Soldiers in the Mist

by Garry Douglas Kilworth

  There were also dark shapes, larger than the corpses of men: these were pack animals and horses, many smashed beyond recognition. Here and there were more signs of destruction: a ground pitted and marked by cannonballs; shattered limbers and waggons; equipment and weapons scattered over the area as if by a whirlwind.

  ‘I feel sick,’ said Peterson, staring out over the ground clotted with corpses.

  ‘Go ahead and be sick if you wish, Peterson. I don’t think there’s a man here who would not understand.’

  She stood for a moment, pale and lined, before saying, ‘I would be, if it was all over, but it isn’t.’

  This was true. There were still the Russian columns gathered ominously in their great oblongs. There was still a gritty, resistant British line, narrow as a ribbon, but looking determined to hold fast. There was still the depleted British cavalry, anxious to be seen doing their part. There were still the blue ranks of the French, peppered with their more colourful units of infantry and cavalry. Over all this, the blue hazy smoke of war drifted, obscuring one moment, revealing the next.

  Guns still pounded from ridge and hill. Rifle and musket fire still clattered out. Men were still dying, losing feet and hands to shot, losing their heads, being ripped to shreds by grapeshot and canister, losing one limb, or two at once.

  ‘It seems as if this day will never end,’ Peterson said. ‘Will it ever end, sergeant?’

  ‘I’m more worried about the next few minutes, rather than the end of the day,’ replied Crossman. ‘We’re over a thousand yards from assistance of any kind. A mere three hundred, stuck out here in the middle of it all, with thousands of Russian soldiers just a stone’s throw away. If one of those Russian columns comes for us now, we do not stand a chance.’

  30

  A British battalion was made up of eight companies, each of approximately one hundred men, though often as few as sixty. Up there on Shell Hill were the equivalent of three companies, each consisting of bits and pieces of several regiments, and even some lone individuals. They had not trained to fight together, had not built up that trust in each other which is essential to the line soldier, they did not know each other’s names. They were strangers in a strange place, and just one enemy battalion outnumbered them by over three to one.

  Mere yards away stood sixteen fresh battalions of Vladimir, Uglitz, Bourtirsk and Susdal regiments.

  There were cannons everywhere which could pound them to a pulp in minutes.

  Up there on the hill, with the smoke from a hundred Russian guns still hanging in the air above them, Crossman, Peterson and the others waited for the inevitable.

  The inevitable proved not to be so. Incredibly, the Russian commander-in-chief, General Dannenberg, finally gave up hope of conquering the Inkerman Heights. His men had fought bravely, the casualties were high, yet his precious guns were still safe in his own hands. He decided to cut his losses. He began at that moment to withdraw his guns and troops from the Heights.

  ‘They’re leaving!’ cried Peterson, her voice choked with emotion. ‘I can’t believe it. They’re going.’

  The soldier next to her, who had been standing grim and defiant, every inch the unyielding man, suddenly broke down and fell to his knees sobbing. Others collapsed, or simply sat on the ground. Their bodies had been held rigid with determination only, and now that fortitude was no longer required, the framework which had held them tall and steady was gone. They wilted like flowers robbed of bamboo supports, their feelings now strong and terrible.

  As they watched however, one Russian commander decided to ignore or disobey the order to retreat. The Vladimir regiment alone suddenly began marching forward, bristling like a porcupine with unblooded bayonets. Perhaps because they had been standing idle for the whole battle, their commander was frustrated and wanted to make his mark on the day. Or perhaps he had misunderstood the message from his superior. Whatever the cause, this regiment seemed prepared to fight on.

  They had been seen by the British guns, who now trained their sights on this column alone and began to blow it to pieces. It was a sickening sight, watching shells burst about men’s heads, turning them from solid beings into flying bits of rag-covered jelly. Great holes began to appear in the column and the piercing screams of the dying penetrated deep into the ears of those on Shell Hill with a chilling horror. Arms and legs, parts of torsos, whole heads, went spinning through the air, striking the uniforms and faces of the soldiers who marched stolidly on. Finally, the Vladimir commander saw that he was committing his men to a slaughter, and turned them back towards Sebastopol.

  The aftermath of a battle is in some ways more dispiriting than the battle itself. It is like some sort of purgatory. An unnatural silence, punctuated by the final horrific shrieks of dying men, settles over the land. The smoke seems to draw weight into itself and hangs heavy over the scene in a great gloomy swell, adding to the sombre mood. Those exhausted survivors out on the ridges and in the ravines, begin to wander back towards their camps. At the same time, those from the camps, especially the women, start to wander out amongst the dead and wounded. The two groups pass each other like phantoms of an underworld, neither looking at one another, nor speaking.

  Crossman and Peterson walked slowly back to the camps. They passed a young drummer boy and a bugler, struggling to carry a wounded man. His face had been battered to a purple pulp by rifle butts, and he stared out between puffed slits, his tiny eyes glinting their pain at the sergeant and lance-corporal. Crossman went to help, but was waved away irritably by the drummer boy, as if the youngster felt this was a musician’s responsibility and the fighting men were to keep to themselves.

  ‘Leave them be, sergeant,’ said Peterson, ‘they want to do their part too.’

  Dark wings fluttered over the battlefield and there was movement amongst the dead. Already the crows and other birds had begun to descend on the bodies. Women tried halfheartedly to shoo them away, but the crows always came back. Crossman reflected that once night fell there would be foxes and various other scavengers. In a few days the corpses would be crawling with maggots. There was new life in the state of death.

  Just before roll call with his regiment, the 88th Light Company’s colour sergeant stopped Crossman and took him aside.

  ‘One of your men, who is it, Corporal Devlin? He be one of the dead, Sergeant Crossman. I thought you ought to know sooner, better than later. He died a brave man, with some others, who chased after the enemy over a wall, while others held back. We found him and they all heaped together. They put up a spankin’ fight by the look . . .’

  Crossman’s heart sank. So Wynter’s premonition had been right. Devlin was gone. He would miss him. The corporal had been the steady one, the mainstay of the peloton. There was a wife to tell too: she had accompanied her husband to the Crimea, though she had seen little of him of late. It would not be an easy task, to inform Mrs Devlin that her husband had gone. Though sometimes the women appeared to know before they were told, sensed it somehow, already feeling bereft before they knew for sure.

  ‘Thank you, colour sergeant.’

  The man nodded, sympathetically, and was about to go on his way when he suddenly reached into his pocket.

  ‘I nearly forgot. Some mail for you. Arrived yesterday before the battle, but you could not be found.’

  ‘Thank you again, colour sergeant.’

  Crossman took the two letters. One of them he knew was from Lisette, who was in France. The other was in a handwriting he did not recognise. This had been addressed to and sent on from his old lodgings in England. It bore his civilian title: Mr John Crossman, Esquire. Whoever had posted it did not know Crossman was a sergeant fighting a war in the Crimea.

  The style was a neat copperplate, very precise, very even. It looked somehow official, like the hand of a lawyer’s clerk, or perhaps that of a debt collector? Crossman decided not to open either letter for the moment. He stuffed them in the pocket of his coatee, to read at a later time.

  ‘Devlin’s
dead then?’ said Peterson, in a sort of wondering way.

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry for that. He was a good corporal. I liked him as well as any man.’

  Something occurred to Crossman at this point.

  ‘By the way, Peterson, I’m supposed to be under arrest for murder, so you’d best go on your way until I get something done about it.’

  ‘Sergeant? I could stay with you.’

  ‘I’d rather you did not get involved, Peterson. It will do neither of us any good. Major Lovelace will support me.’

  Peterson said, ‘If the major is alive.’

  This was a point Crossman had not thought of. What if Lovelace were dead, and indeed General Buller? Many men had fallen, generals and majors amongst them. Without one of those two men Crossman would surely hang for the act he had been ordered to carry out. It was one of the dangers of working as an agent. When you operated in secret, you had little support.

  After a little more persuasion, Peterson left him alone. Crossman decided not to go back to his usual quarters at Kadikoi for the moment. He was mentally drained and he needed to boost his energy before taking on that self-styled policeman, the major who had had him arrested. Crossman needed sleep before tackling that problem.

  Someone was handing out chunks of bread and salt beef. He took some and swallowed it down with nearly two pints of water. Then he crawled under a tumbril and lay back. At first he could not sleep, so he took out the official-looking letter and opened it. It was from a man who called himself Cedric Hodgson.

  The Studio,

  Rye,

  Sussex

  Dear Sir,

  Knowing, as who does not, the hopeless position of the Artist today, especially one with responsibilities, I beg you to forgive me for introducing some of my work to your notice, in this manner, unorthodox, but owing to the high cost of exhibiting, the only one open to me.

  These little Etchings are, of course, my own original work and the lithographs are Artist signed proofs.

  I only ask twopence each, though I once received half-a-guinea each, because they are sincere works and, except in price, are in no way cheap.

  Should some of them appeal to you, I should be more than grateful, because it would be an expression of an appreciation of my work, which I find my tiny price is apt to deny. I have hundreds of original etchings of places of interest and am always pleased to send on approval, so that a number of any one etching in which you are interested can be ordered and Private Greetings and envelopes can be supplied at a small extra charge.

  Though you are under no obligation to even return this packet, I enclose an addressed envelope for your convenience.

  Even though my work may not appeal to you, do please forgive me for having had to bother you.

  Yours most faithfully,

  Cedric Hodgson

  Crossman looked in the envelope and there were some examples of the humble man’s work: a print of Canterbury Cathedral, one of a boy fishing on the Thames, another of a cottage in the country. Crossman did not know whether to laugh or cry. The letter was both poignant and pathetic, yet also quite brave.

  Pictures of home. It was a place that seemed so unlikely, so remote at that particular moment, it could only exist in the imagination. Yet here it was, in black-and-white, that mythical land from whence Crossman and these other soldiers had once sprung. They had left its shores and gone out into a nightmare world, where they died like flies from disease, and those who escaped cholera and dysentery were swept away by the engines of war. This was a church! This was a village guildhall! So that was what those strange buildings looked like, yew trees growing around stately granite walls, roses climbing a trellis arch next to a white gazebo. How quaint, how exotic, how foreign. Glimpses of a fabled land brought nearer by a humble artist.

  ‘You shall have half-a-guinea for these few glimpses of home at such a point in my life,’ murmured Crossman, ‘if I can ever get it to you.’

  Crossman woke next morning to the dull screams of men undergoing surgery. Not all of them cried out of course, but many did. There were those who preferred to die, rather than subject themselves to the saw or knife. Piles of pale amputated limbs grew like faggot heaps outside the tents and houses used by each regiment’s doctor. Blood ran along trenches and in gutters, filled buckets, was thrown into pits to form small lakes.

  The smell of gunsmoke still filled the air, along with the sickly smell of blood and the putrid stench of decay.

  Crossman walked out to the battlefield again. He still could not quite believe the slaughter was all over. It was not of course. There was still the occasional musket shot, as some wounded but fearful Russian, hidden by foliage, was approached and put up a resistance to being found.

  Two officers passed Crossman’s path and he saluted them. They returned his salute perfunctorily. Their minds were on other things. Lisping in the manner of cavalry officers, who affected a certain manner of speech, they spoke of the battle. Crossman overheard a rough estimation of the casualties.

  Over ten thousand Russians had been killed or wounded: a quarter of the number who had taken the field.

  More than two thousand five hundred British soldiers had also met the same fate: curiously the same percent of their total number.

  French casualties were almost a thousand.

  One of the officers realised they were being eavesdropped and turned angrily towards Crossman.

  ‘Did you want thomething, tholdier? What are you looking at? Be off with you!’

  Crossman despised this kind of officer, who treated common soldiers with such discourtesy and contempt.

  One manner of speech deserved another. Crossman adopted an Irish brogue.

  ‘Sorry surr, begging your honour’s pardon, I thought I knew your honour from the battle yesterday. Did I not save your life at some time or another? No? Then it must have been your brother, surr, for you look just like the officer I pulled from underneath a pack o’ rascally Russians. I’ll be on my way, surr, and sorry to have bothered your honours.’

  With that, he left them open-mouthed and incredulous at his audacity, to duck behind some waggons.

  As he walked on, Crossman had a vision of white crosses, covering the Inkerman ruins, nearly fourteen thousand of them, like strong white lilies. He strolled out on to the Heights, where others walked, some looking for friends and relatives, others just feeling safe where they had trod in such fear and bloodshed the day before, finding the peaceful nature of the earth strange to the touch and hearing.

  One or two officers and travelling gentlemen were painting or sketching the scene as it was, or as they remembered it from the day before. The colours were vivid, the lines stark. These were quiet, studious men, who perhaps yesterday had worn the ugly mask of war, wielded a weapon in terrible anger, but who today had shed both mask and weapon for a thoughtful, intense expression.

  Their weapons now were their crayons or paints, as they tried to capture scenes they hoped would never be repeated. A pistol blazed on the canvas held by fingers which now made delicate brush strokes. A pencil was now in the same hand that had yesterday used the cutting edge of a sword.

  Crossman walked out to the Barrier. There he found the corpses frozen still in poses of agony. There were three British soldiers in a huddle of Russian bodies. Two men were caught in the act of bayoneting each other and had fallen face-to-face like brothers about to kiss, their hands still grasping their weapons.

  One British soldier had a grip on the epaulette of a Russian officer, whose right hand clutched dirt and grass in his slim clenched fingers. There was a pistol in the left hand of the officer, and a bayonet through his throat. Their bulging eyes still stared fiercely into each other’s, their facial muscles remained twisted, frozen, revealing the strenuous and determined nature of their conflict.

  This tableau was only different from others in its particular poses, but there were many such pairs, sometimes forming just a small part of a group, a te
stament to the many various desperate hand-to-hand struggles which had taken place all over the battlefield just a few hours before.

  Crossman stood and stared out over the windy Heights, seeing the sandbag battery where the Guards, worst hit of all in the casualties, had fought so valiantly, so magnificently. It looked nothing, that small piece of ground, nothing at all. And Shell Hill looked like it was just a hop and a skip away, standing there, appearing so benign: a calm hill amongst other calm hills.

  Yesterday the scene of bloody war, today a picnic spot.

  31

  There were many stories after the battle, of good luck and of bad luck. Some men were wounded many times and survived, others fell dead at the first shot or thrust.

  Crossman learned that one soldier was struck on the boot heel by a piece of metal from an exploding shell, lost his balance and tumbled over, to strike his temple on a boulder and thus terminate his life.

  Another, a colonel in the 95th and a chieftain of Glencoe, was struck by a musket ball and became entangled in his stirrups. His unfortunate horse dragged the colonel along the ground while the enemy shot him several times. A young soldier ran to free him but was ordered away, it being a dangerous area. The colonel was then bayoneted by Russian soldiers, beaten senseless with rifle butts, and left for dead. He sustained twenty-one wounds in all – and lived to tell the tale over a glass of port.

  There was no accounting for luck or life: it chose one man over another whatever the odds.

  At first, Crossman had that post-battle depression which most soldiers experience. He was alive, but there were many who were dead, including Devlin. That elated feeling of being soaked with relief after it was all over had now gone, to be replaced by guilt, sorrow and a myriad of negative emotions. Other soldiers he saw walking around, who had been full of camaraderie yesterday, were morose and silent today.