Crimea

by Malcolm Archibald

  'Poseidon ahoy!' the hail came from a smartly uniformed naval officer in the stern. 'You're a bit behind time are you not?'

  'We had problems.' Captain Evans replied through the speaking trumpet. 'What's happening? Where are we headed?'

  'We're going to bell the cat!' The naval officer balanced easily despite the crazy rocking of his gig. 'We're all off to the Crimea to destroy Sebastopol.'

  'What happened? There are bodies all over the sea. Was there a battle?'

  'Cholera!' the lieutenant said happily. 'It followed us from Varna; it's killing hundreds of the lobsters. We're much safer at sea!'

  'Oh sweet God in heaven: cholera!' Captain Fleming stepped back from the rail as if the disease would rise from the sea and board Poseidon.

  'Where is our station?' Captain Evans asked.

  'What's your cargo?'

  'The 113th Foot.'

  There was a pause as the lieutenant signalled the information in a flurry of flags.

  'Here we go,' Fleming said, 'he'll order us back to Malta or even England.'

  'Take station to the rear of the convoy,' the lieutenant eventually ordered. 'And wait for orders.' The gig turned in an impressive display of nautical skill and surged away with the lieutenant sitting in the stern sheets and the oars rising and falling in perfect unison.

  'Take station in the rear,' Snodgrass said sourly. 'The only place that the 113th should be.'

  Evans had not waited for Snodgrass to speak; the seamen were already altering the set of the sails.

  For the remainder of that day, they remained in Balchik Bay, acutely aware of the periodic splashes as one ship or another added to the corpses in the water. Jack was thankful when night came, ending the sights of bobbing bodies. The memories of the dancing, grinning heads remained, yet at least he was soldiering, he was no longer acting the spy. He put that episode of his life in a compartment in his memory and firmly closed the lid.

  As pink dawn tinged the eastern sky on the seventh September, the fleet sailed in a flurry of canvas and the steady chunking of paddle-steamers. At the tail of the convoy, the men on Poseidon felt small and insignificant; they were a tiny cog in the machine of war. Jack and Elliot stood on deck watching the line of ships that stretched ahead, smeared with smoke from the steamers as the water was chopped and frothed by the wake of each vessel.

  'What a sight,' Jack said.

  'Six hundred ships, so I heard,' Elliot's face was animated.

  A flurry of flags fluttered from the mastheads of the Royal Naval vessels that led each of the two lines of British ships that stretched a full five miles into the distance.

  'Here we go,' Elliot said. 'Off to the Crimea, victory and glory.'

  'Oh God I hope so,' Jack said. He saw Fleming's face pale.

  They were both wrong. The very next day they rendezvoused with the French fleet off the mouth of the Danube, cast anchor and once again remained static while the army fretted and suffered through disease. Small boats passed to and fro, carrying splendidly attired officers on visits to neighbouring regiments. Nobody came to Poseidon.

  'We are the pariahs of the army,' Fleming said sourly.

  'That's not surprising.' Now even Elliot seemed depressed by the unexpected delay. The hours passed away, with Major Snodgrass becoming increasingly irate and the men more resentful under his authority.

  'I'll check the men,' Jack said.

  'That's the sergeant's job,' Fleming told him. 'Best not interfere.'

  'They're my men,' Jack said as he slipped below, remembering the anger and bitter tension after Riley's flogging.

  'Where's the colonel?' O'Neill's voice rose above the hubbub of the packed and stinking troop's accommodation. 'Where's Colonel Murphy?'

  'He'll be back when he's fit,' Jack did not know the answer.

  'I'll swing for that Major Snodgrass,' Thorpe touched a hand to his bayonet.

  'You'd be better to make sure your kit is clean,' Jack decided to ignore the threat. 'Major Snodgrass is holding an inspection in half an hour.'

  'Another bloody inspection?' O'Neill opened his mouth to say more until Jack interfered before he got himself into trouble.

  'And you'd better be ready for it; we don't want the French showing us up, yet alone the other regiments.' Jack looked around the deck; many of the men were staring at him. 'You men better prepare for the major's inspection too,' he said. More privates were pressing around him, flint-eyed soldiers with no reason to love an officer.

  'Officers never come down here,' one sallow-faced man said.

  'They know better.' The short Scotsman man pushed himself to the front. His colleagues gave him space.

  'Officers stick to their own place,' another man spoke; he had a tanned face and a broken nose, with the herculean physique of a railway navigator.

  Jack heard the implied threat in the harsh voices. For the first time, he felt insecure among British soldiers. He straightened himself as best he could under the low deck beams. 'There is nowhere on this ship that an officer cannot go,' he kept his voice mild as if he had not noticed the danger.

  'No other officer would lower himself by mixing with us,' the bookish private joined them. 'And no other officer jumped into the sea to try and save a private soldier.'

  'You were on the rope, hauling me back on board,' Jack spoke in the sudden uneasy silence.

  'Trust the Bishop to try and rescue an officer.' The voice came from somewhere in the mass, with a ripple of humourless laughter following.

  'I never had the opportunity to thank you.' Jack knew he could not shake the hand of a private soldier, much as he wanted to.

  'I was doing my Christian duty,' the Bishop said.

  Jack nodded. 'Thank you,' he raised his voice. 'You men make sure you are ready for the inspection. We will be landing in the Crimea soon, and we must all be at our best. Major Snodgrass has been trying to ensure we are fit to fight the Russians. You and I and everybody in the regiment must help the major to make us the finest regiment in the army.'

  Jack had not expected rapturous applause for his speech, but he hoped for something better than total silence. 'I'll leave you in peace to prepare.'

  As he stepped away, he thought it best to ignore the short, cynical laugh.

  'Calamity Bay? Who the devil chose that as a place to land?' Elliot lifted his face to the sun, 'but what a glorious morning.'

  'It's Calamita, not calamity,' Fleming said pedantically. 'Get your men ready; we are the last of the infantry to disembark of course; we spoil the look of the place.'

  There was an eerie atmosphere as the British Army left the ships and rowed or sailed onto the beach. Although the armies of the Honourable East India Company had massive experience of campaigns all across that sub-continent and there had been wars in South Africa and China, it was the first time in forty years that British soldiers had fought a European war. Most of this army had never faced an enemy or tested themselves in battle; nobody knew how they would act.

  'This is nothing like the Irrawaddy,' Thorpe displayed his military experience as he stood at Poseidon's rail watching the army slowly fill the beach. 'We had to work in the tropical heat, not on a beautiful autumn day.'

  'Look at the officers,' Jack recognised the harsh Scottish accent. 'What a pack of prancing peacocks!'

  Jack could not fault the description. Dressed in full dress uniform including their swords, the groups of officers were conspicuous as they watched their men file ashore. 'No packs for the men either; they look terrible.' Gaunt and shaking, the infantry moved slowly, more like men convalescing from a prolonged hospital visit than soldiers at the very beginning of a campaign.

  'That's what cholera does,' Snodgrass sounded more controlled than normal. 'We've been cursing the slowness of the voyage, but it saved us from being infected with cholera.'

  'Well done the 113th,' Jack said softly.

  'Maybe our luck is not all bad, then,' Elliot added.

  'There's the Russians now,' Captain Evans pointed a
long telescope to the cliffs, half a mile or so beyond the landing site. All at once half a dozen more telescopes focussed on the spot, with Snodgrass lifting a pair of field glasses.

  'Cossacks,' he said. 'I think. Horsemen anyway; scruffy looking scoundrels.'

  It was a long five minutes before Jack could borrow a telescope. He saw an officer in a bottle-green uniform surrounded by a group of shaggy horsemen with long lances.

  'They look a handy bunch,' he said. He mentally compared them with the Burmese cavalry he had met. 'If they had any artillery they could sweep us off the beach before we get established.'

  'Luckily they haven't' Snodgrass said.

  'I wish we were ashore,' Elliot said. 'We could take a company up the cliff and push these Ruskies off!'

  Snodgrass snorted. 'Our blackguards would have one look at them and run away.'

  The rain began in mid-afternoon, with water-parched men lifting open mouths to the skies and the troops ashore huddled in sodden misery without shelter. What started as heavy rain soon worsened to a storm that swept over the British Amy, adding discomfort to cholera-weakened men and multiplying the number who dropped in sickness and death onto the soil of the Crimea.

  'Thank God for a nearly dry ship,' Coleman jerked a thumb toward the land. 'We've been lucky once again.'

  'The gods of war are smiling on the good old 113th,' Riley said quietly. 'And only God can help us if they should ever frown.'

  The good old 113th? Jack had never heard it called that before. Either Riley was developing sarcasm, or there was the beginning of some regimental pride among the men, whatever the officers thought. He looked over the privates yet again: there was more to them than some of the officers realised. With some nurturing and a couple of successes, they might develop into an adequate regiment.

  It was not until the early morning of the 19th September that the commanders permitted the 113th to land, the last infantry unit of the fleet to set foot on Russian soil. What they walked into shocked Jack. From the sea, the army had looked sickly enough, but once on land, he realised that there were already hundreds of sick and dead as exposure, dysentery and cholera continued their ravages.

  'What the devil has happened here?' Elliot stopped at a pile of stores that lay abandoned just above the beach.

  'There's no transport to carry them,' a laconic artillery officer told him. 'Wellington would have a fit if he was here.'

  'What turmoil,' Jack said, 'but at least we are here; the 113th is part of a major British army in a war with a European power.' He looked around, feeling a surge of unexpected pride.

  'Are all wars like this?' Elliot looked in horror at a man thrashing in the final agonies of cholera.

  'Probably.' Jack said. 'Maybe the 113th is not the best regiment in the army, but Lord Raglan has undoubtedly made a complete shambles of this landing.'

  Hard by the shore, the French were already waiting in formation, with bands playing and flags flying, while inland the green-uniformed men of the Rifles and hard-worked cavalry guarded the British flank.

  'Where are we positioned, sir?' Jack asked as Murphy made his appearance among the men. Stick-thin, he looked as if he needed help to sit on his horse.

  'With the Fourth Division,' Murphy sounded hoarse.

  'Glad to have you back, sir.' Jack said.

  Murphy nodded. 'I had a recurrence of fever. It's been in my bones since India.' He did not mention his consumption. 'Major Snodgrass, take us to the rear of the army, please.'

  'The rear sir? Are we the rearguard?' There was a hint of pleasure in Snodgrass's voice.

  Murphy shook his head. 'No, Major. The Fourth Division is tidying the camp and taking care of the sick. We are burying the dead and following the army to collect the stragglers.'

  Snodgrass took a deep breath. 'Yes sir; of course we are.'

  When at last the allied army marched, the sun was halfway to its zenith, pummelling the men beneath. Jack watched them go, the red-coated men already staggering under six days rations of biscuits and four days of meat, with greatcoat and blanket, rucksack and water keg and heavy Minie rifle.

  'God I wish we were with them,' Elliot said.

  'We must do as the general commands,' Fleming sounded so relieved that Jack wished to upset him.

  'Maybe the Russians will attack us, as the weakest part of the army,' he tried to sound casual. 'There were Cossacks on the heights when we landed. Perhaps they are gathering now, waiting to sweep us back into the sea.' He stopped when he saw the look of fear that crossed Fleming's face.

  'Lieutenant Preston: take a score of men and guard the flank,' Murphy looked around the confusion that the army had left behind. 'We better get this blasted mess cleaned up. I want the dead buried and the sick taken on board the ships to sail back to Scutari.' He swayed slightly and shook away Jack's steadying hand. 'I'm all right, damn it! Go and find some transport to carry these poor fellows.'

  'Yes, sir.' The allied armies had managed to march about half a mile in half an hour, leaving a scattering of sick, British and French, lying behind them. Already some of the men were jettisoning their equipment, with packs, shakos and even a water bottle lying on the ground. The only wagons Jack saw were in the hands of the French. 'How many men do I have, sir?'

  Murphy put a hand on Jack's shoulder as he swayed again. 'You can have thirty. I want you to bring in the dead and bury them Once that is done find a wagon to collect all the equipment that the army is dropping all over the place.'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'Corporal O'Neill,' Jack shouted, 'I need a wagon.'

  'Very good, sir,' O'Neill waited for a moment. 'Where do you suggest I get one, sir?'

  'I'm sure you can find one, corporal.'

  O'Neill looked around. 'Maybe it would be best after night, sir.'

  Jack hid his sour grin. 'I think we understand each other, O'Neill. Now let's get these poor fellows buried.'

  By dusk, they had dug over a hundred graves, carried over a hundred bodies and placed them as carefully as they could beneath the ground. Every so often, Jack borrowed a telescope and examined the countryside around, spending time studying the nearby French camp. 'They do things differently from us,' he said quietly, 'and so much better.'

  'Are you ready, sir?' O'Neill headed a small group of privates. Jack recognised Coleman and the small Scotsman with his bitter-eyed companions. 'I've got some good lads here.'

  'Names?' Jack asked.

  'Logan,' the Glasgow man slurred and winced as O'Neill rammed a hard finger into his ribs.

  'You say 'Sir' when speaking to an officer.'

  'Logan, sir,'

  'Ogden, sir,' the broken-nosed Hercules said at once.

  'Hitchins, sir,' the sallow-faced man's accent rolled from the Shropshire hills.

  'You men are under my direct command,' Jack said. 'If there are any questions asked about what we were doing, you say that you were following orders. Is that understood?'

  They nodded, careless of authority.

  'And if you let us down,' O'Neill said, 'I will personally rip your head off your body.'

  'What are we doing, corporal?' Ogden asked.

  'We are adding to the supply column of the British Army,' O'Neill told him grandly.

  'This way, men.' Jack took a deep breath and headed inland, stepping through what only two days ago had been flower-bedecked plain but was now a rutted stinking morass.

  'Sir,' O'Neill spoke in a low whisper. 'Have you done this sort of thing before?'

  Jack shook his head.

  'It might be best if we took the lead, sir.' O'Neill looked over his shoulder at the privates that grumbled behind them. 'I chose these boys myself. They know what they are about.'

  Jack nodded. 'On you go then O'Neill. I don't want any slip-ups to ruin the operation, particularly not by me!' He stepped aside and allowed the privates to move forward.

  'Where the hell are you going?' A sentry challenged them.

  'That's where the hell are you going, sir,' O'
Neill corrected. 'We have an officer with us.'

  The sentries watched them hurry into the gathering gloom, with O'Neill leading and his eclectic collection following. For the first time in the campaign, Jack felt the tension he had experienced in Burma when he was outside the security of the British lines. He felt the pull of the open spaces to his left, knowing that the whole Crimean peninsula stretched beyond him, and then the appalling size of the Steppes. Only God and the Czar knew how many Russians were marching down on the disease- ravaged allied army. He shivered as he thought of the vast spaces of Russia and the armies that had failed to conquer it before. Now it was Britain with her tiny, mismanaged forces and over-dressed gentlemanly but bumbling commanders, and France, her ally, who were invading this vast nation with her intense national pride and mysterious depths. The prospect was suddenly appalling.

  'Sir,' O'Neill's soft voice disturbed Jack's reverie, and he came back to reality. He had been walking instinctively toward the bonfires that silhouetted the dim shapes of tents and the shuffle of moving men.

  'Bloody Frogs,' Coleman grumbled. 'Trust them to have tents.'

  'Coleman, you and Hitchins go left and make a noise.' O'Neill gave quick orders. 'You know what to do.'

  Jack watched the two privates obey; within a minute there was the click of metal on stone and a soft grunt.

  'Qui va la?' One of the French called.

  There was a low moan, and two French soldiers moved forward. For one second, firelight glinted on wickedly long bayonets, and then the French vanished beyond the periphery of the light and into the dark.

  'In we go, boys,' O'Neill led them into the French camp, keeping to the shadows and moving as confidently as if they belonged there.

  'On the right side,' Jack murmured. He stopped as a group of Zouaves walked past, distinct in brilliant baggy silk pants below their tunics and rakish fezzes above. 'Here we are, men.'

  Local to the Crimea, the araba wagons were heavy and cumbersome but far better than nothing. Some had solid wheels; some were half covered like the prairie schooners of the American West. They were arranged in long, neat lines and watched over by a dozen lounging guards with long coats.

  'Here, sir,' Coleman appeared from the dark. He passed over a Zouave tunic, scarlet trousers and fez. 'There's one for you too, corporal.'