To Do and Die
Page 40
"Don't bother trying to say anything to this lot, Watson…" suddenly, Peirson-Gower, H Company's youthful and adored commander, was shouting in my ear, "they're all as deaf as posts! Good of you to join us this far forward…"
But before I could explain, PG was gently elbowing me to one side and snapping off two rounds from his Enfield revolver whilst the soldier in front of him struggled with a jammed cartridge.
"Damn those Bombay lads, Watson. We did our best to prop them up, but they just broke and ran; would you credit it?" Well, I wouldn't credit anything, for it was as much as I could do not to piss myself with fear. "But we'll hold this lot so long as our ammunition lasts and the guns…ah… ah, that isn't the best of omens." You'd have thought PG was talking about a lone magpie flapping past us on a country walk, so cool was he, not the sight of one of our nine-pounders appearing through the smoke and dust with its horses at full gallop, the limber covered in wounded and going like the clappers for the rear.
"Things will probably get a bit sporting now, Doctor. Might I encourage you to lend a hand with that splendid fowling piece of yours - like your man here - it is Bowler, ain't it - is doing?" I've never heard anything like it. The wretched, lovely, daft bugger might have been asking me to take tea with him so calm was he - but that, thank God, was the sort of officer you got in the 66th and I could no more have refused him than if he'd asked me to bat at number eleven.
"Pull your rear sight down and aim low, sir: lovely, bloody lovely!" Bowler encouraged me as I pointed the long, steel barrel of the Snider at a charging tribesman who was no more than thirty yards from me, squeezed the trigger rather than jerked it, I'm pleased to say, and saw the man throw up his arms, flung to the ground by my piece of lead. Not that I could see much through the muzzle smoke. There were a thick layer of bodies, all dressed in tatty, multi-coloured robes lying a little in front of us, set about by black flags, some fallen, some stuck in the earth whilst the wounded writhed amongst them. Then, no sooner had I fired than the chaos seemed to ease a little with the non-commissioned officers telling us to cease fire whilst the smoke cleared slightly in the breeze.
"There y'are, sir! First blood to you, bet that felt good, din't it?" Bowler, helmet gone and spectacles awry was grinning at me. The scruffy little clerk had transmogrified into a fighting devil - he was fanning the open breech of his Martini to try to cool it down, clearly having the time of his life. But I couldn't agree with him. I'd obviously felled and perhaps killed one of my fellow men for the first time and whilst I knew that, as an educated man I should experience some remorse, I felt nothing. Nothing more, that is, than a profound relief than my wobbling knees and overstretched bladder seemed to have left me. But before I could reply, brassy, corporal and sergeant-like voices were demanding, "How much ammunition 'ave you got lads?" and on most men shouting back that they had no more than a dozen rounds left, there came the answer, "Well, shoot straight boys 'cos there ain't no more just yet an' Johnny Af's not finished by a long chalk!"
The only effect this had on Bowler was to make him laugh, to exclaim, "Dear-oh-dear, whatever next?" and shake his head. For my part I was glad that I had a full pouch of the entirely different Snider rounds - strange, rough, half paper-covered things when you compared them with the neat Boxer cartridges that the Martinis fired - but the next order sent a shiver up my spine…
"Bugger me, sir, you'll 'ave to keep your eyes peeled for one knocking around on the ground," said Bowler as he pulled his own, fourteen inch bayonet from its scabbard and slotted it over the muzzle of his rifle, all the rest of the men doing the same. Clearly, PG was right, things were about to get very sporting and that's why he was ordering bayonets to be fixed. I just had time to glance at Nakshbad who was stroking Madelaine's ears and whispering what I hoped were re-assuring things to her slightly to our rear when the cry went up, "Here they come again, hold your fire!" and with a great cry of what sounded like, 'din-din!' a wall of charging, yowling bodies emerged from another wadi about two hundred and fifty paces to our front. Some were firing their rifles and jezrails as they came, making the air around us hum with lead, but most waved an assortment of cutlery, swords, spears, daggers and the like and many seemed to be completely clothed in dirty white robes.
"Ghazis, sir. Them bastards in white is bleedin' madmen; they'll stick you in the gizzard, they will, if you give them a chance. Just 'old yer fire, sir, wait for the order," said Bowler, telling me nothing that I didn't know already and hardly adding to my confidence. Yet he just stood there grinning along with the rest of the Company, his rifle held waist high, the bayonets pointing at the enemy like a great, menacing hedgehog. But now no guns were chopping at these lunatics, we were simply rooted there waiting for them - I fancied I could hear their feet drumming on the sand, even above their chanting until, "At one-hundred paces, preeeesent…" was shouted by the NCOs and every man's rifle rose together. The minutes passed, on came the wave of bodies, my own finger curled round my trigger, first pressure taken, wondering why we were waiting. Then, "fire!", the scene disappeared in rolling smoke and instantly, "reload," levers were pulled, empty case tinkled to the ground, and "fire!" then the whole process again, our world lost in roiling smoke, cursing men and the screams of the dead and dying mixed with that crazy, terrifying shrieking that came closer by the second, invisible through the white cloud in front of us, Bowler turning to me, leering as he groped for another round and asking, "You alright, sir? Ready for…" but he never finished as, like demons through the fog, a clutch of banshees fell upon our line, three or four of them emerging just yards to my left, bellowing and hacking, pulling one of the soldiers by his equipment straps forward onto their blades, his boy's face an image of surprise and offended dignity as he disappeared under a welter of flying robes and vulpine snarls.
The next few seconds - or they could have been hours for all I know - were a pastiche of blood and horror. The boys rallied to their friend, bayonets jabbing and butts flailing, frail flesh being smashed and stabbed, hot blood flicking and spraying about as the soldiers and tribesman vied with each other in lethal skill. I watched, helpless, transfixed until Nakshbad Singh brought me to my senses, "Sahib…sahib, there in front, shoot sahib!" and I flung my Snider to my shoulder as a great, bearded creature appeared before me, a hideous knife pulled back, ready to plunge into my vitals. I fired (what else could I do, I doubt he'd have waited for me to calm him with laudanum) and saw my ball hit him just below the eye, the back of his head spouting blood before he fell from my view.
Then bugles penetrated the noise, shouts that made no sense to me whilst Bowler dragged at my arm and howled at Nakshbad, Madelaine and all of us, "Come on, damn well fall back…" and as the khaki ranks lost order and turned into a scrambling, darting scrum, "just bloody run for it, sir…" and I did, conscious only of the fact that a little way ahead, apparently on the bank of another wadi, I could see the face of PG and his Colour Sergeant. They seemed to be surrounded by no more than a dozen of his men - now all bareheaded with their clothes and equipment anyhow, yet firing disciplined volleys into our pursuers, buying us vital time. As we came closer I could hear the same officer not shouting, but saying with an iron determination in his voice, "Steady men, steady. Rally here, my boys…" with, unbelievably, a lit cheroot between the fingers of his left hand and a hot revolver in the other. It can only have been this cameo that made me stop and goggle at him for then he said to me, "Ah, Watson, I'm so glad to see you…" Yes, really: I expected him to summon the mess waiter with the next breath! "The chaps really appreciate your being up with us, but might I detain you for a while?"
My legs, however, had other ideas. They wanted to carry me to what looked like salvation across the other side of the wadi into a group of buildings where I thought I could just make out flashing patches of green silk and the Union Jack - the Regimental Colours which promised Colonel Galbraith, the Sergeant Major and, I had no doubt, order, calm and above all safety. But, for at least the second time that day, I couldn'
t refuse a man who asked me - yes, asked not told me - to risk my skin, could I? So, Bowler, Nakshbad, a maddened mule and an equally demented doctor joined this happy band of suicides as the remnants of the Brigade streamed past with all the hounds of hell at their heels.
But, as I turned my appalled face from the bedlam around me to the berserkers in front of me and tried to get the breech trap of my Snider open, Pierson-Gower said, "It's alright, Watson, we'll do the ugly stuff. But, do you think you could take this young woman to somewhere a bit quieter? Heaven knows what she's doing here." It was the damnedest thing. Pierson-Gower was nodding towards a chit of a girl who lay almost at my feet, unnoticed in the chaos, in a dead faint with blood smeared across one of the most beautiful, captivating faces I've ever seen. The point was, I suppose, that you didn't get the chance to see what most of the native women looked like out here, for usually they were veiled. But, whatever it was that had wounded her had pulled the cloth away, revealing features and a figure which it would have been most ungentlemanly to ignore.
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