To Do and Die

by Patrick Mercer

  They didn’t have far to go. Morgan heard the characteristic metallic clinks and jangles and the animal noise of a group of men no more than two hundred paces up the slope. Through the bushes he could just see a host of Russians milling about, looking to their muskets and pouches, with authoritative voices rising up from time to time. They were obviously forming up for another attempt on the Battery—but with a slice of luck they might just be able to get past them before they realized who they were. He raised his hand to halt the column, took off his cap and stuffed it away, silently signalling to the rest to do the same, for other than their head-gear, the two sides looked remarkably similar in their long grey coats and belts. He’d heard that the Guards had tried this trick when they were in a similar fix—it had worked for them.

  They had to stick to the goat track, to do anything else would look damned odd, but it meant that they would pass within yards of the nearest Russian. If they were challenged those at the front could buy some time whilst the others ran past and away—so why hadn’t he checked the priming in his revolver, he wondered?

  On they crept trying not to scuff the path. The Russians were just a few yards in front obviously being briefed by an NCO: they had gone quiet, their butts were rested on the ground, looking towards a speaker invisible in the undergrowth, completely attentive.

  They were squat and broad. They had long, soft leather boots beneath their coats, the skirts of which were hooked up in the same awkward way that Morgan had seen before. The British inched onwards, Morgan quietly putting his rifle over his shoulder in order to look less menacing. Just six feet away something caught the closest Russian’s attention and he turned to look at the approaching strangers. How do Russians greet each other casually, he wondered? There was nothing else for it, he raised his right thumb, mumbled ‘Tsar Nicholai,’ with a scowl and strode past. To his amazement, his enemy returned the salute with barely a glance -- he’d obviously stumbled on some manual lingua franca—before turning back to his superior. But would the rest of the column get away with it too?

  On they climbed, puffing up the slope. Morgan’s shoulder-blades itched and his scrotum was as tight as a padre’s purse—he expected a ball to thump into him at any moment. A hundred paces clear, though, he halted the column and gathered them around him in a clearing. McGucken was the last man in—he looked completely unflustered.

  ‘Get yer head-dress on, yous.’ Whilst the young officer sighed with relief his colour-sergeant attended to the men’s dress and turnout—the important things in life.

  The noise from the Battery had decreased. They were close enough to hear words of command and the occasional shot, but there was a lull as the Russians prepared for the next bout. A series of thumps suggested more heavy guns firing in reply to the enemy from Home Ridge, but as the echo died away, Morgan could hear horses’ hooves on the track behind them. The party stiffened, McGucken put his finger to his lips, signalled to one of the men to come with him, and as the rider drew near they both jumped out, rifles raised.

  The adjutant was as quick as the two men. His horse shied, frightened by the sudden movement in the thick brush, but even with his eyes screwed tight, McDonald’s pistol was up and covering them. Happily, neither fired.

  ‘What are you doing frightening good Presbyterians, Colour-Sar’nt?’ Both sides lowered their weapons, grinning in relief.

  ‘Sir, Mr Morgan’s leading us back up to the Battery.’ McGucken reached forward to stroke Sam’s neck. ‘Where’s the rest of the Wing, sir?’

  ‘Scattered to blazes, McGucken, and there’s a gap a mile wide between the Battery and the Barrier with not a soul to plug it. Russ will be through there and up to our main position like shit through a goose unless more reinforcements have arrived. Have you seen any, Morgan?’

  ‘No, sir, but the slope’s crawling with Muscovites, you’ll have noticed them.’

  ‘No, Major Hume’s ordered me off to find extra men, ain’t seen a creature ‘til McGucken decided to have some sport with me.’

  Myopia could have its advantages, thought Morgan.

  ‘Right, rally on the Battery, Morgan. Try to find the rest of the Grenadiers—and get your cap on, where d’you think you are?’ Without waiting for a reply, McDonald spurred his horse into a trot, bending low over his saddle to avoid the branches.

  Quickly they were back on the track, facing back up the hill towards the Battery. They thought nothing of the shots and yells up ahead until Sam came cantering back down the narrow track towards them, from exactly the point that he and McDonald had disappeared from view. Now the horse’s nostrils flared and his eyes rolled in fear, for his saddle was empty. One of the men caught him by the bridle, soothing him, tickling his nose under the broad, regimental-yellow band. The leather of the saddle had been grazed by a ball, the rough edges showing light brown and new, a smear of blood below it.

  There was no discussion. Their adjutant was clearly in trouble and Morgan set off up the steep, sloping track with his men scuttling behind him, swiftly breaking through the brush into a saucer-shaped clearing. In the middle was a circle of Russians, grunting primitively, stabbing and pushing at something on the ground. Amongst their jostling legs, Morgan could just see McDonald’s feet and spurs jerking, half-formed shrieks coming from his throat as the steel pierced him time and again.

  Then a handful of men bundled urgently into the clearing, Sergeant Ormond amongst them. Morgan knew that whilst the enemy were distracted, if they volleyed then charged home they might beat them, but just as he paused to let a few more men come up, a great burst of firing broke out in the bush immediately behind him. Muskets boomed, strange voices yelled, a few rifles cracked in reply before a yowling cheer—that they had all heard too often before—broke the mist. Through the chaos, Morgan could just hear McGucken’s gravelly voice telling the men to fall back on him.

  The Adjutant must have ridden right into a Russian regiment that was forming-up to attack: he’s probably too short-sighted to realize and he’s paid the price, thought Morgan. And now I’ve led my lads straight into the same mess. Certainly, the enemy were assaulting the middle and rear of Morgan’s strung out command with unusual speed but typical ferocity.

  ‘Come on, sir,’ Sergeant Ormond was dragging him away by his sleeve from the bloody melee around Captain McDonald’s body, ‘...we can’t do anything for the adjutant now: we need to help Jock McGucken. ‘E’s back down the track somewhere.’

  They took no time to organize. Morgan and Ormond pushed their handful into a tight wedge using every inch of the track’s breadth. ‘Right, lads, shout like hell, stay with me.’ And they hurled themselves down the slope to where McGucken had last been seen and where the crashing of bodies and weapons was almost completely hidden by the smoke and mist.

  Sergeant Ormond just beat Morgan to the first man. The Russian was ready to plunge his bayonet down into one of their men who cringed, wounded, on the side of the track, his arms thrown up in front of his face. Fired from the hip at no range, Ormond’s bullet caught the man just below the armpit, throwing him bodily into the bushes and killing him instantly. His musket whisked from his hands before it trembled, muzzle down, impaling the earth.

  The next target that Morgan chose was getting the better of a fight with one of the Five Company boys. The Russian, an NCO, was parrying and thrusting the lad down the track, gradually wearing him away before he went for the final, fatal thrust. Intent on the duel, he dodged and ducked, unaware of Morgan, presenting nothing but thick coat and belts or a bony ribcage in which a blade would stick. So, he tried a trick that he’d seen at the Battery. Darting in quickly he pricked his target in the shoulder, giving him no more that an inch or so of steel, but enough to bring him—with a curse—face-to-face. Then there was no contest. With one straight thrust, the officer ran the Russian through the throat—he wobbled, threw his hands up to the blade, blood running from his mouth as he fell to his knees and then onto his face as Morgan pulled the bayonet away in one clean move
ment. But still he resisted. As he writhed his hands reached out and caught at Morgan’s ankles, before one sharp blow to the skull with the butt finished him.

  ‘He’s hit, sir, colour-sar’nt’s hit!’

  In the press of bodies, smoke and thrashing limbs, several voices yelled to him from the back of the column. He pushed down the track, swerving out of one Russian’s way before another swung round to confront him. The shouts continued, but this enemy had no intention of letting him pass. He stood there, four-square, just like an opponent in the ring except that fourteen inches of steel glittered at his belly. He was no older than Morgan, but a dark moustache fell over his upper lip—it was wet with sweat. He thrust, the officer drew back. He came on again with a stamp and a feint straight from the drill-book, his eyes holding Morgan’s—blue, confident and experienced beyond his years. Morgan had intended to save his single round for an emergency, but he had no time to fence with this creature, so Morgan whipped his rifle straight up into his opponent’s face and pulled the trigger. But only the percussion cap popped—nothing else: his charge was wet.

  Then everything blurred. The Muscovite lunged hard, Morgan tried to pull his belly away from the darting steel, but stumbled, watching the metal jab into the inside of his thigh—there was no pain, the point bursting through his trousers. He could recall thrashing limbs and shouts as they both rolled in the dirt, tepid sunshine through the mist, a canopy of leaves and the Russian’s musket jarring and tearing his thigh with each roll until the bayonet finally broke off in the wound. Big, florid Private Carlton was suddenly there. He babbled Nottingham nonsense about ‘settling that bastard’s hash,’ and ‘lucky ‘e din’t get yer nads, sir’ before he dragged the cooling, dripping Muscovite away.

  Next, Sergeant Ormond and Drummer Pegg were looking down at him, pulling at his arms, getting him on his legs that collapsed below him and telling him, ‘It’s nowt, sir nowt at all,’ whilst he mumbled about the colour-sergeant and they exchanged glances and told him, ‘not to worry about nothing,’ and to ‘op on ‘ere, sir and hold tight to us necks,’ before jogging him up the track sitting on a musket that they held between them.

  He remembered the next bit much more clearly, though. As he bounced on the steel barrel his thigh began to hurt—perhaps it was that that cleared his mind—and when they came to the edge of the Battery, there was Carmichael. He ranted at all three of them—yes, ranted was the word—making no attempt to control himself in front of the men. He wanted to know why he’d been disobeyed, why no one had stayed with him to guard His Royal Highness and how many men had, ‘been thrown away’? He wouldn’t listen to either Sergeant Ormond’s or Morgan’s pleas to get some men together to go and look for the colour-sergeant. Oh no, Richard-cowardly-bloody-Carmichael was going to stay just where he was safest and the devil take McGucken.

  The last memory stayed with him for the rest of his life. The three of them glared at Carmichael with silent contempt. Drummer Pegg had said nothing: then he hawked—as only soldiers can—turned his head and spat. And there it sat, green and sticky, right on the toe of the officer’s boot.

  ‘You little guttersnipe...’ yelped Carmichael, ‘...I’ll...’

  But Carmichael never finished his sentence for Ormond and Pegg were already stumbling away with Morgan between them.

  ELEVEN

  Wounded

  Now Morgan was lying down, the pain was a little eased. Pegg and Sergeant Ormond had dropped him off their makeshift litter at the saucer-shaped dip in the ground that was serving as the collecting point for the wounded. It was sheltered by a bit of a herdsman’s wall, but the Russian artillery rounds still shivered through the air so closely overhead that Morgan felt that he could reach up and touch them. Occasionally, one skidded just the other side of the stone barrier, showering the rapidly growing bunch of wounded with grit, adding to their pain and fear.

  His sergeant and drummer had propped him against the bank, Pegg pulling his flask and pipe out of the folds of his coat for him before telling him that he’d ‘...be right as rain an’ back in the thick of it in no time, sir,’ before scuttling back to the Company and the butchery of the Sandbag Battery. In a curious act of kindness, the boy had pressed a chunk of rindy cheese into his hand before he left. Morgan had no doubt that it had come from deep in some Muscovite’s haversack and it was made no more appetizing by the blot of blood on one of its corners. Still, it was a kind thought.

  ‘Here, your honour, is it a light you’re wanting?’ A grimy hand reached a glowing, stumpy, clay pipe across the body that separated them. Amongst the groans of the many wounded and distracted by his own pain, Morgan had barely noticed the others around him. To his left lay a man with the shoulder-cape of his coat draped over his face. The toes of his worn, muddy boots touched each other, very still. But peering over him was a great, round, whiskery face that could have been any age from fifteen to thirty. His hair was thinning—and had clearly been self-trimmed with a razor. He beamed with pleasure.

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know you, man, but a light for this goddamn thing would be perfect.’ Morgan had been looking half-heartedly at his new clay pipe since Pegg had left a few minutes earlier. He’d bought a dozen at a tobacconist’s in Portsmouth before they left England and this was one of the last to survive.

  ‘I’m Corporal Patrick McEntee, your honour, Light Company, Thirtieth. Got mixed up with your lot and them Guards down at the Battery, so I did, now look at me.’

  Morgan puffed at his pipe, holding the soldier’s hot bowl upside down against his own tobacco. ‘Where were you struck, Corporal McEntee—and where are you from? You sound like a Corkman?’

  ‘Right up the arse, but one hoop does the job rightly, I don’t need another! And you’re dead-on, I’m from Leap, sir—you?’

  ‘Skibbereen, Corporal...’ Morgan’s pipe was going now and he spoke between mouthfuls of smoke, ‘...just up the road. Looks like there’s another one of our neighbours come to join the party.’

  Amongst the shrieks of shells and the groans of the wounded came the scrape of nailed boots in the dirt and the clash of pails. Dr Fergusson, one of the Regiment’s assistant surgeons, came ducking down through the mist, a slim box of instruments in his hand and Mrs Mary Keenan on his tail. Both were crouched almost double seeking the cover of the wall, the girl weighed down with two buckets of slopping, red-tinged water, her eyes flaring wide with worry when she recognized the wounded officer.

  ‘Oh, so it’s you, Morgan. I was told we had another officer casualty, buggering about as usual, I dare say, and getting yourself into mischief.’

  ‘Look after this corporal first, won’t you Doctor?’ Morgan asked.

  ‘Don’t worry about me, Doctor, both my bum holes are fine and numb. See to the young gentleman first, sir.’ Pleased with another base joke, McEntee leered over the neighbouring corpse, fascinated by whatever voodoo the surgeon was about to perform on Morgan.

  ‘All right, that’s enough of the courtesies, you two, Mrs Keenan isn’t impressed. Now, how came you to break this bayonet off, Morgan, it won’t make it’s extraction any easier, you know.’ Fergusson held both ends of the blade between his fingers, gently waggling them and peering into the ragged, bloody cloth of Morgan’s trousers.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Doctor, I’ll try to bear that in mind next time I’m wrestling a Muscovite.’ He managed the quip through clenched teeth, but Mary gave no sign of hearing above the noise of the guns.

  ‘Hmm, quite so. Now, Mrs Keenan, oblige me by putting a swab either side of the wound...that’s right.’ Even through his pain, Morgan could feel how Mary’s hands trembled. As the surgeon placed one palm against his thigh and grasped the broken end of the steel with what looked like a pair of plumber’s pliers, she stared deeply into his eyes.

  ***

  ‘Ere you are, sir, get a tot of that down yerself, whilst: I slip yer pants off.’

  Morgan took a deep pull at the tin cup full of navy rum as the orderly rummaged around his w
aist looking for the buttons that would release his overalls. He was lying on the same blanket in which he’d been wrapped as he clung to the back of a mule all the way down to Balaklava. The pain of the bayonet blade’s extraction had been deadened with grog and this had made the first mile or so bearable, then the effects had started to wear off, the jolting of the animal hurting his leg until by the time that he half-hopped and was half-lifted up the gangway onto the hospital ship he was in agony again. Now some sort of well-scrubbed sailor, maddeningly cheerful and brimming with banter was intent upon pulling his trousers down.

  ‘What on earth are you doing, man?’ Through the rum and pain Morgan knew that his question was unreasonable—the matelot obviously knew his business—but he asked it anyway.

  ‘Just ‘avin a look at yer todger, sir, you’re in the hands of the Navy now, an’ you know what we’re like. No, sir, only joshing...’ the orderly’s voice lost its jokiness, a soft edge of concern showing through, ‘I need to get a look at yer wound so that the surgeon knows which of you officers to deal with first.’

  The candle-lit deck was fast filling up with injured officers of all ranks and regiments. Opposite Morgan was a captain of the Rifle Brigade whose lower jaw had been shattered by a musket ball, his breath bubbling past the remnants of his tongue though he was completely conscious, his eyes dull with pain. Meanwhile, soldiers of all three battalions of the Guards streamed onto the deck, tenderly carrying their officers in blankets or on stretchers, setting them down beside each other before filing respectfully away.

  Morgan looked hard at these young gods and the way in which their soldiers handled them. They were just ripped and bloody flesh like every other officer in the room yet he knew that if he asked who they were, most would be titled, sons of noble families and products of the great schools. Their commissions would have cost twice what his ha .d and whilst they all had conventional military ranks, the Guards also had more elevated ‘regimental’ ranks that meant that even a junior officer was referred to as ‘major’ or perhaps ‘colonel’. Many officers resented this false division, but Morgan had always been rather awed by their whole arcane structure and the fierce loyalty that even the lowliest Guardsman seemed to show his officers, wondering how it might work in battle. Well, now he had seen these men fighting like tigers, standing shoulder-to-shoulder not just with their own men but with his as well, scarcely noticing the blue blood that they shed. Eventually there were half a dozen Guards officers, all lying quietly in their pain, one dying within minutes, a rusty stain dripping onto the teak through the wool of the blanket that stuck to him.