The desire to bark back at the overweight orderly corporal was hard to subdue; his mind was responding as if he were still a captain who would command immediate respect. The corporal’s florid face twitched with annoyance. He stood staring at Jack, wiping his bloody hands across an apron that was so encrusted with blood and filth that it stood proud of his body, as stiff as thick card.
‘Just getting some water, Corporal.’
‘Well, if you’re recovered enough to be out of bed, you’re well enough to be passed fit. What’s your name?’
‘Smith, Corporal.’
‘Smith? There’s more bleeding Smiths in this here hospital than there are lice in my crotch. You taking me for a ride, sonny Jim?’
‘No, Corporal. My name is Smith. Tommy Smith.’
‘Well then, Tommy Smith. Seeing as you is hail and hearty enough to be up and strolling around, you can give me a hand.’
Jack straightened up, wincing as the wound in his side pulled painfully.
The corporal sneered at him. ‘It’s no good acting like you is hurting now. I’ve got your number. Come over here and grab this dead ’un by his ankles.’
Jack did as he was bid, looking dubiously at the body of the man who had lain so silently in the bed immediately next to his own. ‘Is he dead then?’
‘Well, he ain’t bleeding dancing, is he, poor sod. Is he dead, indeed! Of course he’s bleeding dead on account of the fact that he ain’t been bleeding breathing for the last two bleeding days. Now grab hold and shut up.’
‘Yes, Corporal.’
The two men lifted the dead weight of the redcoat from the stinking bed. Jack was forced to tug at the man’s legs, which were stuck to the filthy sheet. The smell of the dead man was awful.
‘Come on, let’s take this poor sod away. Then I reckon there’s more work for you to do, young Tommy Smith – if you don’t fancy being passed fit for duty, that is.’
Jack staggered as he helped carry the dead redcoat from the room, his legs betraying his weakness. There was a sharp tut of disapproval from the corporal. It was a struggle but between them they carried the body outside to a walled yard that was already piled high with corpses.
‘Bloody hell!’ Jack could not keep back his exclamation of horror. The dead had been dumped without ceremony and lay in all manner of unnatural positions, legs and arms bent at impossible angles. Some lay with their eyes wide open, staring serenely at the clear blue sky, while the faces of others were twisted and terrible, their tongues bulging grotesquely from gaping mouths. The wounds that had killed them were evident on most of them, their bodies missing one or more limbs, or with large holes in what had once been living flesh.
It was a scene straight from a nightmare.
Jack dropped the legs of the fresh corpse he carried and bent double, vomiting out his horror at the dreadful sight.
‘Come on, lad. That’s enough of that. These poor sods don’t care. Not any more.’ The corporal let go of his end of the body and reached forward to place an unexpectedly soothing hand on Jack’s back, rubbing it in small circles like a parent winding a child.
Jack wiped the saliva that dangled from his mouth on his soiled cuffs and straightened up. The corporal was right. The dead were past caring.
‘Good, lad.’ The corporal turned to lead Jack from the charnel house. ‘Plenty more to shift,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘Officers too. Not that the Jack Puddings get dumped outside. Oh no. We have a special room for the toffs.’
The corporal led Jack through a confusing maze of gloomy corridors.
‘Here we are. One officer recently expired.’
Jack followed the corporal’s corpulent figure into a dark side room that contained a single bed. The body of a young man lay peacefully in it, a sheet neatly tucked round it. Somebody had taken the time to undress the unfortunate officer; his uniform lay folded on top of a travelling chest that had been placed to one side of the bed so that it could double as a bedside table.
‘He’s dead?’
‘What is it with you? Yes, he’s a dead’un all right.’
‘What killed him? He looks like he’s just asleep.’
‘Fever. He’s been here nigh on a fortnight. From before the battle. I was only speaking to him yesterday. He seemed as right as rain. Telling me all about his new commission and everything.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well,’ the corporal perched his oversized backside on the corner of the bed, relishing the opportunity to talk. ‘His ma and pa died a little while back and he just got his inheritance, you see. Now a clever chap, like you and me, would spend that wisely, on beer or women, or something worthwhile like that. But this young fool blows the whole bleeding lot on a captaincy. And not just that but a captaincy in a regiment stationed in bleeding India of all places. He was going to make his fortune, or so he thought, the daft bugger. Why anyone would want to go to that heathen place is beyond me, like it’s beyond him now, poor sod.’
Jack looked down at the ill-fated officer who had died just as he had secured the same rank that Jack himself had risked so much to take as his own. ‘What was his name?’
‘His name? Let me think. Danbury, I think it was, yes, that’s it. Lieutenant Danbury. Or Captain Danbury, I suppose now.’
Jack smiled. ‘Danbury. That’s a good honest name. I like it.’
The Battle of the Alma resonates in our history. Many towns boast an Alma Terrace or a pub called The Heights of the Alma and countless little girls have been named after the battle fought over one hundred and fifty years ago. Yet it appears to have disappeared from our national consciousness. Ask people about Waterloo and all will know of the great battle where Wellington defeated Napoleon. Ask about the Alma and you will be greeted with blank looks or given directions to a nearby hostelry.
The tale of battle happens largely as described in The Scarlet Thief. The King’s Royal Fusiliers have stolen the role of the 33rd Regiment of Foot and for that I humbly apologise to the men who fought on that bloody day in the ranks of that most illustrious regiment. General Raglan did indeed fling his troops against the heart of the Russian position and one has only to look at the enormous casualties those leading regiments took to see what it cost the men ordered to advance towards the massed ranks of the Russian army. Raglan rightly received harsh criticism in the national press, much of it written by officers so appalled that they broke the gentleman’s code of not ‘croaking’ by writing to the newspaper in droves.
Raglan and Codrington existed, as did the charismatic Colonel Lacy Yea who did indeed order his battalion to ‘Never mind forming! Come on, men! Come on, anyhow.’ Otherwise the characters are from my own imagination, yet I hope they convey something of the men who had the mettle to fight in that mot terrible of battles.
Anyone wishing to study the battle in more detail will find a wealth of resources available. I would not hesitate to recommend The Battle of the Alma by Ian Fletcher and Natalia Ishchenko for a wonderful account of the battle from both a Russian as well as a British perspective. For more detail on the life of the redcoat I cannot speak highly enough of Redcoat by the unsurpassed Richard Holmes, a book that is never far from my side.
Jack Lark will soldier on. Somehow he will find the strength to put Molly’s death and his memory of the bitter fighting behind him. His adventures will take him far and wide and without a tie to a regiment or even to a name he will venture across a British Empire that was at its very peak in the middle of the nineteenth century.
Jack Lark will return . . .
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The Scarlet Thief Page 25