Soldiers in the Mist

by Garry Douglas Kilworth

  Crossman was on another part of the deck, trying to write a letter despite the motion of the ship. He was under a canvas shelter, so he was able to keep the pages from becoming thoroughly wet. But it was impossible to keep out the dampness altogether and he was having trouble with the ink, which tended to blur at the edges of strokes.

  He was writing to Lisette Fleury, the French woman he had fallen in love with when he had commandeered a farmhouse on the Crimean peninsula. Lisette’s uncle had owned the farmhouse, which had been attacked by Cossacks. Crossman and his men had helped to defend the place. He and Lisette, who was now in Paris, had an understanding that one day they would marry.

  Crossman had seen a great deal of action since he had been in the Crimea, though only in small part on the actual battle front. Only a handful of people knew what he had done off the battlefield. It was unlikely he would ever be rewarded for his services in medals or promotion. Major Lovelace had been promoted, so had some of Crossman’s men, but there was really nowhere for Crossman to go. The next stage up was colour-sergeant, the senior sergeant in an infantry company, who had duties to his company which needed his presence. Likewise with a sergeant-major, the one above that. A colour-sergeant and a sergeant-major were needed in the regiment at all times.

  In a general reshuffling, Crossman had recently been transferred from a centre company to one of the flanks of his battalion. There were eight companies altogether in a battalion of a line regiment such as the 88th Connaught Rangers. Six of these were centre companies, or Battalion Companies as they were known. The other two were flank companies.

  One of the latter was the Light Company, usually on the left flank and used as skirmishers. The other was the Grenadier Company, traditionally on the right flank. Crossman had been transferred to the Light Infantry Company, due to some idea that he was on skirmishing duties elsewhere, and therefore it would be more appropriate to place him there, along with his normally absent soldiers.

  Crossman looked on his transfer as some sort of recognition that he was engaged in dangerous duties, even if his battalion and company commanders did not know exactly why they had done it.

  Crossman told Lisette about the problems he was having with his brother. By the time his fiancée answered, of course, it would be too late. But it helped Crossman to ponder on the problem, sharing it with the absent Lisette.

  The Antigone ploughed her way along the coastline, a brisk wind from the north-west driving her through fairly high seas. White-maned seahorses slapped at her hull. In the late afternoon, lamps began to be lit in houses and villages on the shore. A low mist was forming, but not dense enough to prevent the lights from the land being seen by the crew. Before the darkness fell completely, however, another vessel hove into view.

  Suddenly, HMS Antigone veered sharply, changing her course swiftly and smoothly. She began to run with the wind, flying south-east like a racehorse given its head. The crew were ordered aloft and more sail was unfurled. Peterson was violently sick all over Wynter, who registered his disgust by shouting for the sergeant. It was this whine from Wynter which broke Crossman’s reverie, rather than the change in course. Once it had impressed itself on Crossman’s mind, he went straight to a naval officer.

  ‘What’s happening, sir?’ he asked. ‘Why has the captain changed course?’

  The young officer was in a high state of excitement. He pointed with great drama at the ship in the distance.

  ‘See that! It’s a Russian warship! We’re going to attack.’

  ‘Good God,’ muttered Crossman. ‘One foot on a tub and we go straight into battle.’

  ‘This is not a “tub”,’ said the officer stiffly. ‘This is HMS Antigone, a third-rate ship of the line, pride of Captain Montagu Collidge, and it might be our last chance ever for some action. We have seventy-four guns on board this vessel and we’re going to show the Russians that the old Antigone is not obsolete yet.’

  Crossman, who knew next to nothing about naval warfare, was appalled.

  ‘You mean there are people who think it is? In other words, we’re going into battle in a boat that many think is out-of-date and will be scrapped as soon as someone gets round to it?’

  ‘Boat?’ screamed the midshipman. ‘This is a ship, sergeant, and don’t you forget it. Boats are driven by oars!’

  Crossman glanced up at the bridge. He could see Captain Collidge standing there, one hand under his coat lapel in a Nelson-like pose, looking as if he had just been taken out of a long retirement for the action of his life. There was the glint of battle in his eye. Crossman could see he was about to enjoy himself in the line of duty.

  His first officer had his eye glued to a telescope and was shouting instructions to somebody, Crossman was not sure who. Men were coming up from below and spilling over the deck like ants.

  Gunners were manning their stations. Crossman had heard a rumour that the Navy never yelled ‘Fire!’ when they used their guns, they cried out, ‘Shoot!’ The reason being that the word ‘fire’ might have men rushing backwards and forwards with buckets of water and hoses. He waited with interest to see if this story were true.

  ‘Prepare to engage the enemy,’ cried an officer on the bridge, though it looked as if everyone was already feverishly preparing for the battle.

  There was a crack of sails above as the main and fore royals and upper main and fore topgallants were dropped and instantly filled with wind. The Antigone shot forwards in the water, spray streaming from her bows. The wind and spume hissed through stays and lanyards. High above Crossman’s head, men were scrambling up rigging, pulling on ratlines and buntlines, scrambling back down again. These sailors seemed to have no fear of heights, or if they had once, they had conquered them.

  Lance-Corporal Wynter came excitedly to Crossman’s side.

  ‘This will be worth watching, eh, sergeant? A sea battle, by jingo. I wouldn’t give much for that Russian’s chances.’

  ‘You wouldn’t, would you? Well, considering she’s just as big as we are and seems to be carrying the same number of guns, I think it’ll be a fairly even fight. And I hate to ruin your day, Wynter, but we’ll be fighting too. You get back over there and tell the others to load their carbines. If I’m not mistaken, we’re in the marines now – at least for the duration of this battle.’

  ‘Eh? What have we got to do with this? We’re army.’

  ‘We might be crab bait if we don’t help. You think the Russians are going to say, “Oh, don’t touch those army men there, they’re nothing to do with a naval battle”? I think not, Wynter. I believe we’re in it up to our necks.

  ‘I wish the captain had remained on course for the Straits of Kerch, but out here on the high seas captains are gods and follow their own wishes and desires. Captain Collidge obviously thinks it will add more of a flourish to his career to conduct a sea battle, than to transport six soldiers and their canoes safely to Kerch and back again.’

  Wynter slouched back to the group by the rail, who were watching with great interest as the Antigone gradually overhauled the Russian warship. The sea was in a very choppy state, with huge waves crashing against the hull.

  The Antigone used the relatively calm wake of the Russian ship as a sailing lane, and in the process robbed the ship in front of wind. A bow cannon opened up simultaneously as two great splashes appeared one either side of the Antigone, the sound of the Russian guns following up from behind like trailing long-distance runners.

  Captain Collidge suddenly tacked to port, to bring more of his guns to bear on the running Russian. The British gunners below were obviously used to this manoeuvre by their captain, for they were ready to send shot crashing into what they could see of the port side of the Russian ship, whose name Czarevna Alexandra, was now clear to the soldiers of the 88th Foot, as they waited to do their bit.

  Shattered timber and other debris flew into the air as the shot and shells impacted on the enemy ship. A sail was hit by a cannonball and went flying away like a ghost. A fireball landed
amongst some sailors and the clothes of one caught alight. He ran the full length of the deck, blazing, the wind fanning his flames. Only when he fell did someone think to throw a bucket of sand over his twitching body. A Russian gun, and the men around it, disappeared completely under a hail of iron. The mizzen mast lost its spanker gaff, which fell to the deck of the enemy ship amid a welter of heavy canvas.

  ‘Got you!’ roared a sailor nearby. ‘That’ll sting!’

  The noise of the guns was appallingly loud to the army men, who were used to having a certain distance between their ears and the cannon. Thirty guns blazed away again a minute or two later, acrid-smelling smoke filled the air. There was a hollow booming sound over the water. Some cannonballs fell short, sending geyser spouts high into the air, the spray of which was blown back to the Antigone. A rocket fired from the bows dipped into the sea, and skipped like a flat stone thrown by a boy.

  The Antigone listed momentarily with the recoil of the cannon, then was back up again and swishing through the foam, her gunners working feverishly to reload.

  A return volley came smacking into the side of her now, and all around the ship were white founts of water from the shot which had missed. Shells were bursting overhead with black smoke, sending sizzling hot fragments of iron like rain to clatter on the deck. A sailor struck by a piece of shrapnel folded like an empty sack. He lay in the gunwales for a few moments before some comrades dragged him back.

  There were one or two fires on board the ship now, which were being efficiently attended to by sailors. The wounded were for the most part having to fend for themselves. One man had lost both his legs to a round shot, and his stumps had been stuck into twin barrels of hot tar by his comrades. The poor fellow had been left there, half-swooning, held up on the edges of the barrels resting against his crotch, while his comrades went about other tasks.

  A 32-pound ball of solid iron crashed into the deck in front of the soldiers from the 88th. Slivers and chunks of lumber flew and hummed around them like crazy insects. Crossman’s coatee and hair were covered in tiny pieces of wood the size of matchsticks. Wynter fell to the deck with a scream, a foot-long hunk of jagged oak sticking from his calf. He began to seep blood on the deck from this ugly wound, which he clutched with both hands.

  ‘Get it out! Get it out!’ he shrieked.

  Peterson, her seasickness forgotten for a moment, dropped down beside him and wrenched the piece of wood from his leg. Instantly the blood pumped out in a stream, no doubt from an artery, much to the horror of Wynter. He clutched at the hole, trying to keep the blood back with his fingers.

  Crossman quickly made a tourniquet out of his belt and fitted it over the thigh of the writhing soldier. He twisted and got the blood flow under control, while Peterson applied some lint pads she always carried to the wound. Ali wrapped them around with a tight strip of canvas torn from a sail bag. Peterson put her finger on the knot while Ali tied it, then she was sick again, luckily in the guttering which ran along the gunwales.

  ‘You stay there,’ she ordered Wynter, when she had recovered from another gut-wrenching bout. ‘I’ve got to get some shooting in.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ said the soldier, looking at her as if she had lost her reason. ‘I’m stuck here, ain’t I?’

  The battle still raged with the soldiers at the centre of it. They were close enough now to Czarevna Alexandra for the 88th to follow the lead of the marines along the deck, and to fire their carbines. Led in this by the unperturbable Turk, Yusuf Ali, they began to pick targets from amongst the Russians. Ali killed a man with his first shot and Peterson fired directly into a porthole behind which faces could be seen.

  ‘I wish I had my Minié,’ she complained, reloading her hated Victoria carbine. ‘Could pick them off easily with that.’

  Fire was coming back from Russian marines now and musket balls clipped the rigging and ricocheted off the rail. There was a great clamour on the Russian vessel, as the captain tried to run the Czarevna Alexandra off again, to the south-west. Collidge was up to this however, and the Antigone veered to windward, following the line of the Russian wake.

  A loose sail began flapping madly above the 88th, having lost one of its sheets. This noise was even more distracting than that of the guns and muskets. It was as if some insane giant creature were trying to escape from a snare above them.

  Darkness was falling rapidly all the time the battle raged, and the flashes of the guns were getting brighter.

  Suddenly, the desperate Czarevna Alexandra tacked to the south-east and headed for a bank of mist, which, combined with the darkness, folded around her when she reached it. The Antigone followed her in, but it was obvious after a short search that they had lost their quarry. There were moans of disappointment from the bridge and the quarterdeck.

  After some time cruising around in the fog, the Antigone once more set course for the Straits of Kerch. The captain went below while the first officer gave a little speech to his weary men, telling them how bravely they had fought. One man cried it was a ‘shame’ that they had not engaged the Russian an hour earlier, when the darkness could not have swallowed her up.

  ‘We gave her a bloody nose,’ said the first officer, with some satisfaction in his tone. ‘She’ll think twice about coming up against another British naval vessel of our size.’

  A ragged cheer went up from the men at the guns, and the task of clearing up the debris and putting the ship to rights began. The wounded, including Wynter, were taken below, to be looked at by the ship’s surgeon. The deck cannon were secured. The flapping sail over the heads of the 88th was set again. Fires were doused and debris gathered from the corners and thrown overboard. The ship’s carpenter and the surgeon would be the busiest people on board for a time.

  A midshipman came to Sergeant Crossman with a message from the captain to assure him the Antigone was in good enough shape to complete the mission.

  ‘We can still drop you off at the agreed point,’ said the sailor. ‘The damage we sustained won’t hamper the ship’s performance.’

  Crossman went back to the 88th with this news.

  ‘Well done, men,’ said Crossman. ‘You played your part.’

  Peterson went back to being sick over the rail. Crossman made a mental note to leave her behind, with Wynter, now that one canoe was without a full crew. Ali and Clancy would go as one team and he and Devlin as the other. They could not carry the extra bombs between them because a rehearsal had shown they were already very low in the water. One more piece of weight and the canoes would start swamping. Crossman would have to do the job with two canoes and eight bombs.

  9

  The mariner who had lost his legs died within half an hour. Wynter had to witness his going in the cramped quarters below deck. It did nothing for the soldier’s spirit, even though it had seemed a likely end for the poor fellow. He went out of the world crying for water: death had provided him with a thirst which was almost immediately redundant. Wynter wondered about that: why a man suddenly craved the stuff of life on the point of death. It seemed to him to be a cruel joke.

  Wynter’s wound was treated and dressed. The sailors were far better provisioned than the soldiers in the field in that respect. They had bandages, salves and balms. When Wynter had rested, he heaved himself up to the deck again, and Crossman told him he was not going on the mission. The soldier felt a sense of disappointment mingled with relief. He understood the latter, but had no idea where the former had come from.

  Crossman explained the change of crews in the canoes.

  ‘Ali is the best navigator amongst us,’ said Crossman, ‘followed closely by me. It seems pointless to put all our eggs in one basket, so I’m splitting the two of us up . . .’

  They were drawing near to the shore now. It was daylight again and they would have to cruise until nightfall. As soon as it was dark, the canoes could be launched.

  The journey along the coast was quite dreary: the land itself was a charcoal-grey grimace against an un
pleasant sky.

  There was really nothing for the men to do but stare at the waves, which remained endlessly similar. Peterson had recovered a little from her seasickness, but was so weak she could do nothing but lie in a corner of a cabin below and shiver. She still wanted to die, but not quite as much as before.

  When they reached the place where they were to launch the canoes, the captain sent for Crossman. The infantry sergeant was taken down below to a cabin which was luxurious when compared with an army officer’s quarters on the front, but tiny in comparison with any other form of accommodation except a cell in one of Her Majesty’s Prisons. Even then the ceiling was lower.

  ‘Sergeant Crossman?’ said the captain, who was sitting behind a desk covered in charts. ‘I thought I would wish you good luck in your mission. Would you join me in a glass of port before you go?’

  Crossman’s eyebrows shot up at this invitation. It was quite unorthodox, perhaps even unseemly, for the captain of a British warship to offer to drink with a common sergeant. He wondered what might be behind this gesture and decided no harm could come of waiting to find out.

  ‘Thank you, sir, I will,’ said Crossman, taking the seat offered him. He had to duck and weave under the beams, but managed to avoid injury.

  ‘Mind you don’t damage my deckhead,’ said the captain, incomprehensibly. ‘You’re a bit too tall to make a sailor.’

  A pale cabin boy of about eleven years of age poured them each a glass of port with a trembling hand. It was hard not to notice how the child’s hand shook. The captain nodded thoughtfully.

  ‘It’s young Simpson’s first taste of battle, eh, boy?’