Hungry Harry: An Orphan in the Ranks

by Andrew Wareham

  “Fourteen bloody men! Two to the main gate, one each to the small doors, and that leaves three to keep the whole front wall! Seven more for the sides and rear.”

  Sergeant Hollis posted them with the strictest orders to stay awake.

  “Chances are the lieutenant will be inspecting you – first night is most likely time for it. He will see any man shot for sleeping on duty; a sentry must stay awake or every man is at risk, that’s what he would say. He ain’t wrong, neither! Don’t look for me to save your neck if you’re caught taking forty winks!”

  The night was black and long; it was noisy as well. The town was close and newly built shacks sprawled out as far as the walls and the roads seemed bustlingly busy until midnight; there was an evening market as well and every man and woman in it found the need to shout. Beneath the sentries’ feet, literally, they discovered ranges of cells containing slaves waiting to be taken across the ocean; many of them wailed their terror all night. Overall, in the background, there was a hum of insect and to a lesser extent animal activity. There were swamps nearby and great frogs bellowed at each other unceasingly; closer to hand the night flies and mosquitoes buzzed and whined in their ears. Things unseen scurried and rustled about their feet.

  By dawn Harry was sore from insect bites and his nerves jangled from repeated alarms as snakes and lizards and unrecognisable objects had come into his sight.

  They were relieved by local men in a sketchy uniform, auxiliaries recruited for pennies which they were anxious to earn. They were not trusted at night, why was never explained, but made perfectly adequate sentinels through the daylight hours.

  They slept a couple of hours and then were rousted out for fatigues in the store rooms where the Quartermaster needed every item to be checked off and placed according to his plan. The illiterates were of no use to him and he chased five of the seven in the platoon out again; Harry ended up with a brush in his hands working his way along the corridors of the fortress.

  It was a large place, the biggest building Harry had ever seen, built from stone and solid. It was damp and hot and sticky as well. Even ambling along with a brush brought the sweat up. He walked the length of the central block, three storeys high and with tiny windows, musket slits more than ventilation. He did not know just how big it was, being uncertain of the dimensions of a foot and unable to count high enough in any case. He suspected it might be too big for the battalion, less than four hundred strong, to hold.

  Sergeant Hollis said the same as he collected the platoon together and sent them off to sleep the afternoon away.

  “Forty big guns, eighteen pounders most of ‘em, what needs a crew of seven men, on the ramparts. I reckon there might be forty artillerymen left still strong enough to serve and lay a gun. If they takes men from us, then they ain’t goin’ to leave enough to hold the gates and man the walls. If they don’t use us, then the guns won’t be able to keep the ships off.”

  The Governor of the Castle was of lower rank than the senior officer of the Fusiliers, due to three men senior to him dying one after another in the same Wet Season. In theory, the Governor was commander of the fort; in practice, as a relatively young captain he lacked the authority to impose his will.

  The Governor asked for infantrymen to round out the guns’ crews; Colonel Roberts refused to release men to him – he had too few for his own duties, he said.

  They argued for four days and the Governor gave up. He wrote a despatch to be sent off to London on the next ship leaving the harbour and retired from the argument. He knew it was hopeless – his despatch would go to Antigua and thence, if he was lucky, would be taken aboard a West Indies Company ship to cross the Atlantic. If the slaver met ships leaving at the end of the hurricane season then it was possible for the report to take less than six months on its trip; if there was any delay then the report might wait half a year in Antigua before being sent off, assuming it did not get lost hanging about in the offices there. The best he could hope for was an answer in a year, and then Colonel Roberts would respond with an appeal sent back to Horse Guards. A decision must take two years at least, and then he would have to enforce it. He could only hope; the last war was only three years finished and it was said to have bankrupted the French government so that they would be ten years before starting another conflict. There should be no attack on the Castle in the immediate future, except from inland by the Asante, and he was fairly sure that he could man the half a dozen guns at the rear of the fort.

  The infantry avoided the necessity of learning the guns, much to their relief, and they were not in the least concerned with any war that might start in the future. Soldiers looked as far ahead as the next meal.

  Lieutenant Atkins was a very crafty man; he waited till the third night to make his inspection, thinking that the platoon would have decided that he was too slack to bother by then. He made no allowance for Sergeant Hollis’ piercing whistle which alerted all of the posts as Atkins first stirred out of the Mess, belching drunkenly and stumbling as he heaved his belt tight and settled his hat.

  Harry was on a postern gate, third post to be visited; he heard the sentry’s calls and the responses and was ready in his turn to give the challenge.

  “Halt! Who goes there?”

  “Friend.”

  “Advance friend and be recognised.”

  He stumbled a little on the long word ‘recognise’ but managed to get it out more or less correctly.

  “Pass through, sir.”

  Atkins grunted and peered at his uniform, hoping for a button undone; it was too dark to examine polish and pipeclay sensibly.

  “At ease.”

  Harry stamped to the correct position; Corporal Smith, behind the lieutenant’s shoulder, nodded and grinned.

  The lieutenant moved on into the darkness. Harry, forewarned, held to the correct stance at his post. If Atkins tiptoed back through the night he would discover nothing untoward.

  “Atkins was right pissed off last night! He took an hour out of the Mess and found bloody nothing! Every man at his post and alert and correctly uniformed. He’ll be back, he’s that sort. Watch yourselves, lads!”

  Corporal Smith could do no more than give the warning and hope that they would take it seriously. Sergeant Hollis had told him that Atkins enjoyed blood – soldiers’ blood that was, he was less keen on risking his own – and would very actively look for the chance of a flogging. He would not be happy until he had put men up on a disciplinary in front of the colonel.

  “You watch ‘im if it looks like we goin’ to be put in the way of trouble. Gets a riot in town or a bunch of bloody savages runnin’ a raid, then ‘e will be taken with a fever, poor man! Saw him in America when we was ambushed and ‘e couldn’t get out of the way. White in the face and damned near crappin’ ‘is breeches! Shoutin’ ‘is mouth off and keepin’ ‘is ‘ead down!”

  “Sure and I’ve seen the like before, Corp.” Paddy was openly contemptuous, spat loudly. “Out in the forests, south of New York, we was, when we met up with a bunch of Jonathans shooting out of the trees. The captain called for bayonets and we gives a whoop and a cheer and in we go, runnin’ like hounds, so we were; looks round and there’s one of the lieutenants running too, like a rabbit and t’other way!”

  “Not often you see them to scarper like that, Paddy. What ‘appened to ‘im?”

  “Sure, they marched him back to camp and stood him up before the colonel, as ever was. What was said, we were not to be hearing, ‘twas for officers alone. They put him in a tent and under guard overnight and come the morning they placed him in his coffin and that was the end of it. Just the one pistol shot in the dawn and done with.”

  “Shot ‘imself, did ‘e?”

  “You tell me, Corporal Smith! It was our reckoning that he would not use the pistol they left with him and the major who went into the tent to see what had happened overnight found him alive and might be said to have remedied the problem, or so you might be saying.”

  “Bloody good thin
g, too!”

  “That was our feelings on the matter as well.”

  Talking afterwards Harry discovered that there were just two unforgivable crimes in a soldier; stealing from your swaddies was first and worst and cowardice came second.

  “You see, Harry boy, the man what runs leaves a bloody gap in the line, and you might be the man to be shot or sabred because of it. You don’t fancy fightin’, that’s all right, you just deserts when you gets the chance. You don’t run away though, not when it’s getting’ too ‘ot for your likin’.”

  Listening intently he learned that every man had been frightened in a fight, sometimes terrified would have been a better word; but they did not run, not merely for being scared.

  “You knows that it’s goin’ to get better afterward. Just fire your musket and wait till it ends and you gets the chance to pick up a bit from their pockets and out of the ‘ouses if you takes a town. Suppose you wins, well that’s good, ain’t it. If you loses then you ‘olds together with your mates and marches back all together. Or you puts your piece down and your ‘ands up, if that’s ‘ow it goes. But you don’t run about and weep and be’ave like a bloody schoolgirl!”

  It was a simple enough life in the army, Harry discovered. There were rules, of two sorts, both having to be obeyed.

  The officers made one set – and that was the daft stuff, all about uniform and attention and saying the right words and walking in the proper way. It kept the jolly boys amused and was not too much bother if you were careful.

  The other rules were those that the men lived by when they were out of sight of the officers, which was the greater part of every day, and those also must be obeyed, perhaps even more rigorously. It was often possible to fool an officer, but a soldier could never deceive the men he worked and ate and slept with every hour of every day.

  ‘Keep your mouth shut around the officers; tell them nothing. Support your swaddies, your mates. Obey your sergeant. To hell with civilians. Keep your firelock clean. Fair shares. Don’t run from a fight.’

  The soldier who remembered those rules, and obeyed them rigidly, was sure of an easy life in the army. There would be bad times, that was inevitable, but the men together would pull through and the good soldiers would survive, or die fighting.

  Harry listened to all that was said, and opened his mouth rarely, which was proper for the junior man of any platoon. He learned that they were in a bad posting, one of the worst, and that many of them would die of the fevers; he discovered that was ‘tough luck’. If you didn’t die on the Fever Coast, then you were fireproof – nothing could kill you, except a bullet in the wrong place, and that was tough luck too. He learned as well that more of the officers would die, because they were mostly softer than the men; they were brought up too easy, was the general opinion.

  Harry’s platoon was the first to be out on duty at dusk and through the night, and so was exposed to the night airs, the dangerous miasmas, before any of the others. They were also bitten by mosquitoes, which was a nuisance and itched. They were the first to experience the recurrent fever, the mal-arias, which, they were told, was Latin for bad airs, or French maybe, some foreign talk anyway. The old soldiers were only lightly touched by the disease, but they were salted against it, had known it before and expected no more than the shivers and headaches. The young, new men were badly hit.

  Harry woke one morning sweating far more than was normal, shaking and with a blinding headache; quite literally for the headache, he lost his sight for seconds at a time. He staggered out of his cot and fell twice on his way out to the privy at the rear of the barrack room, and then he vomited for good measure. He felt a hand grabbing hold of him, hauling him upright; then water was poured down his throat.

  “Got to drink or you dies, boy!”

  He did not recognise the voice; his head hurt so much that nothing had any meaning. He was vaguely aware that he was moving, that two of the men were to his side, supporting him and pushing him along. He was dropped onto another bed, blacked out on it, came round at some time, minutes or hours later and found himself held in a sitting position.

  A voice was giving him orders.

  “Open your mouth! Drink!”

  Some bitter fluid was poured into his mouth and a hand forced his jaw shut and lifted his chin; he swallowed. More of the liquid was forced into him. He heard the voice, could not understand the words.

  “He’ll live. Early days and I have bark in store, Corporal Smith. He is strong as well. Unless he gets the blackwater or dies of the head pains he will be back in the barracks by the end of the week. Peruvian bark, Corporal Smith – that’s the specific for recurrent fevers, nothing like it!”

  Peruvian bark, soaked in water, gave off a substance that the doctors called ‘cinchona’, which was Anglicised to quinine, and which, administered in time and sufficient quantity, cured the recurrent fevers. Because it was so effective the doctors prescribed it for every other fever as well, not noticing that it was valueless for them. It was used so much that the tree was dying out in Peru, but fortunately other, similar trees were discovered in different parts of the world.

  Harry spent a few days in delirium, experiencing dreams that mostly he could not remember, except that he knew that something very peculiar had been going on in his head. He sweated every bit of fat from his body, but he was lucky that the Regimental Surgeon was one of those who believed in the value of liquids in fever and kept him well watered. He woke one morning with his head clear and the pains gone; he was weak, he was tired, but he was no longer sick.

  The Surgeon noticed that he had pulled through and congratulated himself on another success; he had a swig of gin in celebration. He produced an overripe, yellow banana and persuaded Harry to eat it, telling him it was good for him and that the belly needed soft and wholesome foods in it.

  “No red meat for a week! Broths and soaked biscuit, and fruits, soldier!”

  The bed was needed – there were men lying on pallets on the floor – and Harry was helped to his feet and taken back to his own cot and the ministrations of Smudger, who had seen it all before.

  Two days later he stood on parade at dawn, with the remainder of the platoon; fifteen men were reduced to eight effectives. Four were in the Surgeon’s hands; three were underground.

  Sergeant Hollis inspected the one corporal and sixteen standing men who constituted his whole company and consoled himself that it could have been worse. When the Rainy Season came in, it would be.

  Six weeks after they landed at Cape Coast Castle there was a pay parade; much argument between the Colonel and the Governor had led to the production of silver shillings for the men. The Governor had been against it, saying that if the men were given money they would spend it in the native town and destroy the little health they had left. The Colonel insisted that they must have their wages, or discipline would suffer. The Governor was the weaker character of the two.

  They had not been paid in all of the time since Harry had joined and he received forty-one shillings and five pence, which seemed a lot to him.

  Smudger stood in front of him with his hand out.

  "One shillin' a week for grub, Harry, and seven pence for tea. You don't owe me nothin', for 'avin' paid your way from your bounty money, straight as a die, not like some of the other buggers! But, we ain't about to see pay again for the rest of the year, not unless we gets lucky, so pay up now, boy!"

  Twenty weeks of mess money took thirty-one shillings and eight pence, leaving him with a little less than ten bob in hand.

  Smudger could write, after a fashion, and showed them his little notebook with their names and the sums they had paid, as proof of his honesty and so that they could all remember just how they stood.

  "What if we dies of the fever first, Smudger, me dear?"

  "It ain't my bloody fault if you gets careless, Paddy! More for the rest of us and we'll all raise a mug to you!"

  "Fair enough, lads."

  They sat over the official rum ration
- meticulously measured and given to every man. Whatever else ran short in the stores, there was always a sufficiency of rum - a failure in the issue would have led to certain mutiny. It was mixed with water as it was handed out to the men; grog would not keep and could not be bottled, had to be drunk on the day the men received it. Harry had been told by Sergeant Hollis that he must drink his rum - it was necessary in Fever Country; he would certainly die if he did not sup it all.

  "The rum preserves the flesh, like, Harry! Pickles it, you might say. Men what don't drink their ration don't never go back 'ome again. They say that's what killed all them Welsh buggers on Goree a few years back - they was all chapel-going sorts and would not drink liquor and not one of them lived to see the mountains again!"

  For all Harry knew it was true; he did as he was told, sipping the grog through the whole day and managing just to stay sober enough not to be noticed. A month and he had become used to it, almost liked the stuff.

  They ate their meal, the invariable stew that Smudger cooked up and which made their mess envied throughout the battalion as best-fed of them all; they drank their issue and then talked of what they would do with their money.

  "They native blokes don't see but a couple of pennies a week, Harry. Ten bob is rich in these parts!"

  Ten shillings was one hundred and twenty pennies; a man could buy a half-pint of arrack for a penny and most of the soldiers proposed to buy gallons of the stuff, to drink all they could in the first two days when they were at liberty and then to store the rest under their cot. Properly rationed out and they need not be sober for three months. Some had other plans - a shilling a week would persuade a girl to join them in the barracks, and she could be taught how to do the laundry in her spare time. There were many empty rooms in the barracks area of the Castle, the post being seriously undermanned, and the sergeants would all turn the blind eye, for doing the same for the most part.