The Blue Dress Girl

by E. V. Thompson

  ‘You were probably mistaken in thinking you saw this Shalonga fellow among the rabble on the shore. One Chinaman is very like another. The attack will be mounted tomorrow, gentlemen. Be sure your men are ready by first light. We’re going to teach these Chinese a lesson they won’t forget in a hurry.’

  ‘May I be permitted to take part in the attack, under Colonel Lemon’s command, Sir James?’

  Admiral Hope beamed at Kernow. This was what he understood. A young man eager to do battle. ‘Of course. I only wish I was young enough to go ashore myself, but I’ll bring my ships up to help you as soon as a hole’s been made in that damned barrier.’

  Making a hole in ‘that damned barrier’ was not as simple as the admiral had implied. Furthermore, although Hope had told Colonel Lemon to have his marines ready for action at first light, the order for them to land was not given until mid-afternoon!

  The delay was due to the great strength of the barrier on the river. Royal Marines and sailors toiled through a day that became steadily hotter before word came back that a small breach had been made. Acting on an order given by Admiral Hope, the combined fleet moved forward cautiously.

  During all this time the guns of the forts had remained ominously silent. Contemptuously, Admiral Hope pointed this out as a sign that the Chinese had no stomach for a full-scale battle.

  Kernow thought differently, but deemed it wise to remain silent. It was his opinion that when the Chinese in the Taku forts thought the moment right they would deal the admiral a blow that would send his forces reeling.

  Kernow was proved tragically right. When the fleet reached the gap in the barrier made by the sailors it was discovered this was only the first of a number of such barriers. The British and French ships were trapped, close together, in a narrow channel.

  The landing party was on its way ashore by now to take the Taku forts. When the boats ran aground, the Royal Marines and sailors went over the side. As Kernow and Colonel Lemon had predicted, the whole assault-party immediately found itself floundering through mud that was always knee-deep and sometimes came as high as a man’s waist.

  It was impossible to maintain a steady line, yet the marines and sailors, weighed down with their weapons and battle-kit, kept going until they reached the first of the massive, stake-protected ditches surrounding the nearest fort. As they were forced to a halt, the Chinese opened fire. It was a barrage such as few of the veteran Royal Marines had ever experienced.

  There were far more guns in the forts than the landing party had been led to expect and they were used to devastating effect.

  The short-range guns were laid on the mud flats in front of the fort, an area that provided the British sailors and marines with no cover in which to hide.

  The longer range guns had been sighted and tested to range on the barrier. They now opened fire on the combined British and French fleet with such effect that two ships were sunk in the first few minutes.

  Admiral Hope had promised he would be in the forefront of his fleet. He kept his word, but it made no difference to the outcome of the one-sided battle. The Admiral was wounded in the first volley from the forts and before long his ship was sinking beneath him.

  As Admiral Hope was transferring to the second ship in line he was wounded once more, and yet again when his new flagship came under fire. The admiral’s wounds, though painful, were not mortal. He was far better off than the men he had ordered to make a frontal attack on the Taku forts.

  As the first cannonade began, supported by the ancient muskets used by the Chinese, Colonel Lemon fell at the head of his men.

  Kernow, assisted by a marine, pulled the commanding officer up from the mud but it was evident to them both that he was dead.

  Lemon was not the only officer to fall. In that first, bloody salvo almost a third of the Royal Navy and Royal Marine officers became casualties. Within minutes Kernow found himself in command of a company of what had begun as a hundred men but now contained less than half that number. Somehow he managed to take them across the stake-defended ditch and reach the other side – only to be faced with yet another defensive ditch, even more formidable than the first.

  It was here, trapped between the two defences, that Kernow received the first of the wounds he was to suffer that day. Something hit him low down in his body. In the excitement of the moment he thought he had been struck an accidental blow by one of the marines crowding about him. When the pain persisted he looked down and saw that the red of his tunic was glistening in one particular spot. He reached down to touch it and his hand came up wet with his own blood.

  There was no time to tend a wound. All around him men were screaming out in agony as they too were hit. Sudden realisation came to Kernow that all the senior officers had fallen. He, a mere lieutenant, appeared to be in command of the landing party.

  It was only for a short while. Behind him, having not yet reached the first ditch, a major of marines struggled to his feet. Appalled by the number of men who had fallen, he realised that those trapped between the two ditches would soon be dead unless he recalled them.

  There were no buglers left to translate an order into a call that would rise above the battle din. The major was forced to shout his command to retreat. It came in one of those sudden, inexplicable lulls that occur in every battle and every sailor and marine on the body-strewn mud-flats heard the order to return to the boats.

  Kernow received another wound as he took his men back across the first ditch, yet he was able to lead his men in retreat until they were half way to the shoreline.

  When a shell exploded only feet from him, he was lifted and carried through the air to land on his back in the soft mud. He lay dazed for what seemed an age until sufficient breath returned for him to make an attempt to rise to his feet.

  He was unable to raise himself from the mud. Three times he tried, and three times dropped back again. He believed the retreating men about him would think him dead and leave him where he was. He tried to shout. For some reason his voice failed him too.

  Then he realised he was not lying like a dead man. His arms and legs were twitching uncontrollably. Here, on a mud flat on the coast of China, he was reminded of a stag he had seen shot on Exmoor when he was a young boy. Mortally wounded, with a bullet in its brain, the animal had lain on the soft green grass for longer than an hour, trembling as though in great fear. He had watched it until tears came to his eyes and he begged a huntsman to put the animal out of its abject misery.

  Lying here in the mud with open eyes, looking up at the sky, he wondered whether one of his marines would come along and do the same for him. Perhaps they had all left. If the retreat had gone to plan they would at this very moment be embarking on the boats and heading back to the fleet. He would have been left to die amidst the carnage of Admiral Hope’s fiasco.

  He suddenly thought of She-she, who had promised to wait for him. Would news reach her that he had died on the mud in front of the Taku forts? Or would she wait in vain for ever, wondering why he had never returned to keep his promise to her?

  Chapter 13

  ‘SHE-SHE … She-she!’

  ‘Shh! Quiet now. Who’s this girl you keep talking about? What’s she doing that you’re trying so hard to tell everyone about?’

  When Kernow opened his eyes he could not believe what he saw. After closing his eyes tightly for a while, he opened them again, cautiously.

  She was still there – a blue-eyed woman with a ready smile, her lightly tanned face framed by blonde hair. The face was familiar, but Kernow’s mind would not concentrate. It seemed to be floating at some distance from his body. He was unable to place where he had seen her before.

  ‘It’s all right, you’re not dreaming, and I’m not about to disappear and become some uniformed casualty orderly or whatever you British call such men. I’m Sally Merrill, remember me? My father’s the United States consul at Shanghai. You and I met in Hong Kong. You’re on an American warship now. We came along to observe what happened at t
he Pei-ho river but got involved when things started to go badly for you. My father declared he wouldn’t stand by and do nothing while Europeans were being killed.’

  As the memory of the disastrous attack on the Taku forts returned to him, Kernow closed his eyes, but the expression of pain on his face had nothing to do with his own wounds. He was remembering others.

  ‘We took a bad beating, didn’t we?’

  ‘Kernow, you took an almighty hammering! It was Bunker’s Hill all over again, only this time it was the Chinese who gave you a thrashing and you didn’t win. My father nearly had an apoplectic fit watching you trying to reach the forts through all that mud. What on earth were you thinking about?’

  ‘It was Admiral Hope’s idea. We were just carrying out his orders.’

  ‘Isn’t that typical of you British? I swear you’d jump off a cliff if someone said it was “orders”. It wouldn’t happen in America, I can tell you that. Someone would up and say, “What the hell d’you think you’re talking about? You want to do it that way then you just go ahead but you’ll be on your own.” Wasn’t there anyone of you dared say that?’

  ‘Yes, Colonel Lemon said it, although not exactly in those words. He was one of the first to die.’

  Kernow tried to make himself more comfortable, but he found movement difficult and his left leg hurt so much he grimaced in pain.

  ‘You just keep still now. Our surgeon’s taken enough metal out of you to sink a sampan, but he says there’s still some in there.’

  Thoughts of British service surgeons came to mind and Kernow’s eyes opened wide in fear. ‘Your surgeon … He hasn’t amputated?’

  ‘No, you’re all in one piece, Lieutenant Kernow Keats. You can thank our surgeon for that. Unlike most of yours, he doesn’t amputate first and wonder whether it was necessary afterwards. He’s the best you’ll find anywhere.’

  A memory of lying on his back in the mud came to Kernow and he said, ‘How did I get on board your ship?’

  ‘Four of your ships were sunk by the Chinese and Admiral Hope was badly hurt. Father ordered our captain to go in and bring off the wounded. As we pulled away from your ships we saw two of your marines dragging you across the mud towards the water. All your boats had either taken on survivors and pulled back or been sunk, so Father sent our boat off for you.’

  ‘I’d like to thank him … thank you too.’

  ‘You’ll have plenty of time for that. It’ll be at least five days before we reach Shanghai. Right now you ought to be sleeping. It seems I haven’t given you enough opiate. Here, let me lift you a little and give you some more.’

  Not until Sally Merrill came to move him did he realise just how much he hurt. There was pain in his shoulder, and in his stomach, but worst of all was that in his upper left leg.

  When Sally was finished with him she laid him back gently and looked down at him sympathetically. ‘You’ll be better now but you still haven’t told me about this girl you keep talking about. Whoever she is, she’ll be pleased to know you’re going to be all right – this time. I wouldn’t fancy your chances if you tried fighting another battle as you did today.’

  Kernow slept for a full twenty-four hours. Sally was not in the cabin when he woke, but within the hour he had a surprise visitor in the shape of Admiral Sir James Hope.

  The Far Eastern Commander-in-Chief limped into the cabin, liberally swathed in bandages and sporting an ugly gash on his cheek, but looking surprisingly cheerful.

  ‘Hello, Keats. I’m glad to have found you awake at last. Every time I’ve looked in you’ve been sleeping like a baby, even though you’ve such a pretty nurse looking after you. I’m surprised at a young man like you not trying to take advantage of such a situation.’

  ‘She’s been very kind, Sir James. I want to thank her father some time, too.’

  ‘Of course you do. I just wanted to tell you I saw you take your men practically up to the fort wall before you were called back. You did damned well, my boy. If all the others had followed you we’d have taken the fort and had a different story to tell when we returned. Never mind, can’t be helped. Fortunes of war and all that. Fortunes of war.’

  The Admiral turned to leave the cabin, hobbling painfully. He paused in the doorway and looked back over his shoulder at Kernow. ‘You’ll be gazetted a captain when I return to Hong Kong, young Keats. Promoted on the field of battle. Might even take you on as an aide-de-camp. Pity you’re not a sailor though. Damned pity.’

  Kernow was wounded far more seriously than anyone had allowed him to know. In addition to a badly wounded leg he had been shot in the lower abdomen and had an estimated half-pound of shrapnel removed from his shoulder.

  The leg was the worst of his wounds, as he realised when he was taken to hospital in the British quarter of Shanghai. He and Admiral Hope were the first British casualties to reach the international community in the wake of the defeat at the Pei-ho river. There would be many more. Eleven hundred sailors and marines had taken part in the assault on the Taku forts. Four hundred and thirty were killed or wounded. There were more casualties on the ships of the fleet, pounded unmercifully by the unassailable artillery from the forts.

  A French warship from the Pei-ho, carrying her own casualties, had arrived at Shanghai almost a day before the American vessel. As a result of the news it brought, every available doctor, irrespective of nationality, gathered to cope with the influx of wounded men.

  A Scots doctor was the first to examine Kernow’s kg. He shook his head when he removed the dressing put on only that morning by the American surgeon.

  ‘I don’t like the look of this, laddie. There’s no infection yet, but it doesn’t need long for it to take hold in this climate. I think we’d better amputate the leg right away.’

  ‘Oh God, no!’

  The thought of losing a leg brought Kernow out in a cold sweat. He remembered the frustrations and moments of despair suffered by his father. He had returned to Cornwall from the First Opium War with a leg amputated. ‘Not that! I’d rather die than lose a leg.’

  ‘What nonsense is this? What’s all this talk of losing a leg?’

  The American surgeon who had attended Kernow on the journey from the Pei-ho river pushed his way through the gathered doctors. He was closely followed by Sally and her father.

  ‘There’s no question of your losing a leg, Kernow. I’ve already told you so.’

  ‘Are you a medical man, sir?’ The British surgeon gave his American counterpart a frosty look. ‘If you are, and have experience of this part of the world, you’ll be familiar with the incidence of gangrene. It causes more deaths among wounded men than any other factor.’

  ‘You British lose men because your thinking is fifty years out of date and you’re too hide-bound to accept new ideas. Amputation isn’t acceptable as a preventative! It should be undertaken only as a last resort.’

  The American doctor was aware that his British counterparts were closing ranks around him. He feared they might amputate Kernow’s leg now, for no other reason than to make the point that they were in command in this hospital.

  ‘Sir,’ he spoke to the American consul, ‘is there somewhere on the American ground we can accommodate this young man? I’m convinced I can save his leg. I’d like the opportunity to prove it.’

  When Consul Merrill hesitated, Sally pleaded, ‘Please, Father. If Surgeon Gill thinks he can save the leg, we must allow him to try. We’ve lots of room in the consulate. You’ve said many times it’s far too big for us.’

  ‘Very well.’ The consul saw the expression on the face of the senior British surgeon and added hastily, ‘I’ll ask permission of Sir James Hope. I’m quite certain he’ll raise no objection to our taking care of this young man for a few weeks longer.’

  Confrontation between the Americans and the British doctors was averted by the arrival of a messenger. ‘Excuse me, sirs. The ship bringing in the bulk of the Pei-ho casualties will be arriving in a few minutes. The admiral has sent me to ask y
ou to meet the men as they come in. Some of them are very badly wounded. They’ll require immediate attention.’

  ‘Thank you.’ The senior British surgeon turned back to the Americans. ‘I’ll be keeping a close watch on this young man’s progress. If I feel he’s not receiving appropriate treatment I will see you never practise surgery – or medicine – in the international colony again.’

  When the British doctor had gone, the American grinned at Kernow ruefully. ‘Well, aren’t you the lucky one? Unless you make a full recovery my reputation’s shot among the European community here. You’ll be getting nothing but the best of treatment from me, young Kernow – and have the prettiest nurse in Shanghai along with it.’

  Chapter 14

  AFTER THE DISASTROUS battle, the British and French fleets retired to lick their wounds while the two ambassadors pondered their next move. It was now that the Chinese authorities proffered an olive branch – albeit one that was received with considerable suspicion.

  A letter from the Chinese, making no mention of the fierce battle that had just taken place, was sent to the ambassadors of Britain, France and the United States of America. The letter suggested that if the three men went to a place ten miles further up the coast they would be met and escorted to Peking to ‘carry out their obligations’.

  The wording of the Chinese letter was so vague that Frederick Bruce refused to acknowledge it, as did his French counterpart.

  The United States special ambassador was John E. Ward, a Georgia lawyer. He had been sent to China with orders to ensure that his country obtained a treaty at least the equal of any won by the belligerent actions of the two European nations.

  Ward was new to the East. He lacked his colleagues’ experience of the contempt in which the Chinese held emissaries of the Western nations. Thinking to steal a march on the other two countries, he accepted the invitation.