by Iain Gale
‘They seem to be getting closer, sir, don’t you think? Perhaps they’ve seen you.’
‘Don’t flatter me, Jacob. It doesn’t suit you. Besides, I hardly think the shot are too particular as to whom they land on.’
‘You’re right there, sir. One of them took away poor young Harrison last week. Silly bugger. Took his head clean off at the shoulders. Had to throw his coat away. New issue too. Shame. Not that any of the men would have wanted it anyways. He never was very particular about his personal matters.’
‘Stank to high hell, Jacob, is what you mean to say.’
‘More than the rest of them, sir. We used to say you could put him in a casemate and he’d clear it of rats quicker than any terrier. Poor bugger. Won’t miss the bloody smell, though. A walking sewer, ’e was.’
Steel and Hansam laughed. Williams managed a smile. It was the sort of graveyard humour that now permeated the company and all the men of the Allied army who had lived in these trenches for the last month. And it was not badly meant. Harrison was gone now, and nothing could save him or any of the others, and if a light-hearted joke at his expense could bring some relief to their condition, then what did it matter? And who would hear them? Certainly no kin of Harrison’s. Wherever they might be, thought Steel.
There was another whizzing sound in the air above them.
‘Heads down, lads. Here they come again.’
It had become a familiar routine. The Allies would start their barrage before dawn, the gunners stripped to the waist sweating in the night to send shots raining into the city, causing as much confusion and panic as possible. And then, when they paused, the enemy would reply. Generally, the French fired three bursts before settling down for the business of the day in which they would maintain a steady, if somewhat weak, fire for hours on end. Their timings were predictable, and it was quite possible for the Allied troops to avoid being hit if they only remembered when to expect them. What troubled Steel was how on earth the French might be finding the ammunition to keep up such a rate of fire. As far as he was aware the Allied army completely surrounded Lille. There was surely no way supplies could be got in. Either, he concluded, the French had a huge underground storehouse of ammunition, which given Marshal Vauban’s ingenuity in his siegeworks was not beyond possibility, or there was a breach in the attackers’ entrenchments.
Steel and his small party walked along the line of the trench looking at his men as they sat against the parapet. Most had removed their ornate mitre caps for fear they might be shot off or present too tempting a target for the French gunners, and instead they had adopted plain black or red skullcaps, often worn over a small inner cap of steel. Their scarlet coats, already faded to brick red, were now covered in dried mud which turned them a strange shade of brown, and to a man they looked more like a crowd of farm labourers than a company of grenadiers. But Steel knew that their fighting spirit had not dimmed. They were still his men, even if they would rather be anywhere else on earth than in this stinking ditch in Flanders.
He turned to one of the men, half asleep and propped against the trench wall. ‘Good morning, Mackay. Catching up on your sleep?’
The man roused himself to attention and was rewarded by a glare from Slaughter. ‘Yes, sir. That is, no, sir. I was, er, inspecting my musket, sir.’
Steel smiled. ‘Inspecting your musket, were you? Well, see it doesn’t get mud down the barrel, or if the Frenchies come over that parapet you’ll find yourself sleeping a sleep from which you’ll never wake.’
The others laughed and walked on behind him as Slaughter shook his head at Mackay.
Steel turned to Hansam. ‘D’you see, Henry. In another regiment, indeed any company other than our own, I’ll wager that the commander would have placed that man on a charge for being asleep at his post. But I do not intend to do that, and you may ask me why. I’ll tell you. Respect. That man, Mackay, has been with me since before Blenheim, Henry and I respect him, and he does likewise for me. Did you hear that, Sar’nt? Be sure that you do not place Mackay on company orders, if you please.’
The sergeant shook his head and wondered whether his captain, the man he counted not only as a superior officer but a faithful friend, had grown soft in the head or just soft with married life. He had known others go the same way. But surely not Captain Steel?
Hansam knew that the lecture was for show. There was a time and a place for the harsh discipline that the army demanded, and a man such as Mackay would not benefit from the lashes that might have been summarily meted out in other units. It was true, as with other men in the company, they had a mutual respect, born from five years of campaigning together against the French. Besides, it was clear to anyone that any attack launched from the citadel would be seen long before it would wake Mackay.
The mist was beginning to clear now.
Slaughter said, ‘I hate sieges. If you want to know, sir, I can’t be doing with them at all. Cooped up in these bloody stinking trenches. When do we get to fight?’
Lieutenant Hansam offered a reply. ‘That is the very nature of the beast, Sar’nt. Your siege is what is known as “static warfare”. Never a pleasant experience for either side.’
‘You’re right there, sir. Nastiest place on this earth, if you ask me.’
While at any other time he would readily have agreed, at present Steel did not share their sentiments. He knew of at least one other place that offered a worse prospect than this: a small cell in Paris, where a wooden chair still bore traces of his own blood. But now was hardly the time to mention that.
‘Unless, like Mister Williams here, you are able to find yourself your own cosy citadel and get on with the important business of life, eh, Tom?’
Williams nodded, for he was unable to speak. He was sitting in a small embrasure cut into the forward face of the trench and covered above with a piece of taut canvas. As they found him he was gnawing on a roasted bird, lately taken from a still revolving spit which stood close by, bearing four more fowl, and being turned by one of the drummer boys. He grinned and swallowed.
‘Fair forage, sir. It was sanctioned by the Duke himself, for the duration of the siege, at least. Two of the men brought them in this morning. Three brace of French partridge. Good eating, sir. The lieutenant has already marked his share. Would you join us?’
Steel shook his head. ‘Thank you Tom, but I have to be about company business.’ He noticed that the ensign’s cheeks were caked in grey mud and that his breeches and gaiters too were covered in the stuff. ‘I shouldn’t go on parade like that, Tom. Get yourself cleaned up if you can find any water. You were out last night?’
‘I led the patrol, sir. We went out with the miners and were seeking a mine ourselves. But we found none.’ He paused to tear at another piece of partridge. ‘Though we did bring in one prisoner. A Walloon. Surly fellow. He’s being questioned now.’
‘Well done for that.’
Williams was learning well, thought Steel. How he had changed in the four years since he had come to them as a green ensign, fresh from Eton. He was now a seasoned officer, as good as any in Steel’s eyes and better than most. Mining parties were among the toughest assignments in this war. Leading out a party of men armed mostly with picks and spades, sharpened as weapons in the case of an encounter with the enemy, was perilous work that sharpened the wits. Williams had done well.
Steel continued, ‘The more we know of their defences, the sooner we’ll be in. And I’m sure we shall know of their mine soon enough. At least, should it explode beneath us we shall in fact know nothing of it. Eh, gentlemen? For we shall all be blown to eternity.’
They laughed, and Williams, who had finished his breakfast, said, ‘There’s talk of an attack tonight, sir. Is there any truth in it, d’you suppose?’
‘Well, Tom. There’s always talk of an attack in the trenches on account of the fact that the men would do anything to be out of them. Or at least they think they would, until they get out there. But the truth of the matter is anyon
e’s guess.’
It was true, he thought. You could see it in their faces, worn and grey with stress. Rumour upon rumour confounded their minds. The trouble with this type of warfare was that there was just too much time to think. And thinking, as any officer would readily inform you, was not something in which the common soldier should ever be encouraged.
‘Don’t worry, Tom. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything more. Now, please do go and get your servant to clean you up. If the colonel sees you like that I’m just as likely to be for the high jump as you.’
It was only five hours later that Steel remembered his promise to Williams. And by then it was too late to matter.
At about one o’clock in the afternoon he noticed that the seven batteries of heavy siege cannon directly behind their position had begun to play upon the rising ramparts of the star fort which encircled the city. The effect, he could see from the trench, was to send a party of the enemy who had been engaged in making repairs to previous damage scurrying back into the fortress. After they had gone, the barrage continued. Ten minutes later a messenger arrived, panting, having run from the support trench.
‘Captain Steel, sir. Colonel Farquharson’s compliments, sir, and you’re to stand the men to. You’re to prepare to advance on the enemy.’
As the man left, breaking into a run, Steel shouted to Slaughter: ‘Stand them to, Sar’nt. Officers, take posts. Check grenades and fuses. Light your tapers.’
The sergeant took up the commands. ‘Check your muskets, lads, and your bayonets. We’re going to attack.’
However, it was not for another five hours, at almost six o’clock in the evening, that they finally received the order to make ready to advance. The messenger was followed by another, a young lieutenant, barely sixteen, Steel guessed, from Sir James’s battalion staff. Steel knew that he would tell him what he needed to know, and sure enough the boy’s boiling excitement spilled out.
‘The regiment is to be part of a grand assault, sir. We’re to go in at seven o’clock this evening. A great column, sir. Sixteen full battalions. Fifteen thousand men in all, d’you know.’
Steel heard his calm assurance that their target, the St Andrew and St Magdalen sectors, would have been softened up by cannon-fire from the great siege batteries which had been assembled to their rear on the high ground. They would advance at walking pace into the assault and engage the enemy through the breaches in his defences. This would not be a forlorn hope, or so the generals were confident. As grenadiers, Steel’s company would form the vanguard of the advance. So, he thought, a frontal assault on a heavily defended position. There might be no forlorn hope, per se, but Steel knew that in truth the grenadiers were just that – an impossibly outnumbered strike force being sent right into the mouth of hell, whatever the generals thought of the invincible power of their great guns. Steel had seen it before, too many times. He sighed and, drawing the great sword from his side, ran his thumb gently down the razor-sharp blade.
A drum roll came from the left.
Steel looked to Hansam. ‘What time d’ye have, Henry?’
Hansam looked at his coveted French timepiece. ‘I have thirty minutes past the hour, Jack. It’s time.’
Steel nodded. Well then, this was it. One more time for luck. All for nothing and good Queen Anne.
‘Here we go, boys. And remember, keep low, duck your heads as if you were advancing into a snowstorm, and try to work in pairs like I taught you. Some of us will fall, boys. But most of us, I promise you, will get through, and then we’ll show the Frenchies what we can do, and we’ll take this bloody town. We’re going to kick King Louis’s arse and chase his Grand Marshal back to Paris.’
A ragged cheer rippled down the ranks. The drums beat again, more urgently now. One of the orderlies was passing through the ranks with the customary tot of rum for each man before an assault. All took it hungrily, and those who refused soon found their shares taken up by neighbours only too happy to be advancing into the enemy fire with less of their wits about them. Someone, one of the younger men, vomited his rum ration and the remains of his breakfast onto the floor of the trench.
Slaughter swore. ‘What a bloody waste of good rum. Cochrane, you dirty little man, I’m going to make you clean up that mess there when we get back.’
‘Yes, Sarge. Thank you, Sarge.’
There was a ripple of laughter from the ranks.
‘Sergeant to you, Cochrane. That’s enough. Look to your front. Officer present.’
Steel nodded to the men and Slaughter. ‘Ready, Sar’nt?’
‘As ever will be, sir. I hope those guns ’ave done their work.’
‘The generals seem to think so, and in whom else can we trust?’
Suddenly the earth was rocked by a huge explosion. Instinctively the men ducked, and then just as quickly rose again to survey the result. Far off across the mud, in the outer wall of the first ravelin, a cloud of dust was climbing into the sky.
One of them said, ‘Bloody hell, Sergeant. What was that?’
‘That, my lad, was a bloody great mine exploding. One of ours, luckily. Take a look, Hooper. You’re a lucky boy to see that. And mark it well, for that’s where we’re headed.’
The men craned their necks to see over the parapet. Steel, reckoning that there was little chance that the French artillery would open up after such a shock, climbed onto the firestep and said nothing. Slowly the smoke and dust cleared to reveal a huge V-shaped gap blown in the wall of the ravelin. Around it was utter devastation. Flames crackled on the wall and in the mud and scorched debris: stones, wood and what had been men smoked and crackled wherever the eye could see.
Steel turned to Slaughter. ‘That’s it, Sar’nt. They’ve done it. We’re going in.’ He looked towards the men. ‘See that hole in the wall there? That’s your target, lads. Come on, with me. Before the Frenchies come to their senses.’
Another of the men spoke. Steel did not see who it was. ‘God’s blood, Sarge. It looks like the bloody gates of hell itself. Oh bloody hell. We’re not going in there, are we?’
With a single step Steel crested the trench and stood on the parapet. Instantly the remainder of the company were with him, and all along the line now to the left and right they could see men standing above the trench line.
Slaughter gave the command: ‘Form up. Line of attack. Steady now. Wait for it … Wait for it now. Stand steady there, I said.’
Steel drew his sword and held it high above his head. ‘The Grenadiers will advance with me. For the regiment and for Queen Anne. Forward. Let’s take that bugger.’
With a cheer they set out across the mud at the normal walking pace of an attack: ‘as fast as foot could fall’. They could all see it now, the huge breach blown in the defences by a mine that had been two weeks in the making, a mine that had been tunnelled out by sweating, naked men from Yorkshire, Nottingham and Cornwall who had advanced underground through a long, thin, claustrophobic shaft to lay tons of explosive at the foot of Vauban’s masterwork. This was their achievement, and Steel was determined that they should not have worked in vain. He urged himself on through the mud and looked around, saw Hansam, Williams, Slaughter and the others.
He shouted back to them, ‘Come on. Were nearly there. Not far, boys.’
He was aware of Williams mouthing some words at him and pointing with the tip of his sword towards the fort, but the cacophony of the Allied guns and not least the sound of his own breathing made them unintelligible. He followed the line of Williams’s sword, and then he saw what was worrying the junior officer. For there, pouring out at them from the very breach itself, the very mouth of hell, was a great body of white-clad infantry. And they didn’t look as if they intended to surrender.
Steel gasped. ‘Oh Christ in heaven. How in hell’s name?’
He didn’t have to say anything more. The beleaguered garrison was making a sortie against the attack. It was any besieging soldier’s worst nightmare. The enemy allowed you to expose yourself in t
he open, picked off as many as he could, then, feeling sufficiently confident, counterattacked in strength.
Continuing to advance, and followed steadily by his men, Steel watched as the white flood built to battalion strength, then as still more came on. There must be thousands of them, he thought, enough to easily outnumber the attackers.
‘Keep going, lads. We can take them. They’re just putting on a show. They know they’re beaten.’
In truth he did not believe his own words. The best the British could now hope for would be to stand their ground and trust that the French counterattack petered out. Otherwise, even if they escaped with their lives, they would surely lose all the gains that they had made in the last few minutes and for which many men had died. It was madness, but there was no alternative.
Steel chose his moment with great care. ‘Halt. Make ready.’
They would meet the French attack head on with a solid volley. He was aware that the other five companies of the regiment would still be advancing in their wake but trusted that when they saw the turn of events they too would stop. Indeed if the adjutant or Colonel Farquharson had enough nous they might even be able to join the Grenadiers in the line and give the enemy a really bloody nose before they had a chance to close. For now, though, during the all-important first volleys his men and the Grenadiers from the other regiments to his right and left would be on their own. Slowly the gap between the advancing lines of red- and white-clad soldiers grew less and less. At fifty paces they stopped.
‘Make ready. Fire by platoons.’ He paused. ‘Present. Fire.’
The first of the volleys rang out from the British ranks, followed by another and then another along the line. It was met almost simultaneously by an explosion of fire from the French, which although more instantly murderous was soon over, while the red ranks continued to pour it on. Steel saw white-clad Frenchmen fall in numbers but was also aware of gaps appearing in his own line. Slaughter pushed and pulled at the men, and the drummers dragged out the dead. Another French volley, and the rippling fire of the Grenadiers continued. The French did not break and run, as Steel had hoped they would, and as the smoke cleared he saw why. Behind the two ranks of the enemy regiment to his front, in which there were now significant gaps, another unit had appeared to reinforce it, and as he watched the front regiment split in four and allowed the sections of the fresh unit to come through and form a new and untarnished front line.
