The Winter Soldiers

by Garry Douglas Kilworth

  ‘Stop fooling around, Wynter,’ said Crossman, but he could not help admiring the piece. It was like a bronze artwork, rather than a machine of war. Some Chinese weapon maker had laboured over it in forge and workshop until it satisfied his yearning to make something beautiful out of something deadly, perhaps in the way medieval sword makers had spent long hours perfecting blades, decorating them, and finally giving each weapon a name like Excaliber. Crossman had no doubt this gun had a personal name. Dragon from Hell or Fiery-Mouthed Killer of Men. Now it was in the hands of staid and starchy British soldiers, who liked their guns straight and simple, looking as if they were there to do a job, not to decorate the battlefield and solicit admiring glances from followers of Asiatic sculpture. They were the sort of men who preferred a sombre minister of the Church in his black suit to a Cantonese mandarin in gold and red robes. Point and shoot, that’s what was required of a gun. Not, oh ain’t that a dandy piece, let’s put it on the mantle so everyone can look at it. It was the kind of gun you might find standing within the gates of some diplomat’s country estate, to impress visitors. On the battlements of a Chinese fort, green roof tiles and red gun ports, or a huge junk with ribbons and flags streaming from the masts, it would have fitted in. Here in the mud and muck of the Crimean peninsula it appeared entirely out of place.

  A barked order from the hairy gunner had his men knocking out the bowls of glowing tobacco and stamping their feet in readiness.

  ‘Right, sergeant, you and your rangers go round the far side, while my lot take the left. We got to be quick, for as you can see the wheels has sunk in the mud, and if we don’t move the bastard soon she’ll freeze solid where she stands and we’ll never get her on.’

  Crossman took one look at the way the cannon was listing and knew that the right side was sinking even further. It was an imperceptible movement, but it was indeed going down. Coordinated by the artillery sergeant they made a concerted effort to move the gun, but it remained stuck halfway up to its axle.

  ‘Peterson,’ said Crossman, turning to that soldier, ‘are you all right?’

  Peterson had gone a ghastly grey colour. ‘No, sergeant. It’s my shoulder.’

  ‘Of course, the wound. You’re excused.’

  ‘Thank you, sergeant.’ She stumbled back towards the hovel, leaving Wynter looking very pained.

  ‘Some people get out of everythin’,’ he said.

  ‘Yorwarth,’ asked Crossman. ‘How about you?’

  Yorwarth could hardly speak at all through his broken jaw, which had been splinted in rather a strange fashion by Gwilliams. His face looked as if it had been framed like a picture in order for it to go into an exhibition. Yorwarth rattled something in the back of his throat.

  ‘He says he’s all right,’ interpreted Wynter.

  Crossman stared hard at Wynter.

  ‘Well, he does!’ cried the indignant lance-corporal. ‘I wun’t say he said otherwise, would I? He can hear all right, even if he does look as if his head’s bin blocked by a carpenter.’

  This was true. Now, to business. Crossman sent Ali away to find some metal angle irons he had seen leaning against a house in Kadikoi a few days previously. They were still there, because Ali returned with them a few moments later, an irate naval rating following him and telling him that bloody Tartars couldn’t just steal what took their fancy, without a by-your-leave or excuse me. The Bashi-Bazouk turned and told the rating in broken English that he would cut off his head, arms and legs, very soon, if the rating called him a Tartar just once more. And what was more, he would slice him open and feed his intestines to the dogs if he continued to follow him. The salt got the message and, still grumbling to himself in the kind of voice Wynter often used, he turned and walked back down the street, kicking out unsuccessfully at an inoffensive-looking mongrel that slunk across his path.

  Using the angle irons as levers they managed to prise the wheels from the mud. They then used the irons as runners to get the gun rolling again. Ropes were reaffixed and the cannon could now be pulled from the front and pushed from behind, with a strong man on each wheel to heave them at that point and keep the object moving. The two strongest men were the Turk and the gunner. They kept looking across the gun at each other with respectful glances as first one, then the other, managed to shoulder the wheel out of a potentially difficult rut. Gradually, yard by yard, the cannon began to travel along the post road. There was something near to five miles of ground to cover before it was in its proper place and ready to begin shelling the Russians. It was going to be a long, hard day.

  The odyssey of the gun began to attract attention as they fought it forward over the impossible terrain. Cavalry men came out to watch, smoking their pipes, then taking them out of their mouths and pointing with the stems, while offering unwanted advice. Foot soldiers lounged with their hands in their pockets, often reeling off an anecdote about some heavy load they, or their fathers, or their fathers’ fathers, had once hauled over similar impossible ground. They too had advice to offer and were not inclined to keep it to themselves, even when the gunner told them to stuff it in their pipes and smoke it.

  Everyone thought the weapon was too much like an oriental parade to win a war with, but if it had to be taken from here to there, why they had something to say about it.

  ‘You want to watch that carronade don’t careen over to one side,’ one soldier advised them, ‘and crush the life out of one on you. I seen a gun keel over once and squash a horse flat as a beggar’s purse.’ There were murmurs of approval at the delivery of this homily. The soldier was encouraged to continue, but not by the haulers of the gun. ‘Nasty mess it made. I mind the horse had a rider at the time. He got his boot stuck in the muzzle of the gun. They had to cut un out with a razor. Good pair of boots too. An’ the horse weren’t bad, when it had a body to fix its four legs and a head to, so to speak. But arter it had been fell on, its chest popped like a ripe cherry under a soldier’s boot. Not much use for nothing but the glue factory, arter that.’

  Anecdotal warnings were delivered by an ever-increasing audience along the route. During his leisure time between breaths, Wynter told such advisers where they might go to visit the Devil, and when they got there to stay on.

  Gwilliams said, ‘We could do with Jason’s fire-breathing bulls now, eh, sergeant? To pull this beast along?’

  One particular patch of the road was a quagmire. At that point the men had not the strength to continue, even though a drummer boy from the 47th had brought them tea, courtesy of the drum major. They sat and drank the tea right there in the cold mud, being covered from head to foot in mire anyway. A staff officer, a colonel, passed by on his horse and told them they were doing sterling work. Their fame was spreading throughout the whole of the army. Even some Frenchmen came to watch from the Sapeur du Genie bringing with them stick loaves and bottles of wine, to make a picnic of the affair. To Crossman’s consternation the goose girl arrived and waved to him shyly. He felt it discourteous not to return the wave, which had his men looking at him rather curiously.

  ‘Just one of my students,’ said Crossman, through gritted teeth.

  ‘Woll,’ said Yorwarth through his wooden mouth-cage, ‘oof thoss a somple oof stoo-ent, I woll ee a teesher oomorrow.’

  ‘Not of the English language, I hope,’ replied Crossman, drily.

  After a rest they continued to urge the gun forward, using threats against its ironwork and oaths regarding its parentage, as well as employing brute force. When they came to the Col, where the ground rose steeply, the gun began to get its own back. They would force it two yards forward, only to have it slip back three. Wynter was sent for some blocks, to ram under the backs of the wheels, to stop it rolling back. He returned before the half-hour, clearly drunk.

  ‘How can you get in such a state in just twenty minutes?’ asked Crossman. ‘It won’t get you out of this, you know.’

  ‘Don’t care,’ grinned the almost legless lance-corporal. ‘Don’t care a-tall.’ He then made t
he mistake of putting his bare hands on the barrel of the gun, having removed his mittens to drink, and yelled when he could not free them. They were stuck to the freezing scales of the dragon’s back. The others were now heaving the gun up the slope and dragging him along with it. He pulled at his hands and screamed with the pain this brought him.

  ‘Don’t tear them off,’ warned Gwilliams. ‘You’ll take the skin from your hands.’

  ‘Oh, Christ. Help me.’

  ‘Not if you blaspheme,’ said a seaman. ‘If you take Jesus’ name in vain, the only help you’ll get is from the Devil himself.’

  ‘I don’t care who does it. My palms hurt bad.’

  So far as Wynter was concerned, it was indeed the Devil who came to his eventual rescue.

  Ali took out a hunting knife. ‘All right, I get them off.’

  ‘You keep away from me, you heathen,’ yelled Wynter. ‘Sergeant, he’s going to chop my hands off.’

  One of the interested watchers produced a lantern, which was lit, then Ali warmed the blade of his weapon on the flame. He then began to prise Wynter’s hands from the metal, forcing the blunt edge of the blade between the skin and iron. First he got one off, and then the other, and once they were free he clipped Wynter’s ear with a practised hand and told him not to play child games and to do his work. Wynter was mortally afraid of Ali, having witnessed the Turk slitting the throats of the sleeping enemy. He grumbled at the treatment, but no more than that. A dark look from Ali silenced even that small voice of protest.

  Two Tartars with a wagon were persuaded to hitch their horses to the gun to help haul it up the slope. Once at the top it was then pushed and pulled to the bottom on the other side. Halfway down the gun decided to try to beat its handlers to the bottom. Everyone let go except one of the seamen, who remained hanging on to the large piece of ordnance, which then proceeded to wrench his arm from its socket. He gave a loud scream and fell to the ground clutching his dislocated shoulder. His arm was at a horrible-looking right-angle to his body, pointing, as it were, behind him as if at some Nemesis creeping up to stab him in the back.

  ‘I’ll fix him,’ said Gwilliams, pushing the others aside as they crowded round the unfortunate seaman, saying helpful things like, ‘Does it hurt?’

  ‘Out of the way,’ ordered the bone-man barber.

  Gwilliams took the screaming seaman’s arm, put his foot somewhere in the region of his neck, and gave the wayward limb a practised twist. Everyone heard the click as the ball found its socket. The patient had gone deathly quiet now and stared straight ahead. He was sitting up. Gwilliams took him firmly by the shoulders and began to massage him with large strong hands. Then he ordered the man to lie flat on the ground. Once the seaman was prone, Gwilliams walked up and down his back, pressing here and there with the balls of his feet, until at last he allowed the man to get to his feet again.

  ‘How do you feel?’ Gwilliams asked.

  The seaman flexed his bad arm, shook his head in wonderment, and said, ‘I feel grand. Grand. Not a twinge.’

  ‘Well now,’ said the gunner looking at Gwilliams with admiration, ‘ain’t that somethin’? I never saw nothin’ like that before. Where did you learn such stuff?’

  ‘From the Red Indians,’ remarked Gwilliams. ‘They know all about bones. I can fix a bone, soon as look at it.’

  ‘I’ll wager you can.’

  Crossman slapped Gwilliams on the back. ‘Well done. I heard you were good at these things. Now we’ve all seen it. But, matey,’ he said to the gunner NCO, ‘I think we had better put your man on light duties for the rest of the trip.’

  The gunner agreed.

  They hauled again. Finally the emplacement was in sight. A hoarse cheer went up from both the men of the navy and Crossman’s crew. Idle watchers fell away, now that there was no more sport to be had in baiting the haulers. Battered and bruised the two sets of men dragged the gun the last few yards and set it in place.

  ‘Now,’ said the gunner to Crossman and his crew, ‘you shall be allowed to witness what she can do.’

  He laid the gun himself, then his men went through the usual procedures prior to firing, loading the piece with a round shot. When all was ready the portfire was applied. There was a tremendous explosion, louder than was required of a normal gun of the size. Several pieces of metal went flying towards the Russian defences, only one of which was the cannon ball. When the smoke had cleared the seamen were shocked to see that the dragon had lost its jaws. The lower mandible had hit the ground at great force and had gone spinning away into a gulley. The upper jaw had flown high and wide and had come down clanging amongst some rocks where a British picquet post was enjoying a quiet afternoon.

  ‘You’ve blown his bloody top off,’ said Wynter aghast. ‘Poor beggar’s got nothin’ to put his hat on now.’ He felt the injury almost as if it were himself who had lost puffed cheeks and iron teeth. In the last hour or two he had become attached to the dragon. It was like watching the head of a pet dog explode before his eyes.

  ‘Oi!’ came a distant yell from that spot. ‘Are you firin’ at us?’

  ‘Sorry, lads,’ called back the gunner. ‘Our gun lost its muzzle.’

  The cannon itself looked a sorry mess now, flared and jagged.

  ‘We could get someone to cut off the end of the barrel,’ suggested a seaman. Like most of the others, he was loath to admit they had hauled the gun all that way for nothing.

  ‘It’d be too short,’ sighed the gunner.

  ‘It might not be . . .’

  Crossman and the other rangers left the navy men arguing over the usefulness, or otherwise, of the Chinese cannon. When it came to gloominess there was no one quite like a half-deaf gunner for despondency. His ears ringing for most of his life, his head as thick as a dull cooking pot, the gunner lived in a world of his own. In battle he was expected to stand still in a place of loud noises and kicking iron – or run for his life. There was no in-between. He could not march resolutely forward, or fight a steady retreat back to another position. He remained with great metal balls falling on and around him or he fled the enflamed wrath of those whom he had attempted to blast to pieces from a safe distance. It took a special kind of stolid dependency to be a gunner and a rather stoical if dismal philosophy on life. The rangers were pleased to have left such individuals behind and they made their way back to Kadikoi, their spirits lifting with every step of the journey.

  When they got back Crossman found a message from Colonel Hawke awaiting him. He went to the colonel and found him in a relatively jovial mood.

  ‘Well now, at least we know who you are, at last, sergeant. Mystery veil lifted.’

  Crossman’s heart sank. ‘My father’s been to see you?’

  ‘Yes, we had a good talk. He had already been to the 88th to see your regimental colonel, who referred him to me. I was rather on the listening side at first, you understand, but after his demands had been stated I had my say too. You won’t be surprised when you learn he wanted me to send you back on the next ship going home. Said your presence here embarrassed him and compromised his position as major in a noble regiment. I pointed out that so far as the army was concerned, we only had his word that you were his son, that you were of age and could speak for yourself, and that he could no more demand your return to England, or any other country, than he could request the abdication of our dear monarch, bless her heart.’

  ‘I imagine his response was a fit of apoplexy.’

  ‘You could say that. When that did not work he appealed to my common decency. I’m not sure what he meant by that. I was obliged to ask him whether he intended me to be decent to you, decent to him, or decent to the army. After another explosion I was then forced to remind him that so far as I knew majors could not demand anything of colonels, especially majors using language fit only for merchant seamen who preferred to be pressed rather than sent to a penal colony. He saw the wisdom in apology, asked who was my superior, and left. I imagine you have heard the last of him for
a while, since the name I gave him belongs to a senior member of the government.’

  Crossman groaned. ‘I’m sorry about all this, sir. I had hoped I could get through the war without him knowing. He’s due to retire and I imagine this will be his last campaign. It’s unfortunate that it should happen now.’

  Hawke shrugged. ‘I must admit I was taken aback, almost rocked on my heels for a while, but I rallied, dear boy. I rallied. Now, I have a fox hunt for you, which will get you out of his hair for a while.’

  ‘Do I have to take the lieutenant on this one?’

  A cloud passed over the colonel’s face for a moment.

  ‘No, you don’t have to. Do you resent Lieutenant Pirce-Smith so much?’

  ‘No, not resent, exactly. I think he’s probably a fine officer. He’ll make a good leader of saboteurs one day, I haven’t any doubt. But, understandably, he finds it difficult to accept someone junior to him giving the orders. I would be the same. Send me out into the field with a corporal who was more experienced than me, with authority over me, and I should resent it highly.’

  Hawke looked relieved. ‘I’m glad you think we can make something of him. I actually have faith in the man. He’s the son of a good friend, you understand. Now, your mission. Come over here, to the map. You see this section of the Russian defences, here? Between the Malakoff and the Redan? Our old friend the ingenious engineer Todleben has built a crane, a giant crane, which does the work of a hundred men in half the time. That’s possibly a hyperbole, but you get my meaning? By day we knock down the defences, by night he puts ’em up again, using this wood-and-iron monster worthy of Isambard Kingdom Brunel.’

  ‘I think I understand where this is leading.’

  ‘No doubt. You must destroy the monster, of course, and bring me its metaphorical head.’

  ‘I shall do my best, sir.’

  ‘Of course you will. Now, you expect to take your whole peloton with you?’

  ‘I would like to leave Peterson and Yorwarth behind. Their injuries are too recent.’