“So, where are those bloody Frogs, Sergeant Bacon. And the Welshmen?”
“It’s a small island, and I doubt they have run away, Paddy. I simply don’t know. I am stuck for an answer for sure, and I don’t like the possibilities that sit in the back of my mind. Make sure the boys fill their water bottles tonight, in case we are attacked in the dark hours and don’t have time to top up then.”
“You think we may be attacked, Sergeant?”
“No. But I’ve been wrong before, and more than once. Two hour sentry-go, and at least four men from the company on their feet.”
A quiet night and nothing to be seen at dawn stand-to; they ate and made ready for the day.
Word came from the Brigadier that the Company must send a sergeant’s patrol forward, the battalion to follow down the road after half an hour.
“Puts us just a mile ahead of the battalion. They will hear if we get into trouble, sir.”
“How many men, Sergeant Bacon?”
Captain Higgins was worried, could not imagine what might be waiting out of sight.
“Twelve, sir. Corporal Gloag and his platoon. He has eleven fit men, sir.”
“March in good order while we are in sight of the battalion, lads. Keep time, muskets shouldered, swing those arms. Twenty minutes of it, one mile, past the first bend in the road and then down towards the cane fields. The Brigadier has a telescope, remember, and you can bet that we are centred in it.”
Billy heard the comments that were whispered in return and chose to say nothing; this was not the place to play the martinet.
They rounded the first bend, the scrub sufficient to keep them out of sight.
“March at ease. Light pipes if you want, or chew. Keep the bottles hidden. No booze in the mornings, lads.”
Again, he ignored the whispers of ‘what price, Whitaker’.
They were wearing the linen stock, Brigadier Searson having sanctioned the abandonment of the leather throat-pincher. Better to keep that in place, Billy decided – it mopped up the sweat and stopped bugs from crawling down inside their shirts.
“Keep your shakoes on! Bare heads get sun stroke!”
“Awful sweaty, Sarge.”
“Better sweaty than a boiled brain!”
Another mile and the pace was starting to tell; they needed a rest. You might march three miles in an hour in a cold country; you could not in the tropics, not in daylight hours.
“Take ten minutes. Don’t drink all of your water, no fires for tea. Don’t take your shoes off, that man! Not unless you’ve got a stone in ‘em!”
“Just wanted to wiggle me toes, Sarge.”
“Taking ‘em off is easy; try putting them back on again! Don’t take your shoes off until the day is done.”
They marched an hour, the road taking them between cane fields.
“House, Sergeant Bacon. On the hill to the right, above the fields.”
The hills had sunk to no more than two hundred feet and the house was perhaps half way to the crest, probably benefitting from the winds off the sea but avoiding the lightning strikes at the top of the hill. The thunderstorms could be very violent when the wet season came in.
“Can you see any people there?”
“Few blackies… Man on a ‘orse coming down, Sergeant Bacon. There’s a track a bit ahead.”
“Load muskets.”
One horseman was not likely to attack them, but a loaded musket was more comfortable.
The man stopped perhaps twenty feet away from the road; he was white, well tanned, probably quite young.
“Are you a different set of soldiers?”
His English was accented, but not too heavily. Possibly he had taught himself, in the lonely evenings on a plantation.
“Warwickshire Fencibles, sir. Do you know where the others are?”
“At St Sulpice, the first village. Where our troops were. I think they have all died, or very many. Do not come close! We have sent none of ours to see what is happening. It is a pestilence.”
Billy had feared as much; it seemed logical as a reason for the missing battalion and the absence of the French Army.
“Which illness?”
“Who knows? I have not got close enough to discover.”
“I must. One mile or so, behind me, is the battalion. Please stay here and tell them to wait. How far is it to the village?”
“Less than an hour to walk.”
“Please to tell them your information. We will not attack and kill you or your people.”
Billy called the platoon to march.
“They got a bloody plague of some sorts, lads. Keep clear! If you see anyone, keep them distant. Don’t drink any water or eat any food in that village. Keep your eyes open and your wits about you.”
They marched in silence, then one of the men mustered his courage, called out to Billy.
“Sergeant Bacon, what sort of fever kills the bloody lot of them?”
“Christ alone knows, my son – because I don’t!”
They came to a narrow creek, running down to the sea.
“Halt! Stop here for half an hour. Make your tea. Eat a bite of biscuit if you can fancy it. Have a look along the banks – if it looks clean, no stiffs, no animals watering in it - then fill your bottles.”
Corporal Gloag walked across and took Billy’s mug from him, brought it back filled with tea, black but sugared.
“Thank’ee, Corporal Gloag. Much appreciated.”
“What do you reckon, Sergeant Bacon?”
“Not the recurrent fevers – they don’t kill one in ten. We’ve all seen spotted fever in England, and that don’t wipe out a whole battalion. Cholera can kill more than a half, but never all, and some men get up again after Yellow Jack. Smallpox? Can kill a lot, but not all. Got to be one of the uncommon ones what hasn’t got a name of its own. Any money you like, they had a slave ship come in just a few days before the Welsh landed, brought a bad one with it.”
“So, what do we do?”
“Find out what’s happening. Try to see if there’s any left alive. Keep well out of their reach.”
The village of St Sulpice was dead.
Nothing living moved in the two streets, dead of both armies lay in them, partially decomposed in the tropical heat. The stench was appalling even at one hundred yards.
“There’s dead dogs and cats there, Sergeant Bacon. You can just see them. I reckon I can see the carcasses of rats, too. Whatever disease this is, it kills animals as well as men. All of them.”
Corporal Gloag was openly scared.
“Where’s the wind?”
“Not much at all. Off the sea, what there is.”
“Circle around the village, no closer than this, until we get upwind of it. Two men, strong and sensible, Corporal Gloag, to make the best time they can back to the battalion, to get no closer than fifty yards and shout to them to stop and come no closer. Tell them that the whole place is dead. Then they are to come back here, without making actual contact. Just in case whatever it happens to be is blown on the wind. It might be like Yellow Jack, carried on the miasmas from one man to the next.”
Gloag selected two men and made them repeat the instructions, twice, then sent them off at the trot.
“Pull down brown branches off the coconut palms. Collect all that are fallen. Cut any brown grass and cane you can see and bring it together here.”
Billy inspected the white sand, gleaming in the sun; he looked at the wind-blown coconut palms leaning out over the ocean; finally, he glared at the blue-green sea, shading out to the coral reef, rolling gently onto the beach.
“Jesus, did you ever see such a hell-hole of a village, Corporal Gloag?”
Gloag had not – he was anxious for his promotion.
The men had used their bayonets and the cane knives to collect a substantial heap of combustible material.
“Lay it out in a line, fifty yards wide, thereabouts. So that the wind will blow the fire into the grassland and scrub between here and
the village. With luck, it will set fire to the lot.”
“Are we not going to check that any are alive in the village, Sergeant Bacon?”
“You can, if you want.”
Private Hollis, one of the regular moaners of the company, always able to find fault with an order, stared at the village and swore.
“No thank you, Sergeant Bacon.”
“That might be the first sensible thing I have ever heard you to say, Hollis.”
“I have flint and steel, Sergeant Bacon. Do you want me to start the blaze?”
“That’s the second sensible thing I have heard from you, Hollis. Do it.”
The coconut fronds flared and the fire took in the dry grasses and spread slowly towards the village; it seemed to have stopped at the gardens surrounding the huts but then found a route in. The first thatch took fire, flames rapidly taking hold, smoke billowing, downwind, away from the platoon. The huts caught light, one after another, and the uniforms of the corpses started to flare. Powder charges blew in the pouches, creating short-lived pockets of intense fire.
“It won’t be enough to burn the bodies wholly, but it might kill the disease. Spread out and collect any dead timber you can find. I want a volunteer to heave the dead wood into the flames, chucking it in from a few paces out. Enough rum to keep you drunk for a month – promise.”
The two runners came back, said that the Brigadier had the message. Ten minutes and Ensign Farthing appeared and stopped at a sensible distance.
“The Brigadier wants to know what is best to do,” he shouted.
“Get the battalion to cut dead wood and bring it here, tons of it! We’ll keep this place burning for a week! Every stiff here to be completely consumed, sir. It has killed the animals as well as the people. Send out patrols, I would recommend, sir, to see if the other villages of the island have died in the same way. Bring a cask of rum as well, sir – I need to reward the men for being willing to get close.”
“What disease is it?”
“A bad one, sir!”
Ensign Farthing was very tolerant for a boy of his age; he simply turned on his heel and trotted off. An hour later and the first party arrived, dragging a dead tree, branches and all, behind them.
“Push it as close as you can get to the fire; don’t get into the smoke. Bring me an axe.”
Two hours later and there was a substantial blaze, but too far distant from the huts to be useful. The axe came into play; they cut down one of the tallest and straightest of the palm trees and trimmed off its top and then put the whole platoon to one end and used it as a poker, pushing the burning wood towards the village and then prodding the new material further into the fire. Moving yard by yard, the end of the day saw the bulk of the fire burning in the village, and more timber thrown on every hour.
The platoon was exhausted and pulled back to the beach and the cook fire they had there. Nervous volunteers from the battalion came within a few yards and laid out a sheet of canvas and piled rations and two barrels, one of rum, the other of water, clear of the sand.
They kept the fire alight for four days, deciding in the end that they had killed everything possible. The platoon pulled back and rejoined the battalion, within reason certain that they had picked up no infection.
Brigadier Searson decided that he must set an example to his men and walked down to the platoon to greet them and thank them for their work.
“Brave men! I wouldn’t ‘ave fancied doing your job, that I will tell you for free! Corporal Gloag! D Company needs a sergeant. Put up the stripe and join them, man! Who should make corporal in Sergeant Gloag’s place, Sergeant Bacon?”
“Private Hollis, sir. He is a man who has always wanted to give the orders.”
“Put up the stripe, Corporal Hollis. The rest of you – well done. I will not forget you. Sergeant Bacon, you are made Regimental Sergeant-Major, in place of Lieutenant Muldoon, who has accepted the vacancy left by the death of Mr Whitaker.”
“Thank you, sir. Corporal O’Mara to replace me, sir?”
“Make it so, Sergeant-Major!”
Brigadier Searson stepped back from his little impromptu parade, Billy at his side, where the RSM must belong.
“Beg pardon, sir. Has the disease been found elsewhere on the island?”
“One plantation what had taken a dozen new slaves on, direct from Africa. Every man dead. The French had been there foraging, had taken half of their food, the nearest man to them said. Then the English came and took all of their rum supplies. Then both went to St Sulpice, but they never had a battle. What was the bloody plague, Sergeant-Major?”
“God knows, sir. Call it St Sulpice Fever, sir. It will have to have a name of some sort.”
“So it will. A very successful campaign, Sergeant-Major. We have taken almost no losses, while the Welsh were lost to a man and the French were destroyed as well. There are four field guns outside the village, on the downwind side. We shall prize them, now that it’s safe. That gives us six guns captured in the field – look good in a despatch, that will!”
Billy Bacon and the Soldier Slaves
Chapter Eight
“We are to remain here in garrison at St Etienne, Sergeant-Major, for the next few months. There are to be no further expeditions for at least half a year, until the next reinforcements arrive from England. When they come, it is presently planned that a raw battalion will take over here and that we shall go out to take another island. The expedition to Trinidad was successful, it seems, but took massive losses to the fevers, so much so that between them the regiments involved can barely scrape up a garrison. There are so few English soldiers left that we cannot mount any invasion until new men are found. We as a regiment have lost relatively few men and will be able to take our place in the next campaign season.”
“Yes, sir. With respect, sir, if so be we have six months in hand we could recruit more men and train them up to a useful state. We might look, sir, to take on as many as three hundred and bring ourselves back to eight full companies, even ten if we can lay hands on officers from England.”
“No officers expected before the convoy comes after the Hurricane Season, Sergeant-Major.”
“Could still make eight companies at a stretch, sir. Better for us if we could.”
Brigadier Searson – as he still was, the appointment not having been withdrawn – was uncertain, but permitted Billy to have his way on recruitment.
“If you can find bodies, Sergeant-Major, then take them into the ranks. What about the risk of teaching black men how to use muskets?”
Billy laughed, shook his head.
“Most of the slaves who came from Africa, sir, had been taken prisoners-of-war. And the bulk of them, sir, had used muskets and had fought in their battalions. They don’t do drill like us – and are the worse soldiers for it, I am told – but they can handle a musket as far as loading and firing goes, even if they ain’t never been taught to aim straight. The main thing we have to teach is drill, sir.”
“If that is so, Sergeant-Major, how do the slavers catch them?”
“They buy them, sir. They pay for them, with muskets and powder and ball, mostly. I am told that they sometimes pay with gin, and often with trade goods, the things their blacksmiths can’t forge for themselves. Mirrors are a big item, sir. No glass makers on the Slave Coast. There was a man in Bishop’s Waltham, sir, a customer of my master’s, who had been a slaver and was lonely at home and liked to talk when he came to the shop. He told me that they don’t go out hunting for slaves, sir. They would not last long if they tried that game, he said”
“Well I never! Not what I always heard, but I am sure you must know. Go out and recruit Sergeant-Major.”
Easier said than done, Billy reflected.
The battalion had taken over warehouses on the wharf at the little port, known to them as Harbour Grace, for the bulk of the men, and had a secondary camp on the other side of the island, called, originally, the Outpost. The French in the plantations did not speak t
o the soldiers and the population of the port and the remaining three villages were careful not to take the risk of becoming known as collaborators, fearing that the English would soon go and leave them unprotected. It was difficult to recruit people who would not speak to them other than on business.
The stores were willing to sell to redcoats who offered money – any money of any nationality. There was a bakery which produced good bread – better than Army biscuit, at least; three places offered strong drink, rum in its various forms; a dozen stalls in a little market sold fresh fish at dawn and smoked fish and fruit and a few vegetables for a while longer. It was possible to chatter to the market women and the baker; they had quickly picked up a sufficiency of English to welcome new customers.
The French had been on the island for many years and the inhabitants of the port were of many colours, ranging from deep coffee to dark cream; they referred to themselves as Creoles, a name Billy had not come across before. Billy had been able to arrange for the Quartermaster to purchase bread and fruit every day and fresh fish for the Officers and Sergeants Messes at regular intervals; he had, unknowingly, become an important man to the Creoles, the source of much money.
One of the ladies at the market was mother to five handsome daughters, the eldest of whom seemed to Billy to be very willing to speak to him whenever he came to purchase her fruit, which, in the nature of things was very frequently. Life as a soldier, especially as the most senior of the Other Ranks, was very lonely and it was easy to be attracted to a pretty, and willing young lady.
“Sergeant-Major, is important officer?”
“Not an officer. The highest of the sergeants, Julie.”
“But, a big man!”
Billy preened just a little – she was a very attractive girl.
“Not the biggest, but not so little”
She laughed and glanced downward at his breeches, as if to wonder just how big he was.
He laughed, said that he was important enough to have his own little cabin, separate from the men. She thought she might like to pay him a visit there – just to discover how English soldiers lived. He welcomed the suggestion, saying that they were all free from duty from late morning till close to sundown, in the hot hours of the day when it was difficult to find anything to do.
Billy Bacon and the Soldier Slaves (Colonial Warrior Series, Book 1) Page 17