Soldiers in the Mist

by Garry Douglas Kilworth

  ‘Look for ways up the western bank, boys,’ came the order from Goodlake, when they came to a slope which could be climbed. ‘Find a place to scramble up.’

  The sharpshooters did as they were ordered, knowing the area well. There were goat tracks they could ascend in a trice.

  Suddenly, fire began to come down from the opposite bank of the ravine. Peterson peered through the mists and saw that there were many more grey columns moving on the other side of Careenage. Infantry, artillery, cavalry.

  Thousands of bayonets and swords gleamed dully in the poor light. Through gaps in the mist the snouts of many brass and bronze cannons were visible. Several hundred hooves of battle steeds clattered amongst the stones. It was a chilling, sobering sight which was revealed and then disappeared as the mist drifted over the Heights, covering and uncovering the ground.

  Those Russian soldiers in the gully were a small number in comparison to those great blocks of infantry on the east side of the ravine. This was no probing force. This was a major attack, with many thousands of troops and dozens of guns.

  ‘Wilkins,’ she said, after she had picked off a gunner riding on a limber, ‘this is another Alma. This time it a us who are under attack.’

  ‘I think you’re right there,’ said the tall, stoical guardsman. ‘This is a big one.’

  At that moment the Russians charged, the space in front of Peterson appearing to be a mass of shining bayonets. They came on as a solid body, not having the room to do much else in the narrow gully. There were yells and shouts from both sides as they clashed together, rifles locking with rifles.

  Peterson, light-framed and not really built for close combat, was thrown backwards by the initial force of the charge. She fought to stay on her feet and somehow managed it. The impetus was with the Russians though, who crowded on, cramming their way forward in a welter of arms and legs.

  Wilkins dragged her backwards by the collar, away from the sheaves of bayonets that prodded the air. Goodlake’s soldiers were quicker on their feet, more nippy than the stolid blocks of the enemy, and they were able to dance back out of the way of the forest of points. Once again those who had reloaded amongst the sharpshooters poured a fusillade into the struggling crush of Russian grey greatcoats, forcing them to reel back and shed an outer layer of dead men like a snake sloughing its skin.

  Peterson choked on the gunpowder fumes which gathered in the ravine in blue clouds. She thanked God there was no room in this part of the ravine for the Russians to bring forth one of their big guns. A blast of canister or grapeshot enfiladed down the rocky gutter of the gully would have wiped out Goodlake’s sharpshooters to the last soldier.

  Captain Goodlake, realising that he could do little to hold the Russians any longer, yelled for his men to retreat swiftly. He could hear picquets of other British regiments, scattered about the Heights, being fired on now, but no general alarm had gone out. The rest of the British Army had to be warned of this attack.

  ‘Fall back in good order,’ cried Goodlake. ‘Fire at will as you go. Pick out the officers. Without them the Russian soldier is thrown into confusion.’

  Goodlake’s sharpshooters had not lost a man to the Russians. They faded back from Russian eyes like phantoms of the Inkerman ruins. The Russians must have thought they were indeed ghosts, for they were there and then gone, leaving nothing but wisps of disturbed mist in their wake. Peterson and Wilkins scrambled up a goat track and on to the ridge above.

  As Peterson reached the safety of the rise, along with Goodlake’s other soldiers, a man on a horse rode up.

  ‘Who’s there?’ cried the rider, coming from the direction of the Lancaster battery. ‘This is General Codrington!’

  Captain Goodlake answered the general.

  Codrington then asked, ‘I heard muffled noises of movement while I was riding along Victoria Ridge. Then the sound of rifle fire. What’s happening, captain? D’you know?’

  ‘The Russians, sir, attacking in great force.’

  ‘Damn me!’ cried the general. ‘I’ll rouse the Light Division, captain. You try to hold ’em from up here. Don’t let ’em follow you up. Anyone else aware of the attack?’

  ‘They must be, general – the picquets are fighting hard out there in the mist – lots of isolated but desperate battles in progress over on the Heights.’

  The general rode off, towards the Light Division’s camp, which lay south at the crossroads along Victoria Ridge, below the Lancaster battery. From all around now came the crack and whine of rifle and musket fire. It seemed to Peterson that the whole of the Inkerman Heights were covered with Russian troops. Certainly there was great activity in the north-east, where the post road followed Quarry Ravine.

  Bugles were sounding now and the crash of nearby guns punched holes in the mist. Shells and round shot began falling around the sharpshooters, as they moved back and forth, trying to find their prey in the poor visibility. Peterson recognised the bugle call of the Light Division and knew that Devlin would have been roused from his bed. The 88th Connaught Rangers were at last going to prove their worth, after being denied a chance for glory at the Battles of the Alma and Balaclava.

  ‘They’re coming up the tracks!’ cried a warning voice. ‘Help ho, lads. Come on! Come on!’

  The small company of hand-picked men rallied quickly, the advantage with them as they fired down into the grey stocky figures climbing upwards. Peterson saw her latest quarry fling his arms wide, crumple and roll over his own fallen musket, cracking it into two pieces like a rotten stave. She reloaded and hit another full in the face from a yard’s distance.

  This unfortunate man’s features disappeared in a swathe of black gunpowder, like a dark rash over his pale skin. There was a sound like a trodden toad bursting under a soldier’s boot, then he slid down the slope sideways.

  Some of the guardsmen from the sharpshooters were using their bayonets now, employing them as spearmen might do on the ramparts of some castle, repelling an assault on their battlements. The guardsmen thrust downwards at the oncoming enemy, piercing necks, heads and shoulders. Bayonets were bending as they struck thick skulls or were caught in eye sockets. It was a grisly, horrible business, which had the bile rising to Peterson’s throat. She struck out hard with the others, the long length of her Minié keeping the foe at bay.

  There seemed too many of them: they were like a multitude of rats scrambling up out of drains. Brave men, to come at almost certain death in the way that they did, with brave officers leading them. One of these officers, a tall lieutenant, managed to get over the crest. He ran at Wilkins firing a pistol and waving his sword, jubilant to have a target at last.

  ‘Look to yourself, Wilkins!’ shouted Peterson in a panic.

  But Captain Goodlake was there, swifter than the Russian, who had lost much energy and breath on the climb. The British officer sidestepped and struck the grey-coated lieutenant across the left shoulder with his sword. A wound gaped beneath the slit coat, forcing the Russian to drop his pistol. Then a quick thrust up into the lieutenant’s underarm caused the wounded man to scream in agony as the point of Goodlake’s sword found the ganglions of nerves which nestle in that region.

  A startled Wilkins finished the man off with the butt of his rifle, crashing it down on the side of the officer’s head. It seemed to Peterson’s ears to be a merciful end to the man’s agony, for he was still screaming from being stuck on three inches of Goodlake’s blade.

  All the while the sharpshooters were retreating, some of them stumbling backwards, hoping for relief from behind. Guns were booming all over the Heights, most of them coming from the side occupied by the Russians. A major battle was in progress now, but scattered and fought with independent units, small pockets of British soldiers were holding the swarming soldiery of the Russian columns, trying to keep them contained until the British ranks were swollen by greater numbers. All around the air hummed and sang with flying pieces of hot metal.

  ‘Well done, my boys, well done!’ cried the
encouraging Goodlake. ‘We pushed ’em back before and we’ll do it again. Their numbers are jamming them together, working against them, so don’t despair. Keep your footing. Don’t fall. We’ll do it yet, I guarantee.’

  His bold words gave new heart to the men, who now fell back in good order, to reload their rifles and fire again at the dark shapes in the mist. Ammunition was beginning to run short. Men were borrowing from their comrades, having lost bullets from their pouches in the scramble up the cliff.

  Peterson’s hand was raw from ramming bullets down the barrel. Her mouth was stinging and dry, tasting of gunpowder from biting paper cartridges. Her shoulders ached and her back felt as if it would crack at any moment. There was no relief at hand though, not for the moment. They had to stand and fire, fall back, rush forward, fight and fight on. Sweat was crusted on her brow, as the dust and moisture mixed there into a cake of clay. This was the hardest fighting she had had to do yet in the whole war, and her fitness was put to the supreme test.

  ‘I can’t keep this up much longer, captain,’ she called to Goodlake in despair. ‘My arms are falling out of their sockets, sir.’

  ‘I’ll watch to you,’ said the indomitable Wilkins, his broad face pocked with rings of dust and sweat. ‘You stick by me, half-pint, and I’ll carry you home if needs be.’

  He almost made Peterson laugh, this big serious guardsman who seemed to toil and toil without fatigue.

  ‘You’ll watch to me all right, I’ll wager on that,’ she said, gathering all her reserves of strength. ‘You carry me on your shoulders and I’ll pick ’em off like I was on the back of a mail coach being robbed by highwaymen. You’re a card, you are, Wilkins. I’ll see to myself, don’t you worry.’

  The pair of them stood together, amongst the valiant sharpshooters, firing, loading, firing, scurrying back when the pressure became too great, rushing forward when they saw a weakness or a breach. To the oncoming Russians who came over the top of the gully they were frustrating: like snapping, snarling terriers impeding a herd of determined cattle.

  23

  Corporal Devlin and (despite his pleas that he was still sick) Lance-Corporal Wynter had both reported for duty with the 88th Connaught Rangers on the evening of the 4th of November. It was true that Wynter’s wound had not completely healed and that he was in a great deal of discomfort, but the regiment was short of healthy men. Wynter was told that though he was not to idle away his time in hospital, he would be on light duties: work that would release a fit man to do duty at the front.

  ‘I expect even if I walked in with no head on me shoulders, they’d have still said I was to be on duty,’ he grumbled to Devlin. ‘We’re heroes, we are. We blew up half the Russian fleet – and see what thanks we get for it!’

  ‘I think that’s a small exaggeration. Wynter, but I know what you mean,’ sympathised the Irishman.

  Shortly after this conversation, Devlin had gone with a companion picquet to spend the night in a 21-gun battery.

  He and his comrades employed themselves in trying to keep dry. The incessant rain ceased only in the early light, when the night picquets came back. Then the fog was so thick they could see only a few yards in front of them. Devlin attended an early morning brigade parade, which took place just before daylight, after which four companies of the 88th had gone into the sodden, waterlogged trenches to stand ankle-deep in water.

  Once the picquets had been exchanged in Middle Ravine, the rest of the regiment settled down to making breakfast in the damp chesty air, with Wynter assisting the cook who was preparing food for the officers. He was trying to keep alight the miserable fire on which he was making tea, when the sound of musketry came from the hill above the 88th’s camp. There followed the call of Alarm, followed quickly by Assembly.

  The four companies still in the camp – the Light, the Grenadiers and two centre companies – immediately fell in. Wynter, looking along the lines, could see there were less than three hundred men present. General Buller suddenly appeared, looking as if he had been up all night. Without waiting for the rest of his brigade – the 77th and 18th Foot – he ordered the 88th to march forward in the direction of the firing.

  ‘Christ, what are we coming on to now?’ grumbled Wynter. ‘Can’t even have breakfast without somethin’ going on.’

  The regiment marched quickly in the direction of an old windmill at the end of Careenage Ravine. On the way they saw the Guards turning out and making ready to march. Some of their picquets had already engaged with a force coming up the ravine into Wellway, almost into their camp. The Guards had driven this probing force back where they came from with some keen enfilading fire down the gully.

  ‘Come on,’ said Lieutenant Riley, ‘don’t let the Guards beat us to the front and get all the glory!’

  ‘They can have it, as far as I’m concerned,’ muttered Wynter, ‘and they can put it where the monkey puts his nuts.’

  Devlin glowered at him and shook his head.

  The 88th managed to beat the Guards to the ravine, when General Pennefather rode up and ordered the Rangers forward.

  ‘Keep to the left of the road, men. The picquets of the 2nd Division are hard-pressed out there. I want you to reinforce their numbers . . .’

  Just at that moment a cannonball went sailing over the heads of the 88th to land with a thump and bury itself in two feet of mud beyond them. Wynter and a number of others ducked instinctively, even though the round shot had already passed over them. After which they came under even heavier artillery fire, with shells bursting and round shot falling all around.

  The Guards Brigade had now come up and took ground to the right of the 88th.

  The Rangers moved forward in fours, up the slope of a hill called Home Ridge, north of the 2nd Division’s camp. There they formed a battle line, which moved forward into the fog. However, the scrubland over which they were advancing was covered in bushes and dwarf trees. These obstacles impeded the line, which soon broke up into skirmishing parties.

  Wynter, Devlin and their party reached a ravine known as Mikriakoff Gully, which led into Careenage Ravine, where they found part of the 2nd Division: the 41st and 47th Foot, who had attacked columns of several thousand Russians, driving the enemy back with the fire from their Miniés. The Russian general had then launched his offensive: ten thousand men were unleashed on the five hundred men of the 41st and a similar number of the 47th. The British fought back furiously at these massed, determined columns of Russians who now came stolidly forward. The 2nd Division were now lying in wait for a fresh attack on their position.

  ‘Where are the Russians?’ asked an 88th captain, eagerly. ‘Have they now retreated?’

  ‘You jest, captain,’ cried the officer commanding the picquets. ‘If you keep your eyes on the brow of that hill which keeps wavering through the mist, you will see about six thousand Russians come over it in a very short time.’

  ‘The Light and number Seven companies, follow me,’ said the Rangers’ captain, running down the slope which then rose at the bottom to sweep up to the point where the Russians were supposed to be. ‘Come on, come on!’

  Devlin followed the captain, and was reluctantly followed in turn by Wynter, who hated this kind of heroic fighting. To his way of thinking, revealing oneself as a target on the horizon and mocking the enemy with one’s silhouette was the action of a would-be suicide. Crossman’s peloton suited his sneaky ways much better than exposing himself to the fire of six thousand hidden Russians.

  ‘What can we do?’ he whined to Devlin. ‘We’re so few men against a whole Russian army!’

  ‘Quiet back there,’ called the captain. ‘Keep your mind on your task.’

  Suddenly, almost without warning, Wynter found himself clashing bayonets with two grim-faced Russian soldiers who had appeared out of nowhere. When he had escaped from these two and retreated several yards, Wynter turned to see that Russians were pouring down into the ravine in vast numbers. They had forced a passage between the four companies of the Ranger
s, who were now falling back to a distance of about a hundred and fifty yards.

  A man went down with two bayonets penetrating his chest, just to the left of Wynter. Having no time to aim properly, Wynter fired his rifle from the hip and one of the two Russians folded in the middle with a groan. The other grey creature retreated, but by that time the fallen Ranger was already dead.

  Then Wynter saw a sergeant-major being overwhelmed by the enemy. There were about eight or nine Russians jabbing at the figure who was lying on the ground, his arms flailing at the enemy muskets with their deadly bladed points. It was as if the unfortunate man were trying to beat away stinging bees with his hands. Again, Wynter was helpless to intervene, there being too many enemy soldiers.

  ‘You bastards!’ he yelled. ‘How many does it take?’

  One of the Russians looked up at the shout and fired, missing Wynter’s shoulder by an inch.

  Wynter saw that his own Light company was making steady progress ahead, firing into the enemy at will, along with number Seven centre company. It was number Five and the Grenadier companies which had been forced back. Wynter made a quick decision and ran forward to join the Light company again.

  ‘Bloody game this is,’ Wynter said to Devlin, breathing heavily as he fell in beside the corporal a moment later. ‘We’re done for this time, you mark me.’

  Nevertheless Wynter kept up with his comrade as they progressed over the rugged ground, pursuing the now retreating Russians. His leg wound felt as if it were on fire and he was limping badly. Wynter exchanged fire with a member of the Russian Rifles. Both men missed and fought to reload before the other. Wynter noticed that the Russian, unlike his line infantry comrades, had one of the old Brunswick rifles. The Ranger knew from experience how difficult it was to ram the oversized bullet down the barrel of a Brunswick. It could take all a man’s single-minded strength and the Russian was trying to retreat out of range at the same time as reloading.