by Max Hennessy
As he stepped into the witness box, he glanced into the well of the court. Higgins was sitting there, nondescript and small and made strangely more unimportant than ever by the woman now sitting next to him. Potter had been waiting on the steps with MacAdoo, Busby and Hardacre to see them arrive, and had been well aware of the whispered comments as they had climbed the steps together. The woman was no longer young, but she was still beautiful enough to turn heads, pale and fine-boned, her hands in a fur muff that seemed oddly out of date with her fashionable clothes.
There had been no sign of Prideaux in court for some time now and the newspapers were carrying a story that pressure of work at the War Office was keeping him away, though Potter had private information that he had not left his home in Surrey for two days because of the newspapermen keeping the death watch outside. Murray-Hughes was reported to be back in Berlin.
Moyalan rattled his papers sharply in the silence and Potter turned slowly to face him.
‘Your name is Willie Popham Potter?’ Moyalan began.
‘To my everlasting regret.’
‘Please answer the question exactly,’ Moyalan said tartly.
Potter turned his disarming smile on him. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Yes, that’s my name.’
‘You served through the Great War in France, I believe, being wounded and winning the Military Cross on July 1st, 1916, on the Somme, and a bar to the same decoration in August, 1918? You were also twice mentioned in despatches in 1917, and very early in Russia received the crosses of St. Vladimir and St. George?’
‘That’s correct.’
‘It would be safe to say, then, that you were considerably experienced in war. Why did you volunteer for Russia?’
Potter shrugged. ‘Young, I suppose,’ he said casually. ‘Perhaps I’d been lucky not to be much hurt up to then. And because I was keen on horses. Joined the Yeomanry under age in late 1914, but they dismounted us and we fought as infantry. Decided I’d like a go with horses before I was demobilised.’
‘I also understand that at the present moment you are a lieutenant-colonel in command of an armoured car unit of the Territorial Army and, in the event of an emergency, are likely to be called up?’
‘Yes. Thought a bit of experience might help.’
‘Your concept of duty becomes you, Colonel Potter. Let’s hope your experience will never be necessary.’
Potter nodded, as though saying ‘Amen to that.’
‘Now, Colonel Potter, let’s go to November 6th, 1919, a day of which we are talking. Where were you on that day?’
‘With the Kouragine Hussars, an Anglo-Russian regiment, near a stream called the Kalbek, about forty miles north and east of Nikolovssk and near the village of Dankoi. We were looking for the Red cavalry that was supposed to be advancing on Nikolovssk.’
‘And what was your feeling at that moment, Colonel Potter?’
Potter smiled slightly. ‘Frightened,’ he said. ‘Frightened no end.’
* * *
Under the leaden sky, with the sheen of gold gone from the snow, the day seemed heavy with foreboding. The faces round Potter were expressionless, though there was a restlessness in the narrowed eyes that made him realise there were plenty of other uneasy people there that day besides himself.
He could see Prideaux just ahead of him and, in his stillness, there seemed no longer to be confidence, but the same sort of unease he felt himself. He looked like a man who had gone too far, a man faced with a task that was suddenly too big for him, and Potter felt unexpectedly sorry for him in his anxiety to achieve something that could make up for his failure in the war in France, sympathetic at last towards this last obsessive attempt to put right his earlier non-success. Murray-Hughes, sitting the placid grey alongside him, seemed to be unashamedly afraid. His head moved all the time, his eyes turning in their sockets, looking all the time for the black flood that he was expecting to pour over the slopes in their direction at any moment, his ears alert for the wild yells that meant death.
On the far side of the plain, the hills rolled back, cut by deep valleys and, during the afternoon, after they had crossed the stream, the scouts reported that they had come across more tracks in the valleys. Deliberately, as though to show he was not afraid, Prideaux had pushed the column ahead faster and they were now drawn up on the brow of a rocky range of hills known as the Kinzhal Chorniye.
Finch was just behind the Colonel, silent and subdued, and clearly nervous in a way that made others nervous, and as they gathered round Prideaux again, Nazhintzev, the commander of B Squadron, raised his voice.
‘For God’s sake, my Colonel,’ he begged, ‘let us turn back. I’m certain that some of the men in my squadron know that Budenny’s round here somewhere with all his cavalry.’
When Kuprin had translated, Prideaux spoke sharply with an unnecessary over-emphasis on firmness. ‘Tell him that if his tone doesn’t alter,’ he said, ‘I shall have no alternative but to remove him and give the squadron to someone else.’
The scar on his temple seemed to glow under his cap as he turned his head, his eyes moving restlessly. ‘Damned Russians,’ he muttered to Potter, when he thought Kuprin wasn’t listening. ‘Every one of ’em’s yellow. All Communists, I suppose, if the truth’s known.’
Potter pretended not to hear. Prideaux would never understand.
‘I’m going to send a troop forward during the night,’ he was saying now. ‘I expect they’ll come up against Budenny’s advanced elements. We shall move forward at first light. If necessary,’ he paused, ‘we can always move swiftly back on Nikolovssk.’
‘Colonel!’ Potter lifted his head. ‘Afraid there’ll be no swift movement back on Nikolovssk, sir.’
Prideaux’s eyes swung round to him. ‘Why not?’ he demanded, his voice sharp with uncertainty.
‘Don’t think the gees can do it, sir. With respect, sir, I suggest we move back now and leave it to the cars.’
Prideaux stared, and to Potter it seemed he was blustering to hide his own unease. ‘I shall have to report this, of course, Potter,’ he said. ‘It will have to go on your personal file.’
‘Aware of that, sir,’ Potter said quietly. ‘Still felt I had to make the suggestion.’
The conference broke up in muttering, and they moved forward again, but not so rashly now, as though even Prideaux was beginning to have second thoughts. No one spoke and the column moved along almost in silence, and when Potter looked back he could see the eyes of the men behind him moving sideways, constantly watching the flanks.
They reached a deserted half-burnt village where, under the double-headed eagle of an old Imperial post-house, he could see the word ‘Dankoi.’ The houses, smudged by smoke, were scattered thinly along the stream, among willows that grew densely from the banks. They were roofed with sheet iron or tiles, half-exposed where the wind had blown away the snow; and the cornices, decorated with intricate serrated fretwork, were charred here and there into black scabs where the flames had touched them. Blue-painted shutters creaked in the wind, gates rattled untended among the broken wattle fencing, and a starved abandoned dog barked at them and disappeared, leaving the small blue circles of its tracks in the snow.
Prideaux called a halt and they searched the houses for firewood. Several men dragged out red-painted furniture which they proceeded to break up.
‘Destroyed in the first fighting,’ Kuprin said, indicating the village and speaking in a low grieving voice. ‘They never came back.’
As they jingled off again through the outskirts, among the tangled knots of shallow ravines a group of ravens burst noisily into the sky with harsh cries, and Potter saw a washed-out shallow grave, and a bare foot, dry and wrinkled, and caught the stench of death in the wind.
Kuprin’s eyes had narrowed and he was staring at the brown exposed flesh as though it were an evil omen.
Potter glanced about him with an uneasy feeling of being engulfed by the brooding wilderness. The cold orange-coloured sun was just disappear
ing beyond a sharply outlined horizon, and the moon, flooded with gold in the deepening azure of the sunset sky, was already slipping up from the east and decorating the fresh snow with shadowy dove-grey hues. A grey haze in the north where the sky thickened with clouds that drooped at the edges like felt, obscured the brightness as a storm spread across the horizon, blurring the distance, and from behind them somewhere, probably from Dankoi, he could smell burning scrub and ash, and hear the cry of the ravens, dry and distinct. Night was coming in from the steppe, intensifying the colours of everything, and he could already see a tiny twinkling star.
He felt cold, in spite of his heavy coat, and faintly depressed. To cheer himself up, he took a cigar from a crocodile case he carried and was just drawing the first surreptitious pulls on it, wondering when Prideaux was going to halt his forward movement, when he saw the scouts fling themselves over the brow of a low hill ahead and approach the column at full speed through the thickening flakes. The clods of earth were flying from the hooves of the horses and the stirred snow rose in flurries behind them. They were coming towards Prideaux from opposite sides and, immediately, he realised what it meant.
Ahead of them was the enemy, and from the wide angle at which the scouts were approaching, it was clear there were enough of them to be spread over a wide front.
Potter swallowed quickly, nervously, as the column halted. He heard the shouts of the scouts as they reported to Prideaux, then the regiment began to move in line along the head of the valley.
* * *
There was an intense woolly silence in court. Everyone was leaning forward now, tensely, waiting to hear the rest of the story.
‘You are obviously an experienced officer, Colonel Potter,’ Moyalan said, speaking softly, as though he didn’t wish to break the tension. ‘You were at that time. What were your views at that moment?’
Potter considered. ‘Hoping we’d be told to dig in,’ he said.
‘Were you in a good position to dig in?’
‘Yes. Plenty of cover. Ground was broken and there were some rocks and small trees. In front of us, the valley widened in a long slope downwards, ending at the bottom in a steeper slope, so that the Russians were hidden from sight behind the curve of the dip.’
‘What would you have done in the circumstances, Colonel?’ Moyalan kept stressing Potter’s rank deliberately, to make it clear to the jury that he had experience enough to be able to judge the situation.
Potter answered briskly. ‘Wouldn’t have been there for a start,’ he said frankly. ‘As I was, though, I’d have used the cars and their machine guns to cover us, and sent the horsed troops back to Nikolovssk.’
‘You wouldn’t have attacked?’
Potter smiled. ‘There was really no point in attacking,’ he said. ‘We couldn’t tackle the whole of the Red Cavalry. And we only had about two hundred reliable men – A Squadron, with a few of the Russians of B and C Squadrons. That’s all.’
‘No artillery? No infantry? No engineers?’
‘Nothing. We were alone. Three squadrons of very indifferent cavalry, and the only reliable one – the British squadron – had never been in action before.’
‘What did Colonel Prideaux do?’
Potter moved his hand on the edge of the witness box. ‘First of all,’ he said, ‘he sent the cars to the rear. Rode past the line. Finch was with him, looking a bit green. Thinking the same as I was, shouldn’t wonder. As he passed me, the Colonel said, “I suppose you wish you were with your precious cars, Potter!” I replied that I certainly did, and he smiled and said “Well, whatever glory’s going today, it won’t be shared by a lot of stinking petrol engines.”’
‘How did he seem?’
‘Elated. Overcome by the occasion.’
‘As if, to use the words of an earlier medical witness, as if he needed to purge from himself “a feeling of anger and humiliation” that had sprung from his failure in France? As if now, against the Communists he hated so much for what he’d seen them do to the German Army, he saw a chance of redeeming his earlier failure?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did it seem as if these two obsessions were driving him to do something he should not have done?’
Potter nodded slowly. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It did.’
‘He was quite set on action?’
‘Quite set. I asked him what his orders were. He replied, “Form two lines, A Squadron in front, and prepare to advance.” We then moved the squadrons until we were in two lines, the first one composed of the British squadron and the second one, about three or four horses’ lengths behind, of the Russian squadrons, B and C.’
‘Was that a good arrangement?’
‘Perfectly sound if he were set on making a frontal attack. Couldn’t rely on B and C Squadrons to press a charge home. Felt sure that once the forward movement started, they’d break off the action and disappear.’
‘In spite of the armoured cars waiting behind to stop them?’
‘We’d always understood from the Russian officers that they felt their men were prepared to take such a risk.’
‘By this time, could you see the enemy in front of you?’
‘Yes, we could.’
‘Please describe what you saw.’
* * *
There wasn’t much to be seen – just a small group of horsemen on the lip of folding ground in front, and a group on each flank round what to Potter looked ominously like a machine gun.
He took the cigar from his mouth and was just going to throw it away when he decided it wouldn’t interfere with what he had to do and he put it back between his teeth.
The snow had reached them now from the north and was blowing into their faces in whirling flakes. He was still waiting at the end of the line when he heard the roar of the Rolls approaching. It came rattling down the slope from the hill on the flank, a black square box with the snout of a machine gun showing, leaving two dark lines where its wheels had churned up the snow. Alongside Potter, it stopped, sliding sideways as it skidded on the uncertain surface.
‘Willie.’ Higgins’ head appeared abruptly, but he seemed as calm and anonymous as ever. ‘The whole of’ Budenny’s advance force is in the next valley.’
Potter stared down the hill. He could see only the few figures in the distance and then the lip of the hill and another apparently empty valley beyond.
‘You can see them from the hill up there.’ Higgins pointed. ‘Prideaux should be getting out of here.’
His words were interrupted by the sweet notes of a trumpet, and he banged the shoulder of his driver, and the car moved forward again in a half-circle to where Prideaux was sitting on his horse. Murray-Hughes on the grey was moving slowly towards the rear, but he was obviously having difficulty with his mount which kept turning and trying to take up its usual position behind Prideaux’s bay.
Then the trumpet sounded again and Prideaux began to move slowly forward, and Potter drew a deep breath. They were committed now. Mounted, they were each twenty-four hands high and weighed half a ton. And there were nearly two hundred of them. When they got properly moving, the sheer momentum of the charge would deprive them of all conscious will.
For a moment, he sat still. Somewhere behind him he could hear someone intoning the Twenty-Third Psalm as though it were a spell. ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art by my side…’ Then he raised his hand and his squadron began to move forward into the blowing flurries of snow.
Vaguely he saw the Rolls increasing its speed from the edge of the line inwards towards Prideaux until, finally, it was approaching him from his right rear. But Prideaux was facing forward, oblivious to it, and the car edged closer, with Higgins standing up and pointing.
Prideaux didn’t seem to wish to hear him, however. He was sitting quite upright on the big bay, still heading down the valley, and then the line of horsemen moved beyond the snow-plastered car and, as he swept past, Potter saw Higgins’ face for a moment,
blank and grim.
Prideaux was still looking neither to right nor left, and then to his startled amazement, Potter became aware of the big grey that normally kept to Prideaux’s rear moving up alongside him, heading instinctively for its position behind Prideaux’s bay. Murray-Hughes’ face was ashen and there was snow on his hair. He had lost his hat and was shouting for help as he clung to the mane of the horse, too afraid even to fall off, for fear of being crushed by the following riders.
The heavy sky that was already touched with approaching darkness seemed to sit on Potter’s shoulders like a brooding weight and he kept having to blink against the snow on his eyelashes. He could hear muttering behind him in the ranks, then, almost as though his ears picked it out from all the other sounds about him, he heard the swish and drumming of hooves in the snow as the horsemen moved slowly forward towards the distant black figures down the valley.
It came almost as a shock when he heard the first machine gun open fire. Almost immediately, with the steady tapping, he became conscious of horses falling on his right but then, as his nerves tightened and he waited for the bullets to come towards him, the gun stopped and, correcting its aim, began to fire at the centre of the line.
Then he noticed Kuprin on his left, as though he had moved up from the position he had taken up earlier alongside Nazhintzev, and he seemed to be shouting something and waving behind him, and without looking back, Potter knew what had brought him forward. The two Russian squadrons had broken off the action as they had all expected.
Prideaux had done it after all. Against advice and with a second line that was composed of unreliable troops, he had flung them against an enemy of unknown strength and with at least two machine guns. Prideaux was going to collect his glory at the cost of lives.
* * *