Hope

by Lesley Pearse

  As the Pride of the Ocean pulled into the small harbour, easing its way between dozens of other ships, Hope was at the bows, frantically scanning the soldiers on the quayside for Bennett.

  She could see dozens of green Rifle Brigade uniforms among the scarlet coats, but not him, and she was appalled to see how many walking wounded there were. Some had bandages around their heads, others were hobbling along with their breeches cut open and fearsome-looking wounds that hadn’t even been dressed.

  By the time the ship had squeezed into a space on the quay, Hope had observed some stretchers being carried up to a building set back from the main street. It had the appearance of a school and would therefore make a good hospital.

  She hopped from one foot to the other, waiting impatiently for the sailors to put a gangplank into place so she could run off and find Bennett.

  ‘Mrs Meadows!’ Captain Kyle called out, just as she was about to leave the ship. ‘It’s mayhem out there. I doubt your husband will be able to find any accommodation for you both immediately.’

  Hope realized the Captain was concerned for her, and desperate as she was to find Bennett, she felt obliged to stop and speak to him.

  ‘I’ll find something,’ she said edging towards the gangplank.

  ‘You won’t, not today,’ he insisted. ‘Both you and your husband will need proper rest after dealing with so many wounded, so come back here to sleep until you can make other arrangements.’

  ‘That is so kind of you,’ she said gratefully. ‘I know my husband will appreciate the offer too.’ She saw Queenie running off at full tilt to find Robbie and couldn’t delay a moment longer. ‘I must go now, but I’ll be back.’

  The view of the quay and little town had been picturesque from the ship. The water had sparkled in the sunshine, and the low stone buildings, the church and the steep rocky hills had implied a sleepy but secure and healthy place for a base camp.

  However, once Hope and Queenie had joined the mêlée of soldiers, carts, and goods being unloaded from the ships, it took on a night marish quality. Even men who had appeared unhurt had a stunned, haunted look about them. They were dirty, their uniforms dusty and stained, and all of them were unshaven.

  But if the street was frightening, the scene which met Hope’s eyes as she squeezed past stretchers to gain entrance to the hospital was terrifying.

  Despite the bright sunshine outside, it was dark within, and the first thing which assaulted her was the sound of men in fearful agony, calling for help, moaning deliriously and some even screaming.

  There were no beds, and the men were lying or sitting so close to one another that there was no room to get in between them. Many had only recently suffered a limb amputation and the dressings were bright with fresh blood. Others had gaping exposed wounds in their chests, legs and bellies, so frightful that Hope’s first thought was to flee, for she didn’t have even the first idea where to start.

  Queenie did flee, her hand over her mouth, but Hope had spotted Bennett in the far corner of that dark and terrible place. He was kneeling to dress an amputated leg, the linen jacket he always wore over his uniform soaked in blood. Even in the dim light she could see he was grey-faced and exhausted.

  All at once she was appalled that she’d lain in her bunk early this morning contemplating whether to wear her pink dress with the ruffles around the neck, or the blue one with lace to meet Bennett. She had only been concerned which dress was the more flattering, and had decided it had to be the pink one.

  She was dressed as if going for a picnic with her sweetheart. She’d even put pink ribbons in her hair! But Bennett didn’t need a sweetheart now, or a silly, vain woman whose thoughts didn’t stretch beyond a night of lovemaking. What he needed was someone to help him patch up those heroes who had been torn apart by bullets, so that maybe they might live to return to their own wives and sweethearts one day.

  Turning sharply, she ran back down the hill, side-stepping the stretcher-bearers and pushing through the crowds on the quay. Back in her cabin, she pulled out her old grey dress and white apron.

  Within five minutes she was running back up the hill. Her hair was tied back, her petticoats were gone, the sober dress and apron replacing the frivolous pink one. And as she ran she offered up a silent prayer that some kind of instinct would take over and showher how to dress gunshot wounds, for she knew that nothing she’d ever done previously had been appropriate training for this horror.

  Bennett had moved on to another soldier by the time she got back to the hospital, and he had his back to the door so he didn’t see her come in.

  ‘Nurse Meadows reporting for duty, sir,’ she said softly as she got closer.

  He turned at her voice and smiled wanly. ‘It’s good to see you, but I don’t think you can cope with this.’

  ‘I can,’ she said firmly. ‘Just tell me what to do.’

  It was dark when Bennett finally insisted they’d done all they could for one day. Their clothes were stiff with dried blood, backs aching from continually bending over, even their eyes were sore from peering in poor light.

  All the doctors had worked like demons; there had been no breaks for meals or even drinks. Bandsmen who had been pressed into service as orderlies would bring whichever man was next in line to an area where there was some light, and there on a rough table, bullets would be removed, the wound stitched and dressed. Often amputation was required.

  Hope didn’t think she’d ever forget the horror of the first leg amputation she helped with. The infantryman was no more than eighteen, with wide, childlike blue eyes full of fear. There was no chloroform to anaesthetize him, yet he’d found the courage to smile at her and kept his eyes on her, unwavering, as his limb was sawn off, never once giving way to screaming.

  The sound of the saw on bone was so horrible, with so much blood, and all the time his poor young body was twitching uncontrollably in agony. All she could do was bathe his face, tell him how brave he was, and silently pray for him.

  She knew that he and most of his comrades would have come from places like Lewins Mead. To men like him, joining the army was a way out of poverty, a smart uniform being better than rags. Yet sadly, they were defending a country that felt nothing for its poor and needy. If he survived the amputation, he would be shipped home to nothing. Maybe he’d get a medal, but what good was a medal when he couldn’t work? It wouldn’t buy bread or meat.

  She heard that some of the wounded had lain on the battlefield among the dead all night, without receiving even a drop of water. They said they’d seen the surgeons drenched in blood cutting off limbs and tossing them to one side.

  The Rifle Brigade’s casualties were light compared with other regiments. Two sergeants, one corporal and seven riflemen were killed. Twenty-five more were wounded. But Robbie had been seen by Bennett that very morning in Balaclava, and Queenie had clearly found him as she hadn’t returned to the ship.

  ‘Tell me what it was like at the river Alma,’ Hope asked Bennett after they had eaten and retired to their cabin.

  ‘The men were incredibly brave, even formidable,’ he said weakly, his face etched with weariness. ‘That’s all you need to know.’

  ‘I meant, what was it like for you?’

  Bennett slumped back on the bunk and closed his eyes. ‘Much like you sawtoday,’ he said. ‘Except we had no table to operate on, in fact we didn’t even have a field hospital. I had to examine men on the ground with only a candle for light. There weren’t enough stretchers and during the night I could hear men calling out for help, but it was too dark to find them. We had to use peasants’ carts as ambulances. It was a shambles.’

  She felt his sense of guilt that he hadn’t been able to save more men, and his anxiety that this was surely the first of many more bloody battles.

  ‘It won’t be like that again,’ she assured him. ‘They’ll get things right by the time of the next battle.’

  He opened his eyes and looked at her sadly. ‘I doubt it, Hope. There are too man
y obstacles. Now we are to lay siege before Sebastopol. But as yet there are no tents, and precious little in the way of provisions or medicine. You sailed past Sebastopol this morning. It isn’t a tiny place like Balaclava, it’s big and it’s fortified, bristling with cannons and Russians who will fight to the death to keep it.

  ‘Furthermore, all the supplies for the army will come in here, and the only way to get them to our boys at the siege is up that steep track on to the Heights. Easy enough now while the ground is dry, providing we’ve got horses or mules. But what about when the autumn rains come? Or in winter when it’s freezing? How will they get the wounded back here?’

  ‘It will be over by then,’ she said hopefully.

  ‘I doubt that,’ he said gloomily. ‘Not when the generals can’t even agree how and when to attack.’

  On the morning of 27 October, Hope woke to find Bennett had slipped out without waking her. The Pride of the Ocean, which had been their home, had left for Scutari two weeks earlier, taking many of the wounded to the hospital. Now, until such time as they could find better accommodation, they had a tent.

  It was pitched a few hundred yards from the hospital, behind the main street, and just far enough up the hill to be away from the filth and commotion of the quayside.

  The small port now had more in common with Lewins Mead than the picturesque sparkling harbour that Hope had seen when she first arrived. The hundreds of wounded men might be gone, sent back by ship to Scutari, where rumour had it they would die faster than if they were left here on the quay. But a different, less understandable squalor had taken its place. Piles of unloaded goods littered the quayside because no one knew where to take them. Some of them were foodstuffs, and after a few days of the sun burning down, or rain soaking them, they rotted. Livestock brought in on ships were slaughtered and their entrails thrown into the water. Corpses often floated back into the harbour, bobbing up to the surface because the weights tied to them weren’t heavy enough to keep them down. Along with the gallons of slops created by the now vast number of residents, and the waste from horses, mules and oxen, the stench was overpowering and the water murky.

  It seemed strange to Hope, who knew so little about army campaigns, that all those tens of thousands of troops which she had seen in Varna were now here in the Crimea, somewhere, but she didn’t know where or how close to the port. The cavalry were reported to be camping up on the plain above Balaclava. She’d seen a few of their men in the town, but she hadn’t seen Captain Pettigrew. She was terribly frustrated by being unable to speak to him about Nell. Nursing filled every minute of the day, but her thoughts kept turning to her sister, and she’d have given anything to have some sort of positive picture of Nell to help her overcome the endless horror she was subjected to daily in the hospital.

  She knew that thousands of men had been marched around Sebastopol to lay siege before the town. She’d seen picks and shovels being carted up the track to dig the entrenchments, just as she’d noted the incredible amount of ammunition and cannons being hauled up that way. The French army were based in a place called Kamiesch Bay, which she understood to be along the coast nearer Sebastopol. She had no idea where the Turks had camped.

  But even though there were far fewer wounded men, the hospital was almost as full as it had been on her first day at the port, only now most of the patients were cholera cases.

  If the port of Balaclava was to have a motto, Hope thought it should be ‘Not Enough’. For they finally had beds at the hospital now, and bed pans, bowls and some medicine too, but not enough. They had already enlarged the hospital, using outhouses, sheds and marquees, but there still wasn’t enough room. Every day ships arrived laden with goods, but all too often these goods were not what they needed. Not enough wood for fires or building work. Not enough medicine, not enough doctors, not enough nutritious food.

  A large consignment of boots had arrived, but they were too small for most of the men who needed them. There were still precious few tents, and the goods which were desperately needed up at the trenches on the Heights mostly couldn’t be got up there.

  Autumn had come, bringing very changeable weather. It could be pouring with rain and very cold for several days in succession, then suddenly the sun would come out again as warm as a summer’s day. As Bennett had predicted, the track up to the Heights, which was the only way to reach the troops, became a mudslide after rain.

  Lord Cardigan’s yacht, the Dryad, was moored out in the harbour, and he slept on it in luxury while his men huddled in greatcoats in the open. Dr Mackay, a man Bennett had much admired, had died of exhaustion after his heroic efforts to save lives at the battle of Alma.

  Bennett and Hope’s knowledge of the progress of the war was all received at second or third hand, for they rarely had a chance to venture out of Balaclava. From the commencement of the troops digging their trenches before Sebastopol, the Russians were firing on them. But it was only on 17 October that the allied army were finally ready to answer the fire. From six in the morning until darkness fell they kept up the barrage of shot and shell on the batteries and forts. The following day a steady stream of wounded were brought down, but many bled to death on the bumpy ride down the track.

  They had heard a huge explosion and everyone in Balaclava had rejoiced imagining it was the town walls being breached. But sadly it was a French powder magazine that had been hit, killing forty men, and fifteen guns were lost.

  Hope got up and dressed hurriedly, for she knew why Bennett had left for the hospital so early. The previous evening it had been said that 25,000 Russians under the command of the formidable General Liprandi were gathering a few miles from Balaclava, with the intention of seizing back the port.

  Balaclava was the sole lifeline of the British army; the food, the ammunition and every item of equipment came through it. But because Lord Raglan could not spare troops to guard it, it was garrisoned only by the 93rd, the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, 100 men from the Invalid Battalion and 1,200 Turks. The cavalry camp was a couple of miles outside the town. But there were now here near enough men to defend it.

  It was a misty, cold morning as Hope made her way down to the hospital. When she reached the hospital, as she had expected she found Bennett doing the rounds of patients, checking which ones could be sent on to Scutari.

  She could sense his anxiety, even though he turned and smiled at the sight of her. A week ago, in an unguarded moment, he had likened this task to the Judgment of Solomon. He knew that the sea trip and then the appalling conditions at Scutari were likely to kill his patients. But he had no choice, for unless he freed up beds, there would be no room for fresh casualties. If there was a battle today, there would be a huge influx of wounded. If the Russians seized the port, they were all likely to be killed or left to die anyway.

  ‘I want you to go with this lot,’ he said, waving the list in his hand.

  ‘No, Bennett,’ she said. ‘I’m staying here.’

  ‘Do as I say,’ he said curtly. ‘It’s an order.’

  ‘You are not my commanding officer,’ Hope said with a defiant toss of her head. ‘You’re just my husband, and I’m staying here with you.’

  ‘Please, Hope.’ His tone was pleading now. ‘I doubt those Cossacks have any respect for women. And I can’t bear to think what they’d do to a pretty one like you.’

  ‘Then don’t think about it,’ she snapped. ‘Now, which ship will be taking the patients to Scutari?’

  Up on the plain above the town the British had built six redoubts in a semicircle to house naval twelve-pounder guns. These were to defend the Woronzoff road which ran from the port up to the Heights, the sole line of communication with the troops up there. The redoubts were manned by Turkish soldiers, and shortly after the first volleys of gunfire were heard down in the port that morning, some of these men, desperate and terrified, came fleeing into the town yelling, ‘Ship, ship!’

  Bennett had just finished overseeing the last of the patients on to the ship to Scut
ari as the Turks appeared, and guessing that the casualties would be enormous as there were only 550 men of the 93rd and 100 Invalids standing between Balaclava and the Russians, he decided that he would borrow a horse and ride up to the plain to get a better idea of how things stood.

  The early mist had vanished and by mid-morning the sun had come out hot and strong, giving a clear viewfor miles. As Bennett reined his borrowed horse into a high vantage point to one side of the road into Balaclava, he was staggered by the scene that met his eyes.

  Wheeling cavalry, the artillery, Highlanders in their kilts and red coats, all made a glorious and somewhat unreal spectacle. The air was so still that he could hear the clink of sabres, the champing of bits, and shouted orders as clearly as if he were down there with them.

  To anyone looking down on the plain, which was some three miles long and two miles wide, surrounded by hills, it looked flat, but in fact there was what they called back in England a ‘hog’s back’ running down the centre. This created two valleys, and it was clear to Bennett that the troops in one valley couldn’t see or hear those in the other.

  In the north valley a huge square of Russian cavalry was slowly advancing, while the British cavalry were motionless in their saddles in the south valley, and the two sides were oblivious to the other’s presence.

  Lord Raglan and his entourage of commanding officers up on the high ground had a perfect viewof the whole plain, but Bennett quickly realized that they were not aware the troops couldn’t see one another, and in fact they had selected a dangerous command post.

  Bennett glanced over towards the small group of Highlanders who held a defensive position to prevent the Russians taking Balaclava and a tremor of fear ran down his spine. Five hundred and fifty men were just not enough, even if they were commanded by Sir Colin Campbell who, it was said, was one of the finest officers in the entire British army. He had ordered his men to lie in a line two deep, a difficult position for anyone to maintain, especially when they came under fire.