To Do and Die

by Patrick Mercer

  We'd done this only three or four times and on this occasion I was sunk in melancholy, wondering about the future and trying not to linger on the past when he said, "Please stop that, Watson. It makes an infernal row; can't you just have the damn thing put on your watch-chain like any other man would? Why do you keep playing with it?”

  At first I thought that he must be able to see my reflection in the glass of the window, how else could he know? I didn't reply.

  "Trophies like that have their place, I agree, but can't you be a bit more discreet with it? Hang it from your watch-chain, like I say, or have a little case made for it and leave it on the mantel piece, but do stop tinkering with it, can't you, it's damned distracting."

  It was turning into something of a habit, I agree. Whenever the black dog paid a visit, I'd ferret it out of my waist-coat pocket, pass it from hand to hand and, I suppose annoyingly, roll it along the surface of the table next to my chair under my palm.

  "What do you mean by trophy, Holmes?" He couldn't see what I was toying with, how could he know?

  "Well, it's obvious what it is, isn't it. Clearly, it's round, but it's not a glass eye or a child's marble, why would you have such things? In fact, it's not quite round as the noise it makes as you roll it is uneven. And it's a low noise, suggesting metal - soft, heavy metal that's slightly misshapen. It's a musket ball, Watson, the one they fished out of your back in Afghanistan after it had hit your shoulder blade and lost its shape," he answered matter-of-factly. "Now be a good fellow and either put it away or give it to me so that I can take it to my jewellers and have it mounted for you."

  "But that's astounding, Holmes…how on earth…" He interrupted my surprise: "No, it's not astounding, it's elementary my dear Watson."

  And there it was, the whole part of my recent life, the part I'd hoped to shroud, to keep from prying eyes, laid bare before me. It wouldn't have surprised me in the least if he'd even mentioned the very place that things had changed for me forever: Maiwand. That shocking, sordid, sun-baked gutter where the best men I've ever known still lay. Their bones, I guessed, were now as white as the walls of the squalid little village where the pick of Victoria's men - both Indian and English - were hacked into carrion. If Holmes thought my face haggard, it had reason to be as his words sent me tumbling back into that butcher's shambles - nothing more than a scratch on the map known as Maiwand.

  ***

  "Bloody fog, sir? 'Ow comes there's bloody fog? It's more like being on the banks o' the damned Thames, not in a goddam' desert," grumbled Private Bowler as we rattled and bumped our way over the gritty, broken ground. And he was good at that Bowler - grumbling. I'd inherited the scruffy little devil when I was posted as Medical Officer to the 66th in Karachi in late '79 and had had a few months to get used to his curious, flat Reading twang before we started the long slog up to Afghanistan whilst the fighting was still raging around Kabul. Shorter than most and wearing spectacles, Bowler had soon been posted to the Medical Section from a duty company because he hardly looked the part on parade, but what he lacked in stature, he made up for in brains.

  "Yes, it's a bit of a puzzler, ain't it, Bowler," and it was true, I'd seen nothing like it in my time up country. Mists aplenty, but never as thick as this, for it swirled and wafted about like something from an Irish bog, deadening the noise of the brigade which we knew marched around us. It even muffled our two mules, all the gear they carried and our three native bearers who could be relied upon to hawk and chatter like monkeys even early in the morning.

  "Think the General will want a fight, sir, or will he just try to out manoeuvre this Ayoob Khan bloke?" There, that was just it. Bowler looked a sight in his baggy khaki, his just too big sun helmet and with his puttees badly wound. His buff equipment was never tightened properly and his rifle seemed more like an impediment than what the sergeants would term his 'wife an' fuckin' lover', but he had some grey matter. What other private soldier would have remembered the name of the enemy's commander and even appreciate that there might be a way for Burrows - our General - to see the upstart off without a fight at all?

  "Course he'll fight! Our General's too much of a gamecock to let this bunch of cheeky savages get away with things. Why, they'll be exhausted after their march all that way from Herat and you saw what fettle they were in at Gereshk the other day, didn't you, Bowler?" I replied, trying to sound more confident that I felt. For sure, Ayoob's mob had marched hundreds of miles from Herat in the west to try to oust the Wali of Kandahar and us, 3,000 or so mixed English and Bombay troops, from the same city and they should all have been tuckered out. It was also no lie that we'd given them a bit of a bloody nose at Gereshk, the ford across the Helmand a few days back, but we'd hardly come to grips with them, had we?

  "They looked sound from what I could see, sir! I thought these johnnies was supposed to be all rag-tag an' curly swords, sir, not uniformed with proper guns an' that. I reckon they could be dead nasty if they gets their dander up," and I had to agree with Bowler's gloomy assessment.

  I, too, had expected to see a native host more reminiscent of the bible than a regular army when we'd collided with Khan recently. But all I'd observed was troops in trim looking green uniforms who came on well enough and artillery that seemed not only to be well handled, but numerous. And worst of all were the swarms of Ghazis who jigged about screeching. These were the proper jihadis, the vicious clowns who'd sworn to rid their land of the hated feringhee and whom I'd already seen in action. True, we'd only come across one or two of them so far in the streets and alleys of Kandahar where unwary patrols could find a man isolated, filleted with a razor sharp blade, his rifle and ammunition gone and left bleeding to death before you could say 'knife' - if you'll forgive the expression. Now there were thousands of the lethal sods who'd flocked to Ayoob's colours as he'd marched east, the cut of whose jib I didn't like one little bit.

  "No, Bowler, my lad (my lad? I was 26 and Bowler was older than me and had learnt more at the university of life than Trinity and medical school would ever teach me), just trust to the Horse Gunners, our Martini-Henrys and a bit of cold English steel to show this lot who's master."

  "But the Battery's only got a few nine-pounders, sir. Johnny Af's got dozens o' guns an' it's only the 66th wot's armed with Martinis, the Bombay lads ain't got nothing better than the enemy has, the old Sniders, sir, an' I weren't impressed with either battalion when it came to brass tacks the other day, sir," said Bowler, dismissing my optimism.

  And he was right to. E/B Battery was damned good but only had six of the new, steel, guns and we'd pressed a few of the Wali's brass smooth bores into service but at the cost of denuding the already under-strength 66th of yet more men who should have been carrying Martinis. The native regiments - the Bombay Grenadiers and Jacob's Rifles - were, indeed, armed with the old Sniders and hadn't looked too steady under fire at Gereshk - but it wouldn't do to agree with a private soldier, would it?

  "You don't need to worry yourself, Bowler. Just listen to any orders that are passed down, get the Dressing Station set up and the awning rigged if we're told to and things will be just grand," I said airily. But that wasn't the case at all.

  ***

  "Now, Watson, any chance you could lend me your bhistis for a while?" This was Lynch, a sometime pal of mine from the Regiment, but the trouble with him was that he blew hot and cold. One minute we'd take your dogs out ratting down to the stables and he'd be the best of companions, the next he'd turn on you when the bucks in the Mess decided that the style of your coat wasn't de rigeur. We'd only been on the march for about three hours, the fog had burnt off and the sun started its normal, burning caper, when we'd been ordered to stop on the lip of an old, muddy water course - or wadis as we liked to call them out east - that was about twenty foot deep and prepare for action. Bowler and my natives had got the canvas awning up and were just starting to off-load the mules when past us doubled Letter C Company with Lynch, the commander, at their head, every man dusty on top and mud-sme
ared below and puffing like grampuses. And they wanted to use my boys as bhistis - as water carriers - as if they didn't have natives of their own for that very purpose!

  "Well, dammit, no, Lynch! My fellows are highly trained medicine wallahs…" and they were, all three had qualified at the central hospital and earned three annas a day extra, not beasts of burden. “What's wrong with your own people? And what news is there anyway?"

  "There's nothing wrong with my bhistis at all," Lynch positively snapped back at me, "it's just that we've used every drop of water charging about whilst the brass decide where to put us."

  "Well, I've told you not to let the men guzzle water when they're hot, it'll twist the gut, see'f it don't!" I fired back, deliberately embarrassing the man in front of his colour-sarn't. "Be a good fellow and tell me what's ado, we base wallahs hear nothing, you know, " and this pacified him a bit.

  "Aye, you're right about the water, Doctor. But, I don't know much more than you do. Galbraith…" Lynch was talking about our Colonel, he was one of those fierce Ulstermen whom I'd rated as soon as I saw him; I'd just watched him go trotting past on his big grey with the Adjutant not ten minutes past. He'd waved cheerily but told me damn-all, "has sent my people…" he pointed at the sixty or so sweaty, beefy lads who were panting all about him, "to guard you lot, the Quartermaster's gang and the baggage train whilst he forms a firing line on the right of the whole Brigade up yonder," Lynch pointed over the lip of the wadi, leaving me not one jot better informed. "The cavalry's being kept back and the Bombay battalions have just gone running forward, but I don't know much more than that, I fear."

  "Any sight of the enemy?" I asked, rather hoping to hear news of some group that had come forward to parley with our Political Officer, Colonel St John. Now don't get the wrong impression. If it came to a fight I wouldn't swerve, but I was a doctor first, not a soldier and my job was to mend holes in folk, not to make them. My career depended on being deft with needle and poultice, not powder and shot. Frankly, the handful of bones I'd set, the wounds I'd staunched and the few rough blankets I'd pulled up over dead, pale faces, had done me fine. I had no desire to see any more.

  I reckoned that we might just as easily let St John and the clever-buggers talk us out of this one.

  "No, not really. I saw what looked like quite a mob of 'em barrelling along the road towards Kandahar - I think that's what made us deploy so damn quick - but I got the impression that no-one knew quite what was going on before I got sent back here. But I don't suppose much will happen…" this piece of wisdom, though, was cut short by two, quick, snarling bangs in the distance. They were our, rifled nine pounders for sure, "ha, well…damn, that'll cool Johnny's ardour for him!" and in the normal course of things, I'd have agreed with Lynch. Our guns could always be relied upon and if we had to fight at all, I was glad they'd got their punch in first. The problem was, that as I looked at Lynch and he looked at me, both of our faces just beginning to crease into little, confident smiles at the thought of our foes getting the worst of it from the off, a great ripple of gunfire came hammering back - thirty guns at least judging by the row.

  We were safe enough tucked into the wadi, but one of the enemy's rounds came skipping over our heads, shrieking along and showering the top of the awning with grit and sand and causing Shilman Ali to drop a big bottle of ether. The damn thing smashed, dosing my trousers and puttees in the process and making me stink like a three-farthing chemists. That smell, combined with that of the hot canvas - which always made me think of cricket marquees during an English summer - was something I'd never forget.

  "You're a clumsy owl, Shilman…" mocked Nakshbad Singh, my senior orderly, "have you never heard a little gunfire before?" which was a typically daft thing of the old bugger to say for none of us had been under artillery fire until now - except Singh, of course, and I suppose that's why he said it. He could be a cussed creature could Nakshbad Singh. Older than all of us, he'd been a bearer with Napier at Magdala back in '68 and never let the rest of us forget it. He was clever, spoke good English and knew his medical onions, so to speak, but he was always bickering with Bowler - they were like cat and dog - and, frankly, it all got a bit wearing.

  There must have been a pause for a few minutes, I suppose. I didn't notice, I was too busy looking to my lint, splints and bandages and listening to the noise of the guns when, all of a sudden there was a slithering crowd of men, sliding down the bank of the wadi just next to us and a voice yelling, "Where's the dressing station, where's the bloody doctor?" an alarmed, anxious, commanding voice.

  "Over here, Sarn't Jackson, you've found the damn doctor!" I yelled back at the Band Sergeant who, along with some of his musicians, was carrying two stretchers with silent forms stretched out on top of them.

  "Oh, sorry, sir. No disrespect meant. We've got two lads from Letter H Company for you - right nasty." Jackson was right about that. The first boy had been struck by a combination of iron splinters and flying grit that had peppered the side of his face and his shoulder badly and as Singh and Shilman started to clean the wound just like they'd been taught I asked:

  "Why've you brought me this man, Sarn't Jackson? He's dead meat, you've wasted your men's time and brawn. You know you're supposed to mark the fallen and leave them where they are when battle's joined, don't you?" I was being needlessly harsh with the man, I knew, but then I was trying to cover my own dismay. It was another lad, no older than twenty at a guess, and the litter was quite asked with his gore that had leaked from several shrapnel wounds in his back, "Oh…oh, sorry, sir. I…we…"

  “Go on, Jackson. Take the stretchers and get back to the Battalion. Go on, stop gawping and get away with you," and with that he and his seven men stumbled off. How I wish they had stayed.

  Chapter Two: The Battle

  I was completely absorbed with the wounded man, getting some of the little ether I still had left into him, cleaning the muck and cloth out of the lacerations and trying to staunch the bleeding, when a shot boomed close by, a ball smacked through the canvas of the awning and the breeze carried a cloud of powder smoke right round my little team.

  "Bloody 'ell, bugger off you!" My senses were still numbed by the bang and, if I'm honest with myself, I was probably trying to absorb myself totally in the casualty and block out the distant din of the fighting - thank the Lord that Bowler had his wits about him. I was just aware that he was tinkering about getting more medical stores to a point of readiness, when the shot came and then he was down on one knee, swearing hard, his rifle - the very weapon with always seemed so unnatural in his hands - in his shoulder, bucking and spouting a great white finger of smoke. I heard more than saw the strike of his round, for I was still in a half crouch from the bullet that had narrowly missed me, but the sound of lead hitting flesh was unmistakable. And then a sigh and a body hitting the ground caused me to look over my shoulder at a wiry, bearded tribesman whose sandals were drumming a beat of death in the dust.

  "Jesus, sir, there's more of the buggers!" said Bowler again, levering a spent cartridge from his rifle, slipping another half-inch round into the breech and sending another turbaned lout to meet the Prophet all in one, fluid move. And that's when I wished the bandsmen had stayed. They might only be musicians and the shock may well have ruined their violin playing forever, but at least I would have had someone to protect me. As it was, I was a good few strides behind Nakshbad Singh and the other two of my native bearers who, in a rare display of combined athleticism and savour faire had realised that a clutch of Ayoob's finest had not only infiltrated up the wadi, but had also got well into our rear. Then Nakshbad Singh and his folk - wise lads that they were - had made an instant decision to abandon their sahibs to whatever the fates had in store. Well, I can't say I'm proud of it, but I left the casualty for dead and was away up the wadi lip tearing off my apron and wishing that I'd had the forethought to keep my revolver on my belt.

  "Run, Bowler, just run for Christ's sake man," I bawled as I scrabbled in the loose earth of
the bank and it was only Madelaine, I guess, who saved the day - it certainly wasn't me. There must have been about half a dozen of the brutes within a few yards of my makeshift operating table now - I paused at the top of the stream bed - when Madelaine (we had to call her that - Madelaine the medical moke, you see) bolted right through the middle of them, braying like the self-opinionated harlot that she was, and giving Bowler the space he needed. Then it was, "Go on, sir, I'll hold 'em here, see'f you can't get 'old of the bloody nag," another cracking detonation from Bowler's rifle who was now beside me and I was haring off out of it, catching Madelaine's harness as I did so. The difficulty I found, though, was that I was now going forward towards the fighting, not backwards away from it, clinging to an animal that was only a fraction more in control of its senses than I was and neither of us with anything more offensive than a bag of mixed oats and bran. Thank God for Bowler and Nakshbad Singh.

  ***

  I'd never really realised what that old expression, 'out of the skillet and into the fire', meant until I ran for my life, right slap-bang into the middle of the biggest, bloodiest brawl I've ever seen. I seemed to have found myself in the centre of Dante's Inferno what with drifting smoke, shrapnel rounds bursting within feet of my head, horses and their riders galloping crazily by with the guns that they towed bucking along behind them. They were joined by Madelaine braying like the clap of doom whilst Nakshbad Singh did his best to stop her stampeding along with the rest of her kind.

  "Ere, sir, get 'old of this, will yer?" panted Bowler, pressing a dead sepoy's Snider into my hands and a pouch full of ammunition. "Look sharp, Nakshbad, me old mucker, let's get amongst our lot, quick now!" and the weight of the weapon and its rounds was suddenly welcome. But not as welcome as the press of khaki bodies just in front, "Make way for the Doc an' 'is mates, can't you, Letter H?" yelled Bowler as we found ourselves hard up against two ranks of about sixty men, wreathed in smoke and, from the look on their faces, completely oblivious to anything except the charging ranks of humanity whom they were scything down with each of their thumping volleys. Now, I’d always thought that H Company was a fine company in a splendid battalion, but the way that those boys were loading, aiming, firing, loading and firing again struck me as miraculous. Some of their rifles were so hot that they'd wrapped the yellow-waxed cartridge wrapping paper around the stocks, whist every man had dozens of empty cases strewn about his feet.