weapons.
It was time that the Company was kicked out anyhow. They had made a real mess of things. No one but an idiot would demand that a native soldier should bite a bullet that he believed was greased with pig fat. The Sepoy would die first. Things were changing and India would never be the same again. But this was no time to reminisce. There were women and children at risk, and subordinate commanders to brief. But first he would pray.
He looked around at the men preparing to move, smelling of sweat and leather in their stained uniforms and tarnished brasses, their webbing, cross belts, straps, and packs still bearing the scars of the march. Soon they would be fighting and dying, but first Henry Havelock would go down on his knees before his Maker and beg for their lives.
Less than an hour after Havelock had finished speaking, they were advancing on the city in a wide arc which they hoped would take them on to the enemy’s flank. Their lines of communication were stretched for sixty miles and they were pretty fragile at that. They were tired from the long marches of the previous days and they knew that the guns were not yet up with them. But as the sun rose and they headed through the geometric lines of mangos, the knowledge of where and why they were going straightened their backs and gave them strength. A piper from the Seaforths, bearded and in blue tunic and kilt of the regimental tartan, spurning both cover and camouflage, played a march and gave Andrew a moment of nostalgia for other times and other days in the hills and glens of home. So, spurred on by what their commander had said, they strode bravely on towards Cawnpore.
It was to be no set-piece battle. The British did not form the traditional square and face a suicidal rush from an undisciplined foe. The Sepoys were British-trained ‒ men who, but for the mutiny, might have been marching by their side. As they emerged from the mangos, where the ground was released from the restraint of the roots of the tall trees, the yellow dust started to rise again as they advanced ‒ now by companies in open order.
The Sepoys held the advantages that always go to the defending force, advantages of cover and of high ground. The old city, the native quarter, formed the centre of town. The outskirts were dotted with the homes of the European community, each a little fortress surrounded by a stone wall. Andrew spotted one; a bodhi tree stood in the centre of a green lawn, and from its branches hung a child’s swing gently swaying, but there was no wind. Why? As he asked himself the question, the answer came. From the gardens, from behind the hillocks, from the windows of houses built of solid masonry, the firing started and the enemy began to cannonade the advancing British in
fantry. Men started to fall; they were still too near the enemy’s centre. Havelock, sizing up the situation, galloped on his charger through the advancing companies turning them out on to the enemy’s flank; and aided by the range and accuracy of their new Enfield rifles, accurate over distances which would have been unthinkable a few years ago when they would have been equipped with the old smooth-bore Brown Bess, they began to take their toll of any Sepoy foolish enough to expose himself for more than a second.
At long last they were among them, each man with fifty pounds of weight on his back and ten pounds of rifle in his hands. Thrusting into the brown masses for nearly three bloody hours they fought hand to hand and, as Havelock had predicted, it was the bayonet and the broadsword which carried the day.
Andrew had amazed himself. It was as if he were standing outside his own body and watching some demoniacal being which had taken possession of him. Before him was a brown and grey rocky outcrop with a tuft of parched grass sticking out from its head. Suddenly a face appeared from behind. It was a young face, little more than a boy. He remembered how the thick lips had curled into a smile as he watched the musket come up pointing towards him. Then he heard an explosion and felt his right arm wrenched up from the recoil of the Colt that he had fired instinctively. He saw a bloody hole appear in the Sepoy’s head and looked at that thing which had been a man and was now just a mass that twitched and spasmed at his feet.
It gave him a wonderful almost Godlike feeling as he looked down at his victim, totally unaware of the battle that was raging around him. It was only when a soldier screamed in his ear, ‘You’ll get bloody shot standing there, sir!’ and then died himself, that he returned to reality. Intoxicated by his kill, he shouted and cursed as he cut and shot his way through the mass of brown bodies. And when the silence came, when the last shot had been fired, the last agonized scream stilled, he stood silent on the battlefield, knowing what he had done, looking at the blood on his sword, and then at his own body, untouched, bearing not even a single scratch to remind him of what he had been through. And in that moment, the words of another Henry, Harry Hotspur, came to him, out of time and into mind:
But I remember when the fight was done,
When I was dry with rage and extreme toil,
Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword …
In the stillness that followed the battle, the bugle had sounded, plaintive and weary. The men had slowly and with aching limbs formed columns. Stretcher parties were detailed off to carry those wounded who could not walk, and what was left of them marched into the town.
The city that they entered was silent. Not a single soul to greet them. No cheers, not even a curse, the only sound the battle-weary tramp of their boots puffing up little clouds of yellow dust with every step. The thing of which they were most conscious was the smell ‒ the smell of recently burnt buildings, a pervading odour of decay, but most of all the stench of the sweat of their own tired bodies as the temperature rose to over a hundred. They marched on through the European quarter towards the centre, past the burned-out lines of the garrison. There was one house, a pretty little white bungalow surrounded by trees. It looked intact, until you looked again and saw the broken door and the smashed verandah, a doll’s pram, new and shining, split into two, and the flagstaff with the barely recognizable remains of a Union Jack half burned, lying drunkenly across the lawn.
On they went through the streets, past the deserted dwellings and into the native quarter where the buildings were all square blocks of clay, and straw, mean little houses surrounded by the litter of insanitary living. Then towards the market square; shops and stalls began to appear, their goods in disarray, their owners fled. A mangy dog, its ribs delineated sharply against patches of bare skin, crept towards Andrew, gazed at him for a moment with lacklustre eyes and then slunk quietly away through an open door. Was this to be the only living thing in Cawnpore?
At last they arrived in the square where a couple of oxen were helping themselves to the mangos, maize, sugar cane, rice, and other vegetables which were piled in an untidy mess from the overturned counters where they had so recently been neatly displayed. The beasts standing up to their bellies in the mess of fruit and vegetables barely moved as two soldiers broke ranks and slit their throats.
Well, thought Andrew, at least the troops would have fresh meat tonight. In the square they halted and the command was given to fall out. The men went only as far as the nearest shade, slipped out of their packs, dropped their rifles, and lay exhausted on the dusty ground.
For Andrew there was, however, to be no rest.
He reported to the general as soon as the stand-easy had been sounded.
‘Get me Colonel Hamilton,’ demanded Havelock.
Andrew found him, the commanding officer of the 78th, the Seaforths, and together they reported back to Havelock.
‘Willie,’ said Havelock, ‘your chaps put up a great show today, but I still need some of them. Detail a couple of your junior officers to take squads and search the European quarters. There’s got to be someone alive somewhere.’
They had erected Havelock’s tent, a simple, spartan ridge tent with an awning outside. Havelock was seated at a trestle table with Colonel Hamilton and Major Barrington, the brigade major. They were deep in conversation. Andrew, as was his duty, stood a little apart from them out of earshot and ready to intercept anyone who wished to approach the general. It was while this conversation was in progress that the first squad returned from their search. Their officer stood them easy, but the troops did not move; ashen-faced under their grime, they just stood there as if in shock. Their subaltern, a tall pink-faced youth wearing the Seaforth kilt and red double-breasted jacket with Inverness skirt, approached Andrew.
‘Ensign Campbell, 78th,’ he said. ‘I have to see the general at once.’
‘Sorry, he’s in conference,’ said Andrew. And then, seeing the man’s obvious distress, ‘What is it?’
‘Holy Jesus, we’ve found them,’ he blurted out and pressed his hands to his temples. ‘For God’s sake, man, get the general!’
‘You’ve found who?’
‘Get him or I’ll go myself.’
‘Wait here,’ said Andrew and went over to the tent.
Havelock looked up, irritated at the interruption. ‘Mr Maclaren, this had better be important.’ An expression of astonishment crossed his face as he looked past Andrew. ‘What the ‒’
Campbell had followed Andrew to the table. Hamilton and Barrington rose to their feet glaring at the presumption of the young man.
‘What the devil are you doing, here, sir?’ demanded Havelock.
‘Come with me, sir, please,’ said the young ensign. ‘I can’t explain. It’s too horrible. You’ll have to see it for yourself. Please.’ Without waiting for a reply, he turned and left them.
Havelock was impressed. Without another word he followed Campbell out, and together with Andrew and the two field-ranking officers, they set out through the town.
‘Not so fast,’ shouted Havelock to the disappearing figure of Campbell.
‘Hurry, sir. Please hurry,’ was the reply.
They followed to the edge of the native quarter and then they saw it. It was a waterhole, or a well; it was surrounded by a low crumbling mud wall. There were caked patches of mud all around it and it stank. It stank with the sweet, sickly-cloying smell of death. They stopped and gazed in horror at the sight before them. Over the edge of a broken piece of wall, upside down, its hair brushing the dust beneath it, a rag doll still clutched in a small hand, was the body of a child. Beyond this, piled high, were mutilated corpses, women and children, more than they could count, the women and children they had come to rescue. One hundred and twenty miles they had marched, exhausted they had fought a battle, one in every three of them had died or been wounded, and they had achieved nothing.
Havelock stood silent for a moment and then turned away from the sight as though he could bear it no more. Andrew, after one glance at the
carnage, kept his eyes fixed on his general, because had he not, he would have had to look again.
‘Mr ‒ er ‒ what’s your name?’
‘Campbell, sir.’
‘You stay here.’
‘But, sir ‒’
‘Sorry, but it’s an order.’ Havelock turned to the others. ‘Come with me, all of you.’
They went back to the square in silence, each alone with the image of what they had seen. At his tent, Havelock leaned heavily upon his table. Andrew and the other two waited for their chief to speak. Finally, Havelock rounded on them, his lips trembling and his hands clenched so that the knuckles showed white through the bronzed skin.
‘Colonel Hamilton, as soon as we can, tomorrow if possible, we march to Lucknow.’ He paused. ‘We will take no prisoners.’
‘We already have taken prisoners, sir,’ said Major Barrington.
‘You know what to do.’
‘Sir?’
‘Organize an execution detail at once. Take them to that waterhole, show them what’s there, then shoot the filthy lot of them.’
‘And the wounded, sir?’ The Major was surprised at the vehemence of his chief’s reaction. He knew him for the staid, grave, but kindly puritan that he was.
‘And the wounded,’ snapped Havelock.
The major saluted and left on his grisly errand. Havelock turned to Andrew.
‘And now, Mr Maclaren.’
‘Sir?’ replied Andrew. He was still shaken by the memory of what he had seen. His gentle, bookish nature violated by the bestiality of it all, he felt sick and angry, and yet he was afraid that he might be given the same job as Barrington. He was not sure that he would have the guts for it.