Soldiers in the Mist

by Garry Douglas Kilworth

  ‘We have a fox hunt. You and your men. Any of you been in the navy at all?’

  Crossman was a little taken aback. ‘Not to my knowledge.’

  ‘Pity, we need some sailors on this one. How are you with a canoe?’

  Crossman frowned, wondering what this was leading up to.

  ‘You mean like Red Indian canoes? My friend Rupert Jarrard might know a thing or two about canoeing. He was an American frontiersman, before he became a newspaper man, or so he informs me.’

  ‘Then we might have to recruit this Jarrard. Come over here and look at this map.’

  Crossman did so. It was a map of the Crimea and part of mainland Russia.

  ‘Now,’ said Lovelace, pointing with his pencil, ‘here we have the Crimea three-quarters surrounded by waters of the Black Sea. You see this stretch of water on the north-east shoulder of the peninsula, almost enclosed except these straits? This is the Sea of Azov and the straits are known as the Straits of Kerch.’

  ‘I am familiar with the local geography, sir.’

  ‘Right, yes, of course you are. I sometimes forget you were educated at Harrow like myself. However, we did not always swallow the stuff Professor Damien threw at us,’ said Lovelace, recalling one of the tutors at the school, ‘so perhaps you’ll forgive me if I go over a few details.’

  ‘I think it was “Piggy” Allendale who taught geography,’ replied Crossman, quietly, knowing Lovelace was trying to catch him out. ‘Professor Damien, or “Bottleneck” as we used to call him, on account of his rather reedy-looking throat, taught history.’

  ‘Quite so, quite so, sergeant,’ said Lovelace with a wry smile. ‘Put me in my place, eh? Well, on to more serious matters.’

  He continued to bring Crossman’s attention to sections of local geography and topography and finally came to the crux of his plan.

  ‘This is the Russian supply route. They ship men and provisions across the Sea of Azov, to Yenikale and Kerch, here on the panhandle of the Crimea. These are then taken overland to the Russian Army or Sebastopol in the west. I think we can harass their craft a little. Blow up one or two of their supply ships before they realise what we’re doing and it becomes too dangerous. I have two ships in mind – the St Petersburg and the Yalta. They should, at the time you destroy them, be floating arsenals, magazines carrying explosives and ammunition.

  ‘They’ll light up the sky a little for us and give us a certain psychological advantage in this Russian attack you tell us we must expect.’

  7

  A boatswain by the name of Peter Brickman had designed a canoe which would serve Sergeant Crossman and his men in their efforts to sabotage Russian ships in the Sea of Azov. The canoe was fashioned to carry two men with cargo space for their bombs between them. Three of these grey-coloured canoes had been built to carry the six men: Crossman and Ali in the first, Devlin and Wynter in the second, and Peterson and Clancy in the third.

  Rupert Jarrard, as the only man they could find with canoeing experience, agreed to help train the men in the use of the craft.

  ‘There’s nothing to it,’ said Jarrard. ‘Most Americans are born able to paddle a canoe.’

  ‘If we were to listen to you,’ grumbled Crossman to the American correspondent, ‘we should believe that most Americans can do anything and everything. I recommended you, I know, but are you sure you should be assisting us?’

  ‘Can’t help it,’ replied Jarrard, always itching to be in on any action. ‘In my blood. You don’t know how frustrating it is, sitting on the sidelines, watching this scrap go on around you, yet barred from assisting. It’s like witnessing a fist-fight in a saloon and not being able to join in. Anyway, you could hardly call this training exercise “combat” could you? All I’m doing is showing you how to use a canoe. Something we Americans . . .’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ interrupted the piqued Crossman, ‘something you do instinctively from birth. You’re all little Moseses, paddling down the river in your pitch-caulked cradles, fighting off Sioux Indians with one hand and shooting rattlers with the other.’

  They were standing on the quayside of Balaclava harbour. Crossman and his men were preparing for their first try in the canoes. Wynter was staring dubiously at the flimsy craft bobbing in the water below him. Clancy, Devlin and Peterson were not looking too happy at the prospect of canoeing in the choppy water either. They were not used to the water, any of them. Three had been farm labourers. Clancy had had various occupations, but none of them involved close contact with water.

  The boatswain who had designed and built the canoes had hold of the lines which were attached to the bows of the canoes. Peter Brickman looked like a proud man with his hands on the leashes of three frisky dogs, about to walk them in the local park. These were his pedigree puppies and he was sure they would be up to the work for which they had been fashioned.

  ‘Sergeant Crossman and I will take out the first canoe to test it,’ said Jarrard, with a certain satisfaction in his tone, ‘so you men can relax for a few minutes.’

  The soldiers of the 88th Connaught Rangers looked relieved. The Bashi-Bazouk, Yusuf Ali, merely nodded. Boats held no fears for the Turk. In fact there was little in the world which did scare the man, who looked like a cross between a renegade Santa Claus and a Corsican bandit. He had a mother-in-law of uncertain temper of whom he was wary, and he was not overfond of large snakes, but since he did not come into contact with either of these horrors in the Crimea, his heart rarely felt a flutter of panic.

  The first thing Jarrard did was pick up one of the double-ended oars and snap it in half over his knee, so that there were two short one-bladed paddles. Brickman looked on in consternation, but said nothing. The sailor realised that the American would have a good reason for breaking the paddle he had spent so much time shaping with his spokeshave.

  We don’t use those kayak paddles where I come from,’ Jarrard said. ‘They’re no good for manoeuvring in narrow channels. If you have to go between two ships or between a ship and the dockside, you’ll be smacking something noisy with the tips of the blades. Better to use the short Canadian paddle. It’s easier to control and therefore quieter to use. A single splashing sound might mean your life. You put it in the water like this.’ He held the blade of the paddle in line with the side of his body. ‘Propel the canoe forward, gently, so as to minimise the noise it makes, and then twist the oar sideways so that it’s parallel to the canoe and automatically forms a rudder. Thus the end of the propelling motion helps to steer the craft. And while in this position, the paddle slips out quite silently from the water without so much as a drip.’

  Crossman had to admit to himself that Jarrard really did look as if he knew what he was doing.

  ‘I see,’ he said, taking up the other half of the broken paddle. ‘Like this?’

  He copied the sequence Jarrard had demonstrated.

  ‘Looks fine to me. Now take off that sheepskin coat and those boots. If we turn over they’ll drag you down. Keep the rest of your clothes on or you’ll freeze in two minutes in the water in this weather. Right, are you ready?’

  The two men went down the quay steps. Jarrard held the canoe steady while Crossman climbed into the back seat. Then Crossman held on to the quay while Jarrard took his place at the front. The two men paddled out into the harbour, Crossman copying the strokes of the man in front of him. They seemed to be doing quite well. The surface of the water in the harbour was calm and Crossman was beginning to wonder what all the fuss was about.

  ‘This is easy,’ he said.

  At that moment a seagoing ship cruised into the harbour, its bow wave creating a rather different surface to the water. Suddenly Crossman found himself fighting to keep the canoe stable, as it rocked violently. Jarrard seemed quite easy with the motion, using his paddle to keep the craft steady, but Crossman was rocking at the hips, unable to control his upper body movements.

  ‘Don’t panic . . .’ cried Jarrard, but then the canoe was over and Crossman found himself in water tha
t was so incredibly cold it sent a shock wave through his body. His lungs seemed to shrink to pebbles in his chest. His bones were brittle sticks of ice. He sank like a brick at first, the grey-green water passing before his eyes, but then fought his way back to the surface, the low temperature eating deeply into his flesh.

  When he broke the surface he instinctively reached out for the canoe, as a drowning man will claw at thin air, but Jarrard had somehow remained inside the craft and had paddled a little out of his reach.

  ‘Jarrard,’ gasped Crossman, ‘for God’s sake, man.’

  ‘Stop flailing,’ ordered the American. ‘Calm down. Tread water. I’ll bring the canoe to you, but just use it as a balance aid. If you tip it over again, we’ll both be in trouble. Grasp the stern of the craft with one hand.’

  Jarrard was wet through. He paddled the canoe closer to Crossman, who gripped the stern as he had been told and thrashed with his legs to keep himself afloat. Fortunately they were only about twenty yards from the quay. When they reached the edge, Ali grabbed the sergeant by the coatee and pulled him from the water. A blanket was wrapped round him immediately.

  The freezing Crossman turned to Jarrard, who had climbed out of the canoe and was now also covered in a blanket.

  ‘How did you do that?’ said Crossman, his teeth chattering. ‘How did you stay in the craft? I thought it turned over?’

  ‘I turned it back again, with my weight and the use of the paddle.’ Jarrard looked round. ‘Right, now who’s next . . .?’

  But Wynter and the other soldiers, looking as pale as death, were already half-way back to Kadikoi.

  Once Crossman and Jarrard were dried and ready for another session, the terrified soldiers were dragged back to the waters of the harbour. They were forced into the canoes and made to practise within a short distance of the quay. A bonfire was lit on the quayside, to dry those who fell into the water. This scene attracted the attention of the sailors in and around the harbour, who hung over ship rails to yell encouragement or to heckle the soldiers in their efforts to become instant mariners.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said a watching Mary Seacole, to Major Lovelace, who had come down to the harbour to watch the fun, ‘you should use sailors, instead of farm boys?’

  Major Lovelace shook his head. There was much to admire in this army officer, who was not afraid of generals and who wanted to create an espionage network in the face of official opposition. But like many other army officers, and indeed their naval counterparts, he had the vice of pride. Proud army men do not allow navy men the opportunity to prove they are better. Proud army men would rather die first. Or let their men do so. The maxim, ‘My cousin and I are against the enemy, but I am also against my cousin,’ suited both services admirably.

  ‘No, it was our idea, and we use our own. Besides, half those jeering jackals on those ships can’t swim either.’

  ‘They know the sea better,’ the West Indian lady pointed out. ‘It’s supposed to be in their blood.’

  ‘They know tall ships and steamships, but do they know canoes? I think not. Naval ratings are used to rushing about a big deck, tying knots in things. My men will improve more quickly, since they are more resourceful. Out in the field they have to use their intuition in order to survive. Those salty chaps simply follow a procedure time and time again.’

  Mary smiled to herself and walked away shaking her head.

  Gradually Crossman, Wynter, Devlin, Peterson and Clancy did improve. (Ali seemed to take to it naturally, as he did with everything else.) Soon they were able to go out of the harbour into the real ocean, where the choppiness of the water created quite a different and much more difficult task. They learned, however, to keep their canoes together like a flotilla in tight formation, so that they could steady each other.

  Wynter never quite got used to being on an uncontrollable surface, and his face often went from the red caused by exertion, to an ashen colour within the space of a few seconds. He was terrified of drowning and did not mind who knew it. He considered being on the water an unnatural custom, only one stage removed from the practice of eating one’s own young.

  Finally, after a day and a half of intense training, Lovelace announced them ready. There followed a short course on navigation from Peter Brickman, but he ended with, ‘Hopefully you’ll just have to set course for one set of lights or another. The captain of the Antigone has promised to hang lamps from the yardarm, so that you can find his ship on your return journey. Just remember one or two principles . . .’

  The next part of the training was in the use of the bombs they were to carry in their ‘holds’.

  The bombs consisted simply of explosive charges which would be detonated by a slow-burning underwater device known as the Beckford fuse. There were spikes on the casings of the charges which would enable the bombs to be stuck to the lower hull of a wooden ship, below the waterline. Even if the explosive did not start a chain reaction in the doomed ship, the vessel would sink where it was and thus create a future shipping hazard, with its unstable cargo forever menacing the seaway.

  Each of the canoes had four of these bombs.

  Finally, the expedition was ready to depart. A new fox hunt was under way. The canoes and their crew would be carried eastwards along the Crimean coastline to a point just outside the Straits of Kerch, where they would be lowered into the water at night and would have to paddle up through the straits and into the harbour of Kerch itself. There they would light and plant their bombs on the Yalta and the St Petersburg, and then paddle back to the point where HMS Antigone was anchored, waiting for them to board again.

  ‘All very straightforward,’ said Lovelace. ‘You should have no problems.’

  Crossman spent the last hour before embarkation with Rupert Jarrard in a quayside canteen.

  ‘Thank you for giving us the benefit of your knowledge,’ said Crossman, ‘hard-earned no doubt on the frontiers of the New World.’

  ‘Hard-earned? You betcha. Did I ever tell you of the time I was swept over some rapids on the river . . .’

  ‘Once or twice,’ interrupted Crossman, smiling. ‘I forget how many times exactly.’

  Crossman was smoking his beloved chibouque, that marvellously long-stemmed pipe purchased in Constantinople. Smoke billowed in clouds from the bowl of this instrument. Jarrard was sucking on an old cigar, his smoke too adding to the dense atmosphere within the canteen.

  ‘You still carry that fancy 5-shot Tranter?’ asked Jarrard.

  Crossman patted the pocket which contained the illicit revolver.

  ‘I certainly do. Just as you have your beloved Navy Colt.’

  ‘Well, keep your cartridges dry. You may need that pistol before your expedition is over. Lovelace may think this fox hunt is a piece of cake. I think it’s highly dangerous.’

  ‘So does he,’ replied the sergeant, ‘but he’s not going to say so to a bunch of men terrified of the sea, is he?’

  ‘I suppose not. So what’s the latest in the world of inventions? Have you heard of anything new?’

  This was a subject dear to the hearts of both men and the thing that had bound them together as comrades from the start of their acquaintance.

  ‘I am reliably informed by a French soldier that a countryman of his, a one Charles Gerhardt who works at the University of Montpellier, has synthesised a substance called acetylsalicylic, or aspirin as he calls it.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Aspirin is a drug which appears to be excellent for the relief of pain when taken orally as a powder or a pill. Having used laudanum, for the same purpose, and having become addicted to its opiate qualities, I welcome any new advance in medicine of this sort. It seems that aspirin is happily not addictive in any way.’

  ‘Well, that certainly is good news. Now I have something for you to ponder on while you are ploughing through the dark billows and furrows of the Black Sea. Staying with France, and also relevant to our situation here in the wartorn Crimea, the United States has been importing a new kind of ammun
ition – the Flobert cartridge – so-called because it was invented by a Parisian gunsmith called Nicolas Flobert. The ball or pellet is actually fitted to a case containing the powder, which goes in the breech of the rifle as one single piece. The modern cartridge they call it. This has been greatly improved by our own gunsmiths of course and has led to the development of a weapon called the .22 Long Rifle.’

  ‘Marvellous,’ said Crossman.

  ‘Brilliant,’ agreed Jarrard.

  They both puffed away happily on their respective tobaccos.

  8

  Sergeant Crossman’s peloton – or platoon – boarded the man o’ war, HMS Antigone, late in the afternoon. There was a fresh breeze blowing and the Antigone, one of a dying breed of wooden-built, sail-driven battleships in the British Navy now that steam power was the order of the day, set off along the coast towards the Straits of Kerch. They had roughly a hundred and fifty miles to go, before anchoring offshore. There they would deposit canoes and men in the sea.

  ‘This is a job for marines,’ grumbled Wynter, gloomily, staring out at the dancing grey-green sea. ‘We shouldn’t be here at all, doin’ this kind of thing.’

  ‘Better than fighting in the line, eh?’ Corporal Devlin answered him. ‘Better than the trenches?’

  ‘I like the sea air,’ said Clancy, his dark skin glistening with salt from the spray. He sniffed in the cold clean air deeply. ‘It fills your lungs well, don’t it? No gunsmoke out here. What do you say, Peterson?’

  Peterson did not reply. She was busy being sick over the rail. Peterson hated the sea. She only had to look at a rowing boat and she felt sick. This was not the best of fox hunts, so far as she was concerned, but since she had grit and determination she refused to let a little thing like seasickness prevent her from going on the expedition. At least, it had seemed a little thing, before they had set sail. Now she believed she wanted to die.

  Ali was sitting at the base of a mast, cleaning his many weapons, wrapping them in oil cloth and trying to keep them from the corrosive effects of the ocean. He was a walking arsenal, the Turk, while the others carried only Victoria carbines. These latter were not a favourite weapon with the soldiers. Victoria carbines were not very accurate, not very efficient, not very anything really except that they fired a ball.