A Close Run Thing mh-1

by Allan Mallinson

  I speak German, sir, if it would help,’ said Hervey hesitantly.

  ‘Help? I should say it will!’ replied Vandeleur, turning to his staff. ‘None of us have a damned word of it!’

  Help it did, for Vandeleur would no more have recognized Prince Wilhelm at the head of von Billow’s cavalry than he would an officer in another brigade. And now was not the time for discourtesies (Sir John was notoriously short on ceremony). He managed to give, with Hervey as interpreter, a passable account of the last hour’s fighting, and the prince agreed to take up the pursuit.

  ‘One more matter, General,’ said Wilhelm, his hard Berlin consonants commanding absolute attention. ‘Marshal Blücher and the Duke of Wellington must seal this arrangement. I propose they rendezvous in this very place, at this inn – La Belle Alliance – an apt name for the battle itself, think you not?’

  Vandeleur looked at Hervey, who did not wait to translate for him: ‘We may arrange the rendezvous, your Highness,’ he began instead, ‘but the duke is very particular about naming his battles.’

  The army slept that night where it halted, on the battlefield itself, surrounded by the dead and dying, their exhaustion utter. The camp-fires which, as a rule, lit up after battle, like so many stars in a clear sky, were few and far between. Everywhere men just lay down and slept.

  Not so in the Sixth. They could not claim to have suffered as the infantry, and Hervey had two thoughts only: to recover their dead and wounded, and to make ready for the advance on Paris, which he knew must follow soon. Making-ready he could, with confidence, leave to RSM Lincoln and Assheton-Smith, the senior of the other three lieutenants still in the saddle, but recovering the dead and wounded was another matter. ‘Mr Lincoln,’ he began thoughtfully, ‘we have but a half-hour of twilight. Scour the slopes in front of the battery we overran, but no further. I myself shall search for Serjeant Strange.’

  ‘As you wish, sir,’ replied the RSM, his voice for once muted, ‘but I urge that your cover-serjeant goes with you.’

  Hervey was more than content to take the counsel, since there was no-one else with whom he might begin to relate his sense of guilt at this time.

  In failing light, and against the flow of Prussians, they trotted northeast, the sights and sounds all about them reducing even Armstrong to silence, for never before had either of them re-crossed a battlefield. And never, for sure, one as bloody as this. What therefore made Hervey check in front of La Haye Sainte he could not tell: the ground was everywhere covered with the dead and dying. But one body lying face-down, sword still clutched in an outstretched hand, even among all the others drew his eye (perhaps the uniform looked too pristine compared with the muddy, gory remains all around). He dismounted and turned the scarlet-jacketed body over. The wild, staring eyes, which he had last seen on the ridge that morning, rolled upwards, yet there was no other life.

  So Styles had reached the slopes in front of the batteries, dying with sword drawn, going for the enemy. Whether those eyes stared in wild fear or with the exhilaration of the charge mattered not: Hervey would be able to tell his people that their son had died among the enemy. And that was all he would need to say.

  It was after midnight before they found Strange. Hervey had prayed so fervently that they might not, but his body they found easily, alone, and where he had last seen him, contorted in the agony that the dozen or more lance wounds had inflicted (for that was the number the lantern revealed).

  ‘Jesus, Mr ’Ervey,’ cursed Armstrong, ‘it’s an infernal weapon; it’s … unchristian.’

  They wrapped him gently in a blanket, as if wounded, and then Armstrong caught one of the loose horses roaming even this remote corner of the battlefield – a chestnut (Strange had always liked chestnuts). Unmarked by the battle, she stood patiently while they lashed his body into the saddle.

  They picked their way back to La Belle Alliance, in silence once more, across a moonlit landscape where ghostly figures shuffled or darted in and out of the shadows. At times they were accompanied by a press of riderless horses seeking the security of the herd, some barely able to walk so appalling were their wounds. It was past three o’clock when they reached the inn, and burial that night was unthinkable. Hervey had resolved that Strange would have the rites of the Wesleyan service, so they wrapped his body in a velvet curtain (blue – the colour which had clothed him in life) and laid him in one of the rooms. Soon afterwards, Assheton-Smith and the RSM came with the regiment’s parade-strength. Hervey studied it through eyes that already ached, and which now filled with tears. He could scarcely believe the order of their loss, for they had been so late engaged. Only five officers and 123 other ranks would be ready for duty at dawn.

  ‘I have posted an inlying picket only, sir,’ said the lieutenant. ‘Do we stand-to as usual before dawn?’

  Hervey checked his irritation at the suggestion they might do otherwise. ‘Yes,’ he replied simply.

  * * *

  His leg ached, his head pounded, and he felt weak for want of food. He ought to do his rounds of the squadrons – that was what Edmonds would have done, was it not? But surely he had done sufficient of his duty, and was it not now his duty to rest? The RSM insisted it was, and Hervey yielded. Johnson had already taken Jessye, who had carried him through so much that day without once even stumbling, and he now brought his valise. Hervey put his hand on his groom’s shoulder. ‘I am glad that you at least … ,’ he began, but then stayed his sentiments and went instead to the next-door room in silence. He lay on the floor by Strange’s body and struggled to think of a prayer. But sleep came quicker.

  PART THREE

  AFTERMATH

  Were you at Waterloo?

  I have been at Waterloo.

  ’Tis no matter what you do

  If you were at Waterloo!

  Popular ditty

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE AUDIT OF WAR

  Before Dawn, 19 June

  At his headquarters, the inn on the Brussels chaussée at the village of Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington slept. He had returned after dark, eaten some supper with those of his staff who had survived, and then sat down to write his dispatch to the prince regent. When he had finished, he had instructed the headquarters physician, Dr Hume, to bring him the casualty list at first light so that he might attach it. One of his ADCs, Sir Alexander Gordon, had lain mortally wounded in the duke’s camp-bed, so he had, instead, lain down in an adjacent room, wrapped in his cloak. Hume crept in silently and placed the list by the sleeping commander-in-chief. When he returned after daybreak he found the duke up, studying it intently. His face was still grimy from the previous day, and there were traces of tears.

  On the other side of the battlefield, Hervey, wrapped also in a cloak, slept, too. And death, in the shape of a comrade, was likewise but a few feet away. Johnson roused him as late as he dared before the squadrons paraded for stand-to.

  ‘Are there no orders for the pursuit?’ he asked as he took the canteen of coffee (the beans were Johnson’s sole find in the inn’s cellars).

  There were none. And RSM Lincoln had disquieting news: there had been no contact during the night with Sir Hussey Vivian or his staff.

  ‘Very well, then, RSM,’ said Hervey resolutely as he rose (stiffly), ‘We must stand-to with extra vigilance lest there has been some unaccountable reverse since last light.’

  ‘Shall I detail parties to search for our wounded, sir?’

  Most of their losses had been on the ridge at Mont St-Jean: they would surely by now have been recovered. ‘No, Mr Lincoln,’ he concluded, ‘I cannot spare even a dozen. We must trust to the medical services.’ Had he but known that these were already overwhelmed, that the wounded were yet lying on the ridge – and that some would do so another night – he might have dispensed with all caution and taken the whole regiment back to scour for their fallen. ‘Ask the RM to get the squadrons collecting loose horses, if you please, but not to venture beyond carbine-range: we shall need all the prize money w
e can lay in for widows’ pensions.’ The RSM saluted and made to leave, but Hervey had one more concern. ‘Is Corporal Sandbache fit, Mr Lincoln?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he replied dubiously.

  ‘Then, I wish him to read the burial service over Serjeant Strange; he is a preacher, is he not?’

  Hervey made his rounds in silence, except for the briefest word here and there to warn for an outlying picket, and he held the squadrons a full quarter-hour beyond first light, for without knowledge of who else was about he would not risk an encounter with stragglers. There was a mood of numb relief about the Sixth. All they wanted to do was get away from this place, for never before had they halted where they fought, so that the sights, the sounds and the smell of the battlefield had remained with them as they lay, recruits and older hands alike unnerved by the strangeness of it. All night long there had been moaning and shouts for help. Those of the regiment who had not been called for duty, and who had slept soundly, had indeed been fortunate. Those who had stood sentinel would tell of the moaning, the cries, the screams, and the ghoulish sights which the moon had shone upon. They had seen men sitting clutching at a stomach ripped open by a sabre slash or a piece of shrapnel, one by one succumbing to death as their life-blood drained away. Others, less dreadfully injured, or possessed of some last strength, had risen and staggered off into the darkness, only to fall down again after a few steps. There were horses, too, that suffered no less, and claimed more pity by their helplessness. Some still lay with their entrails hanging out (and yet some of these would live), attempting to rise from time to time, only to fall back again in the manner of their fellow, human sufferers. And then, all strength spent, their eyes would close gently, there would be one last convulsive struggle, and their suffering would be at an end. All this as close, in places, as a dozen yards. Yet few, even the usual Samaritans, had dared to venture out of the lines that night, for there were too many roaming the field intent on evil business, and shots had punctuated the small hours as the wounded who tried to resist the looters were sent to join the dead.

  He walked through the lines of tethered troop-horses, casting an eye over each to gauge their condition, and exchanging a word here and there with a dragoon who felt the need of something to say. It amounted to little, however, since the exhilaration of the gunfire and stirrup-charges had passed, and the reality – thinned ranks and lost comrades – was grimly apparent in the daylight. As he neared the inlying picket-post the corporal (the ubiquitous Collins) rousted its troopers for a salute. ‘Picket! Commanding officer approaching. Pree-sent … arms!’

  Hervey glowered at him, but Collins returned the look with defiant pride. As far as he was concerned Hervey was commanding officer irrespective of rank: arms would be presented, not a mere butt-salute.

  He left the bivouac and crossed the rutted road to see the ground over which they had fought with such resolve. Smoke still drifted in places, but to his left and right he saw clearly the shattered remains of Bonaparte’s folly. Where, the day before, there had been magnificence – proud cuirassiers, fine horses, burnished guns, fluttering lance-pennants, the bearskins of the Garde, eagles, tricolours, and everywhere ‘Vive l’empereur’ – there was now only desolation. Even the silence was melancholy. No wind, no rain – not even the skylark was tempted to song. Here and there a single shot rang out as a horse, too badly injured to be worth hobbling with to the meat-market, was put out of its protracted misery. And long, chilling screams, ending as abruptly as they had begun, reminded him that death, were it to come, were best to come quickly in his profession.

  In the distance the sight was no less doleful, for on the slopes of the ridge at Mont St-Jean – the sea wall against which the French-blue waves had battered all day – was the red of Wellington’s dauntless infantry. But they lay in lines rather than standing upright in squares. Was there so great a difference ‘twixt a battle lost and this?

  ‘De l’eau, monsieur – pour l’amour de Dieu, de l’eau,’ cried one of Bonaparte’s gunners, propped up against a limber wheel. His pipeclayed-white breeches were blood-darkened from the oozings of the slash across his chest – a slash which one of the Sixth’s own troopers must have made. Hervey stooped to pick up a water-canteen from a gunner who no longer had need of it, and put it to the man’s lips. The water trickled down his tunic, for he had not the strength to swallow, and he slumped to one side, eyes open in a look of bewilderment – yet stone-dead. Hervey closed them with his thumbs. ‘Into thy hands O Lord … ,’ he murmured.

  He opened a pocket of the man’s tunic to see who this soldier of France might be. Gaspard Juvenal, said his papers, from Saintes in the Charente-Maritime – a provincial Frenchman whose blood had flowed into foreign soil. Had he served these guns in the Peninsula? Had they met before in battle? Or had Gaspard Juvenal ventured even further from the Gironde, perhaps to Muscovy, and seen the basilicas of the tsar’s capital?

  ‘That ’un dead an’ all, sir?’ called an orderly, examining each body in what remained of the battery.

  ‘Yes, just,’ replied Hervey, more than ever conscious of the slender divide.

  ‘No, I ’aven’t found any alive this side of the road, either. Whoever caught these poor beggars was ’orrible neat with the sword. I reckon some over there is nought but into their teens. What in God’s name is Boney doing fighting with slips of boys, d’ye reckon, sir?’

  Hervey almost sobbed, conscious that this was indeed the Sixth’s handiwork. Instead he turned his remorse against the orderly, angered at being touched thus. ‘They were old enough to fetch powder and put a portfire to a touch-hole if needs be,’ he snapped.

  ‘Ay, they were right enough, sir,’ replied the man readily. ‘Found ought worth anything on that one, sir?’ he continued breezily.

  The orderly would never know how close he came at that instant to knowing the same sabre that had made its accounts at the battery. Hervey bit into his glove. ‘I have not searched him with any thoroughness,’ he said curtly.

  But still the man was not put off. ‘Then, I’ll have a look for meself, sir, if that’s right by you.’

  There was no regulation of which Hervey knew that prevented an orderly of the medical services from relieving the dead of their worldly possessions. It was, indeed, a consideration to many, who might otherwise have sought a less sanguinary billet with the commissaries.

  ‘Wonder if this did him any good, sir,’ said the man after a deal of rummaging, holding out a rosary.

  Hervey cursed beneath his breath as the orderly threw it aside. ‘I will have that, if you please,’ he snapped.

  ‘Right enough, sir,’ came the cheery response, ‘but it’s not worth a ha’penny.’

  When the orderly had finished his work Hervey walked over to the furthest gun and sat on the trail of its abandoned limber. He put his head in his hands and searched for a prayer that might transport him from the death and despoiling, and from the monstrousness of the orderly and his work. ‘Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace …’ he began. But his thoughts wandered. Which of these thousands lying before him had been His servants? ‘For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,’ he continued resolutely. Serjeant Strange had been his servant. And Lankester. And Edmonds, too, though he would never admit it. Edmonds - the major had been more to him than his own kin these past six years. He shuddered at the lonely prospect of soldiering without him. But Strange had been worthier than any, in the sight of the Almighty, surely. And yet he had not departed in peace. Would his death torment him for ever?

  Only then did he remember the oilskin pouch that Strange had thrust at him on parting, and reached into the deep inner pocket of his jacket where it rested securely with his other keepsakes: Sister Maria’s signet ring, d’Arcey Jessope’s watch, and the prayer-book his father had given him. He took out the pouch and unfolded it carefully. There was a lock of grey hair in the first fold – Strange’s mother’s? Then a letter (Hervey would not open it), and then a miniature, whose likeness was obsc
ure since water had at some time permeated its case. Small enough tokens of sentiment, he concluded, but perhaps no surprise from so taciturn a man as Strange. The doubts began to gnaw at him again. Had there been no other course but to leave him and gallop for the trees? He took out the prayer-book, hoping for some relief in its formularies (in the Thanksgiving perhaps) – ‘For Peace and Deliverance from our Enemies’. ‘O Almighty God,’ he began, ‘who art a strong tower of defence unto thy servants against the face of their enemies,’ (‘servants’ again – service, obligation, duty: the words came crowding), ‘we yield thee praise and thanksgiving for our deliverance from those great and apparent dangers wherewith we were compassed …’

  ‘Mr ’Ervey sir!’ The voice was its usual insistence. He turned to see Serjeant Armstrong striding towards him, looking to neither left nor right. ‘The brigade-major’s come. I told ’im to wait and said I’d fetch you meself. What are you doing out here? Who are you talking to?’

  ‘Merely taking time to think, Serjeant Armstrong, that is all,’ he replied.

  ‘You don’t want to be thinking. What’s past is past – gone,’ he insisted. ‘’Arry Strange did ‘is duty, and that’s it. We’ll say some prayers over ’im in a minute or two with Preacher Sandbache and then it’s on for us. There’s no place for contemplating till everything’s over.’

  Sir Hussey Vivian’s new brigade-major (Harris had all but lost an arm after they had moved to the centre) seemed rattled. ‘I may tell you, Hervey, that we have a brigade in name only,’ he began, ‘and the butcher’s bill is prodigious. Uxbridge will be lucky to live, by all accounts: his leg was taken clean off. Vandeleur is given command, but there is to be no pursuit, for the army is not up to it. We are merely to follow on the Prussians in the event that Bonaparte turns, although I wager he is making for a ship this very instant. America, they say, will give him sanctuary.’