The fusiliers’ band struck up the opening bars of ‘Cheer, Boys, Cheer!’ It was a firm favourite in the battalion and Jack grinned as he heard the men begin to sing in their deep and surprisingly melodic voices.
The company had come a long way in the few days since they had landed. The men now marched with a cocky air about them, a sureness that had been missing earlier. Watching them, Jack could almost believe they took a certain pride in being one of the first troops to have engaged the enemy. Only the looming presence of Slater cast a shadow over his own confidence.
He turned and saw the enormous redcoat marching easily in his allotted station, his long, loping stride and confident demeanour a reminder of the man’s power. If the whole company had, at first, been wary of the new arrival, now they were openly fearful of him. The loss of his sergeant’s stripes had added a chilling bitterness to the man and not even the boldest redcoat wanted to spend a moment in his company.
The first Light Company fusilier collapsed shortly before the march was one hour old. Fusilier Macclesbridge had been convinced he had been dying for days. His messmates, long used to his complaints, ignored his whines and daily litany of distress. If Macclesbridge was not complaining of dying of thirst then he was starving to death. He did not get a fever without being certain he had got the plague. That morning he had woken convinced that he had the cholera and his comrades had laughed at his malingering ways. Yet this time he was right. One moment he was cursing as the men marching around him belted out the chorus to ‘The Girl I left Behind’, the next his face darkened and he stumbled forward, crashing into the back of the man in front and falling to the ground choking on a torrent of vomit that erupted from his throat.
Macclesbridge was the first to fall but he was not the last.
The heat of the sun cooked the fusiliers in their thick woollen coats, stewing them in a soup of sweat that chafed their skin. Another two men from the company collapsed before midday, unable to find the strength to march under the maddening heat. After the first few hard miles, barely one fusilier had more than a few mouthfuls of warm brackish water left in his canteen. The march had barely begun but already the men trudged in misery.
They soon marched in silence, the joy of the early morning forgotten. The bandsmen had been forced to stow their musical instruments and carry out their secondary role as stretcher-bearers, hauling the sick out of the line of march lest they be trampled into the dust by the never-ending procession that ground its way forward. All too soon, the bandsmen were overwhelmed by the sheer number of men falling to the ground and by the dozens of redcoats who were too weak to rise to their feet after the halts that were now being called every half hour.
The pace of the march slowed to barely a crawl. The ground behind and to either side of the army became littered with abandoned equipment and with the crumpled forms of those unable to carry on. Men sank to their knees in delirium, their anguished cries for water breaking the hearts of their mates who could do nothing but march on and leave them to the less than tender mercies of the overworked bandsmen.
After another hour picking their way through the detritus that littered the path ahead of them, the fusiliers could march no more. The men fell out, before the order was given, many sinking to the ground where they stood.
The army was disintegrating. The heat and the cholera threatened to end the campaign after barely ten miles.
Jack observed the pale faces of his men as they sank to the ground. He saw their drawn, haggard expressions, their mouths tinged blue from dehydration. Worst of all was the listlessness and the exhaustion in their eyes. It would be a relief to sink to the ground with them, to give in to the pain that wracked his body. A terrible thirst tormented his every thought. Anything was preferable to the torture of carrying on in this living hell. But Jack refused to give in. Everything he had gone through since the army had landed a few short days ago would be for naught if he gave in to the demands of his battered body.
A mocking laugh caught his attention. Jack turned his head to see which of his men had the energy to find something in this terrible situation to laugh about. Sitting to one side of the company, Slater took a long drink from a full canteen, carelessly letting drops of the precious water spill from his mouth. Against his will, Jack licked his cracked and swollen lips, helpless in the face of his desire to drink. He could smell the water, the mere thought of drinking made his body tremble with desire.
Slater watched the company’s reaction as he drank. He lowered the canteen slowly, his lips wet from the long draught. He leisurely wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and belched. The men turned away.
Jack watched the performance, his hands clenching into fists at his impotence to deal with the bastard’s mockery. Slater would pay for this particular pantomime, as he would pay for all his violent thuggery.
But revenge would have to wait. With the column of infantry stalled, staff officers galloped backwards and forwards to rouse the men, the flanks of their tired mounts lathered in sweat.
‘To your feet!’ Colonel Morris shouted. On horseback, the colonel looked imposing. His charger was huge, jet-black save for a white blaze on its forehead and of such an evil temper that only the colonel could ride him. Now the fine horse was streaked with sweat, its eyes rolling in their sockets as Morris paraded him past the slumped ranks of his battalion.
‘On your feet, my boys! On your feet my brave, brave boys!’
Jack expected the colonel’s call to go unheeded but, to his surprise, the men dug deep into their reserves of strength and struggled to their feet once more, responding to their beloved colonel. Like an army of the dead, the fusiliers rose from the ground and stumbled back into formation.
‘That’s it, my boys!’ Morris applauded the effort, encouraging his men as best he could. ‘I am proud of you. Proud of all of you,’ he shouted, moving up and down the flank of the column that was slowly taking shape. ‘That’s the way. It will be time to rest soon enough. But not now. One more effort. One more march.’
A handful of staff officers came galloping back down the length of the infantry column, their urgency attracting the attention of those fusiliers with enough strength to still be interested in their surroundings.
One, a cornet from the 7th Hussars, reined in hard alongside Colonel Morris. The hussar officer’s bay horse skittered nervously, moving in a tight half-circle, as the cornet leant forward in his saddle to hand a piece of paper to Morris.
The colonel scanned the paper quickly, his brow furrowing. His eyes darted across the few short lines before he looked up, his leathery face creasing into a smile.
‘This is it, boys!’ he shouted, standing in his stirrups to call down the length of the battalion. ‘The Russians are ahead!’
The Russian bear had stirred. The road to Sevastopol was blocked.
‘Water!’
No other single word could have created more disruption to the order and discipline of a British army battalion. The fusilier had spied the small stream twisting its way along the shallow valley ahead and joyfully announced its presence to the rest of the regiment. The fusiliers had trudged over the low rise footsore, dehydrated and close to collapse. Yet the single word transformed them. Without a word of command the column stopped, the men quivering with eagerness, like hounds smelling the fox for the first time.
Colonel Morris beamed with pride as the men held their ranks despite their desperate desire to drink. Every head turned to stare at the colonel, the same look of longing on all their faces.
Morris could not deny them. ‘Go, my boys! You have earned it.’
Released, the redcoats streamed forward, the men pulling and elbowing each other in their desperate haste to reach the small stream. Men who minutes earlier had felt ready to lie down and die found the strength to race forward down the shallow slope towards the Bulganak River. They threw themselves into the s
hallow stream, thrusting their heads into the ice-cold water or cupping their hands and gulping it down their parched throats as fast as they could. And the officers joined them. Colonel Morris alone held back, walking his horse behind the rearmost and slowest moving fusiliers. Only when the drenched fusiliers returned to the north bank of the river, their heavy uniforms soaking but their thirst satiated and their canteens full, did he allow his horse to bow its head so it, too, could drink.
‘Would you be so kind, Sloames?’
Jack stood in the centre of the stream, the slow-moving water rippling around his boots. His stomach ached with the cold water he had gulped down. He looked up to see Morris holding out his canteen.
Without a word, Jack reached out, took the canteen and squatted down, removing the stopper as he did so. It was only when he handed the full container back did he see the strain on Morris’s face.
‘Obliged to you.’ Morris tipped back his head and took a long draught from the canteen, closing his eyes at the exquisite pleasure of the fresh water cascading down his throat. It took several seconds before he lowered the canteen, leaving a few errant drops of water captured in the wiry grey hairs of his beard.
Morris replaced the stopper. ‘Mr Sloames, form your company, if you please. We have work to do.’
A troop of the 13th Light Dragoons splashed noisily through the river. The horses’ hooves flung the water high into the air so that the bright sunlight flashed off thousands of droplets. More dragoons were riding down the shallow slope towards the river. The cavalrymen looked down in disdain at the soaked fusiliers as they rode past, their sneers and shouted insults leaving the redcoats wondering who the true enemy was. Jack looked to the south, the direction the cavalry was taking. There, half a mile distant, Russian cossacks lined the brow of the hill.
A chill ran down Jack’s spine. Muttering imprecations, he went to form up his company.
‘Jesus Christ! If they could bleeding shoot straight they’d be fucking dangerous.’
‘Silence in the ranks!’ Sergeant Baker snarled from his place behind the company, his eyes scanning the men as he tried to identify the culprit. The redcoats stood stoically in their ranks, as the sun beat down. The sweat poured freely down their bodies and faces but at least they had a grandstand view of the afternoon’s entertainment.
The battalion was deployed in a line two ranks deep, spread like a long red chain on the brow of the shallow slope to the south of the Bulganak River. It had not taken the 13th Light Dragoons long to drive off the few cossacks who had been observing the movements of the army and the fusiliers had been ordered forward to take up position on the crest of the slope the cossacks had vacated. To their front, Lord Cardigan had led the light cavalry forward in skirmish order and for the last twenty minutes they had been engaged in a vigorous but so far ineffectual exchange of gunfire with a large body of Russian cavalry. Neither side appeared capable of hitting their targets. From their vantage point on the low crest, the fusiliers watched in disappointment as the brisk exchange of fire failed to inflict a single casualty on either side.
‘It reminds me very much of a review day at Chobham.’ Captain McCulloch had wandered over to join the Light Company, making his observation as he approached where Jack stood observing the afternoon’s display. McCulloch’s 2nd Company was formed on the Light Company’s right flank. The Light Company itself was the furthest left of the whole battalion, with Captain Brewer and his grenadiers at the opposite end on the battalion’s right flank.
This was the first time the two officers had spoken since the night of Jack’s abuse of Major Peacock.
‘I wouldn’t know as I never had the pleasure, although I hear review days are about as interesting as listening to Brewer fart. At least our damn cavalry are not spoiling the spectacle by actually hitting something.’
McCulloch winced at the colourful language. ‘So you have not yet learnt to moderate your language, Sloames.’
‘No, I’m afraid I haven’t, nor do I think I ever shall.’ He turned to face McCulloch. ‘But I have learnt to appreciate when I’m being a complete fool. I can only apologise for my appalling behaviour. It was unacceptable and I truly regret that it ever happened.’
McCulloch met Jack’s intense gaze. A moment’s scrutiny was all it took for him to believe Jack was telling the truth. ‘Let us hear no more about it then. Let bygones be bygones and all that.’ McCulloch lifted his shako by its peak and wiped his hand across his sweat-streaked forehead. He slicked his damp hair down with a grimace of distaste.
‘Thank you.’ Jack offered McCulloch his hand.
‘There’s no need for that, old fellow,’ said McCulloch, shaking Jack’s hand anyhow. ‘We all have our off days.’
Jack and McCulloch stood in companionable silence watching the British cavalry engage their Russian counterparts in a wasteful and ineffective duel of musketry. The sight of a single Russian trooper silently crumpling over and falling to the ground raised such a cheer from the watching British troops that the cavalrymen of both sides turned to look at the source of the huge hurrah.
The sporadic gunfire soon resumed and proved as wasteful as before. The mute participation of the British infantryman became languid and sleepy.
General Raglan steadfastly refused to allow the infantry to join the attack. He was anxious to avoid a general action until his army was consolidated and so he held his men back, refusing to be drawn into a precipitate advance. There was nothing for the infantry to do other than to roast in the sun and endure the heat, the flies, the boredom and the thirst. The foolishness of the inactivity was not lost on the battalion’s officers as a steady trickle of men collapsed from heatstroke, victims to their general’s feckless caution.
‘Aha! This looks more like it. Action at last,’ McCulloch said happily, announcing a change in the tiresome skirmish.
Jack had been engaged in a battle of his own as he fought to keep his heavy eyelids from closing. The effects of the long march and the cavalry’s ineptitude had combined to leave him struggling to stay awake. It was with some difficulty that he lifted his gritty and sore eyes to see what had caught McCulloch’s attention.
A squadron of Russian cavalry spurred towards the British dragoons’ left flank, the first purposeful movement either side had managed for the last half hour.
With a precision that put the languid movements of the British cavalrymen to shame, the Russian cavalry opened in the centre, the separate halves of the squadron peeling back left and right, revealing the battery of guns they had so skilfully been screening.
‘Oh, well done. Well done indeed!’ McCulloch could not resist praising the beautifully executed manoeuvre.
The Russian artillery opened fire as the last of their cavalry spurred their way clear, the puffs of smoke from the mouths of their cannon clearly visible moments before the noise of the cannonade could be heard.
‘There! We are privileged indeed, Sloames. We have witnessed the first cannon of the campaign being fired.’ McCulloch pulled hard on the hem of his jacket and picked a small bit of lint from his lapel as he spoke, as if to be present at such a historic moment made him uncomfortable.
‘Let us hope our cavalry is pleased. I’m not sure I’d be so keen to see the first cannon shot of the campaign if I was on the receiving end of it as they are.’
McCulloch chose to ignore Jack’s somewhat caustic observation. ‘I had better get back to my company. I’m glad we had the opportunity to talk.’
‘Enjoy the day, Mr McCulloch, and don’t forget, aut vincere aut mori.’ Jack mangled the Latin phrase he had heard for the first time on the night of his confrontation with Major Peacock.
His sarcasm brought a wry smile of acknowledgement from McCulloch. ‘Mr Sloames, you are incorrigible. God willing I shall see you later and we can work on your pronunciation. You sounded like a constipated clergyman.’ McCullo
ch nodded his farewell and left Jack to enjoy the display the cavalrymen were putting on.
A battery of British horse artillery careered to a noisy halt a short distance to the left of Jack’s company, stung into action by the skill of the Russian horse artillery.
The suddenness of their arrival stirred many of the Light Company from their sun-induced stupor. The gunners prepared their weapons to fire to the clipped orders of their sergeants. The sight was of much greater interest than the shambolic performance of the skirmishing cavalry.
The Russian artillery fired a second volley before the British gunners were ready to reply. From their elevated viewpoint, the Light Company could trace the pencil-thin track the roundshot left as they flew through the air towards the dispersed ranks of the cavalry. In the widely spaced skirmish order, the dragoons and hussars offered a poor target for the Russian gunners and the heavy barrage struck down only a single dragoon.
An ear-ringing explosion of noise and smoke to the Light Company’s left announced that the British battery was returning fire. Far to the battalion’s right a second British battery opened up, the deep cough of these guns identifying them as bigger bored nine-pounders.
Despite the cloud of foul-smelling powder smoke that partially blocked the fusiliers’ view, it was clear the British were directing their fire with greater effect than their Russian counterparts. Several Russian cavalrymen and horses were struck by the first British volley. The Russian gunners bravely fired again, resolutely sticking to their task despite the storm of roundshot that crashed about their ears. It was a courageous display but one that only served to goad the British gunners to greater energy. With another explosion of noise and smoke, the British guns fired again.
The Scarlet Thief Page 15