A Victorian Gent (The Making of a Man Series, Book 1)

by Andrew Wareham

  His first move had been to take sticks of chalk, bought in advance, and to number each passenger and horse car and freight wagon, and then to inform each officer which he must put his charges onto.

  “Second train, Captain Burke, cars four and five for your men. Car eight for your horses and fodder; remainder of the car for spare powder and ball, dry and well stacked. Car nine to accommodate baggage and tents and rations. Your men all to take a pair of blankets with them – we shall probably run through the night and they will need the warmth. Clear, sir?”

  “Noted, sir. Embarkation is to be complete at eleven hundred hours, I understand, sir.”

  “That is so, Captain Burke. I need not tell you to keep an eye on your men’s packs, I believe. A bottle to each platoon will do no harm, but a keg of whiskey very definitely will!”

  Dick saluted and passed the word to the sergeants and corporals that he would not wish to see any excess of alcohol, and that any man found drunk would pull fatigues and extra guard duty to fill his every daylight hour for a month.

  “Flogging, sir?”

  “I may be English, sergeant, but I have not yet attained major’s rank! There will be no use of the lash at my command. I cannot say what a court-martial may order at some future time, as is obvious, I trust, but I will not whip my men. I am not to be seen as some damned Southron slave-driver, sergeant!”

  The word spread rapidly, was approved by all; there was no place for the whipping-post among free men, all agreed.

  “What about our enlistments, Captain? We’s all ninety-day men, but the Governor done start signing men up nigh on to two months since, because of all the troubles us’ns been having with them damned Border Ruffians. Some of the men goin’ to be turnin’ round agin not two weeks after we gets there to Washington!”

  “Depends, don’t it, sergeant. Suppose we get to fighting the Rebs, then I don’t reckon on any man just upping sticks and going home in the middle of it all. If, and it’s likely, we are waiting while the President talks with the Southrons, then it’s a different kettle of fish. I would ask every man to stay with us till we know what’s happening, but I accept that I will not be able to make that an order. I’m not going home till it’s all over, I know that; I just hope I won’t be left standing on my own on the field of battle. Knowing these boys, I don’t expect that to happen. If the guns start firing, then I will speak to the Company and ask every man to stick to the very end; but if it’s just threat and hot air – well I don’t know, that’s all I can say. In the end, I reckon every man has to think for himself. Me, I like what I have seen of your Union, and I don’t like what I have heard of the South. I reckon the North stands for free men and the South don’t. So, that’s why I am here and staying. Because we are free men, I ain’t giving orders on whether or not a man must stay after his time is up – I don’t see how I rightly can!”

  “That’ll do me, sir. I’ll talk with the boys, tell them that we ain’t in the business of counting down the days. We’re in for a fight.”

  Dick hoped so – if the war fizzled out then he and Blackjack and Miss Elizabeth would be left in possession of a lot of guns and powder and percussion caps and very little army to sell them to.

  “Difficult if we had to go into the African trade to get rid of them. Might not go down too well with local opinion.”

  News came in next morning that Fort Sumter had been fired on, that the South had started a shooting war. The men boarded the trains alternating between cheering and shouting outrage and announcing exactly what they would do to the warmongers of the South.

  They sat and waited for the locomotives to couple up, singing and calling out of the windows to the womenfolk of all of the local men, come to put on a brave face and bless their heroes marching off to battle. A deputation of ministers stood rarely shoulder to shoulder and called the Lord to their assistance. The Governor appeared in person and shouted something that none could quite hear but was probably encouragement. A makeshift band of drums and trumpets played loudly and dozens of little boys whistled and hooted and ran about with sticks on their shoulders while their sisters generally caught their mothers’ mood and stood silently tearful.

  The lead engine whistled and started off and the band turned to ‘John Brown’s Body’, the regiment singing more or less in tune behind them.

  “A good day for it, Captain Burke.”

  “Be a better day if we can bring them all back again, Colonel.”

  “We can hope, sir, but I do not believe we can expect it. The Mexicans were poorly armed and badly led, but they killed a lot of good men. The Rebels are a little better armed, and many of their leaders are fighting soldiers – they will do better than the Mexicans managed. If the war lasts a year, and I do not rightly see that it can be less, then we shall be lucky to bring one half of these men back to their mothers and their young ladies. At least we can comfort ourselves that very few of them are married men with children to be orphaned!”

  “So many, do you fear, sir?”

  “I do, Captain Burke. What of you, sir? Have you a direction to leave with the adjutant for a last letter if the melancholy event should ensue?”

  “No, sir. There are none who will weep for me. A letter to the British Ambassador, if you would be so good, asking him to place a notice in the Times newspaper informing all interested parties of the demise of Mr Richard Burke of Poole in Dorset. No more will be necessary, and I doubt that any will read that and give it so much as a passing thought. I shall find twenty dollars, sir, to go with the note and pay for the insertion.”

  The colonel seemed troubled, but there was nothing he could do and very little to say. He made a note for the adjutant, changed the subject.

  “Ain’t never been there, Captain Burke, but from all I been told, Washington is a sinful town! Been stretching my mind a bit, on how to look after the lads and stop them falling into city-folk’s ways of temptation.”

  There were three large brothels in Kansas City to Dick’s certain knowledge, and presumably there were some smaller and a number of young ladies of independent means, and quite probably, from all he had heard, one or two young men as well. Such being the case, there was probably little new for the boys to learn. If the colonel was worried, however, then he should be reassured – he was a kindly intentioned sort of fellow.

  “Best if we can ask the general to keep our lads a distance out of town, sir. Where there’s room and to spare to set up a range for them to get more used to their rifles and to this new load we’re hearing of. Schafer was telling me that he had heard the whole army was to take to these new Minnies we saw tell of in the newspaper.”

  The Minie round was easier to load and gripped the rifling better and provided both more accurate and more rapid fire. It also made a vicious wound in the human body, according to the stories; a man hit in arm or leg was very like to lose the limb and a strike in chest or belly very often killed.

  “Modern science applied to the field of battle, Captain Burke. Rifled cannon – Parrott guns and Dahlgrens; magazine loaded breech-firing carbines; a whisper even of multiple-barrelled rifle guns that will fire hundreds of rounds in a minute; balloons in the sky to observe the enemy. The railroad to rush men from one point of battle to another in a few hours – steam ships to command the rivers. I am an engineer, sir, and I foresee machine-made horror added to the old ways of war. Our boys will be cut down like wheat before the scythe – or these new harvesting machines, more like!”

  “Then we must train them, colonel. That English major may have been part right, sir – the boys have to learn.”

  “What can we teach them, Captain Burke?”

  “To advance in line, to fire, to reload and then to get down out of sight, I reckon, sir. Might be a good idea was we to buy in a few hundreds of spades and shovels, sir – nothing like a hole in the ground for taking cover in, so I think.”

  The colonel nodded solemnly, much inclined to agree.

  “We ain’t got much more than a score of
shovels, for to dig field latrines when we camping up. Suppose we stop overnight in any town, Captain Burke, take a platoon to the hardware stores and buy up all they got. Adjutant will cover the cost.”

  It was an amateur way of making war, and a battalion with a rich colonel and officers would end up far better equipped than any regiment of poor boys out of the sticks. Dick had no military experience, but could foresee difficulties in keeping brigades of such diversely appointed soldiers together.

  “Beg pardon for enquiring, sir, but what are we to do on the medical side? We ain’t got a doctor with us, nor no trained orderlies, nor so much as a sick tent or a bottle of jalap.”

  “I have sent letters to my cousin in Boston, a gentleman of some standing there who has expressed a desire to aid the army. He informs me that he has recruited a pair of doctors, young men, recently qualified and up to the knocker. He has raised funds among the merchant community – who are the nation’s richest, as you will know – and they have purchased wagons and spring carts and tents as well as medicines and some amount of opiates. They are to meet us in Washington and will travel in our rear with the baggage. It is my intention to hire fit young black freedmen in Washington to act as orderlies – they will have to be black as whites will all be marching to battle, if they are worthy of consideration.”

  “I would have thought that fit young blacks could carry a rifle just as well as us, sir.”

  “Impossible, Captain Burke! The African is constitutionally incapable of battle – they cannot go to war!”

  Dick was inclined to ask why, if that was the case, the slave trade had bought its merchandise in exchange for muskets, powder and ball. There was no point to argument, especially with a senior officer; as well, he did not really care.

  “Stretchers, sir? Have we a way to carry the wounded from the field?”

  “Never gave that a damned thought, son! We can cut poles in the field, easy enough. Tent canvas and waxed twine to sew them up with? Sail-makers needles as well. Keep an eye out in the hardware stores, if you would be so good, Captain Burke!”

  The colonel retired to his compartment, calling for the adjutant. He was impressed with young Burke’s intelligence, he told the adjutant later, a man fit for higher command, if the war lasted long enough.

  “Makes you wonder, don’t it, sir, why a man like him came to the States at all, let alone to the West.”

  “Look in his eyes, Mr Mayberry – that boy is twenty years older than he ought to be! I don’t know what he left behind him, and I don’t suppose I want to find out, but I tell you for sure, he don’t care for himself or anybody else no more!”

  The colonel was not quite right in his assessment of Dick – he found that he did care about making money, quickly. He sat back in his own compartment in the swaying carriage, notebook and pencil busy.

  “Opium, for the manufacture of laudanum and morphine, one presumes – from Turkey, mostly. A purchase before the demand grows high from whatever medical departments the government may have. The price really must rise if there are to be numbers of wounded, and if it becomes necessary we may be able to sell at cost, even apparently below, to establish a reputation for good works. Importation of the hypodermic syringe from Germany should more than compensate in terms of profit. Apart from that, shovels and spades, mattocks as well, no doubt – all will soon be in short supply… what of tent canvas, I wonder? So many obscure items that an army will depend upon, and which will be found in short supply when the time comes. Bandages! There’s a thing will be needed, if the colonel is right. So much to be brought in and so little time to do it all. A letter to Miss Elizabeth at soonest, I think.”

  Book One: The Making

  of a Man Series

  Chapter Five

  Four days brought them to Washington to sit half a day in overcrowded yards, waiting for a direction to their new abode. Their locomotives disappeared within the hour, rolling stock being in short supply.

  Colonel Mayberry lost his patience as the temperature rose, dropping the ramps to the horse cars and leading the stock out and into shade. This provoked action by the railroad officials as the sole shade was afforded by the canopies over the passenger platforms. Uniformed employees, especially the porters who had to clean the platforms, who had previously been wholly uninterested suddenly began to wake up to the need to shift the battalion to a more proper place. Wagons appeared and backed up to the cars and unloading commenced, assisted by the men, bored of watching and waiting. The adjutant, who had been chased from one office to another for three hours, appeared with a set of orders from the provost-marshal of the yard.

  “These goddam orders were written up and ready for us, Colonel! He just would not hand them over!”

  Mayberry shook his head gently.

  “He wanted a bribe, son. Had you put fifty in his hand them orders would have been yours inside five minutes!”

  The adjutant was a very young lieutenant, had never been exposed to the wicked ways of Easterners.

  “Can I just go back and put a bullet in him, Pa? I mean colonel, sir?”

  “No, son – they reckon that’s rude in these parts. Get the men up, we got a five mile march to the camping ground. Two hours on the road and then barely enough time to raise the tents before sundown. Cookhouse too, but we going to eat dry rations tonight, I reckon. Send the headquarters party by a direct route to mark out the lines for the companies – everything neat and tidy, like we planned.”

  By some miracle they had sufficient wagons and teams to load all of their stores without burdening the men. All had wondered just why they had been kept waiting for hours and were anxious to be on the road.

  Dick called his company into march order, stood them at ease for a few minutes while he addressed them.

  “We must march through the city and out towards the river, men. It ain’t the straightest way of getting there, so I reckon they want to show the locals the extra troops coming in from all over. They got to see that the army’s strong and growing every day, or so I read it. So we got to march smart, boys! Rifles up on them shoulders and backs straight. We ain’t got time to polish up the boots and belts, but we ain’t here to parade neither! Show these city folk just what they got coming to rescue the Union, boys!”

  Dick thought that was a very good speech, though he still needed to work on the accent. Still, he didn’t sound too English.

  “Two men to walk the horses, Mr Schafer – we lead the men on foot through town.”

  Washington was a dirty, smelly place – it was low-lying and the sewers were inadequate and had overflowed under the influx of bodies the war had brought. Unusually, even the rich areas of the city stank, to the outrage of the politicians who expected to be exempt from that particular reality. The weather was humid, stickily hot, which did not help and the unpaved streets had turned into mud-splashes after recent rain. The men’s boots were covered in filth and every woman’s dress bore a brown band around the hems; the wheels of the wagons threw mud, if such it could be called, three and four feet into the air.

  The streets and sidewalks were packed, crowded with civilians and soldiers pushing their way from one place to another. Every second front seemed to be a bar, or ‘hotel’, and all were full. There were drunks reeling along the street, and most of them wore uniform and many had females on their arms. The marching soldiers looked eagerly about them, many in outraged disapproval; the churches were strong out west and the farmboys did not expect to see outright whores on the streets rather than hidden away in the back alleys as was decent and proper.

  Few of the crowds so much as turned their heads to look at the battalion marching by - soldiers had become a commonplace in the street and a damned nuisance on the sidewalks. The business people carried on with their money-making and the publicans continued to sell their liquor; only the whores showed any interest, and most of them were too busy to need extra customers.

  A few of the soldiers took notice of them, normally to jeer and shout that they’d
soon be sorry they ever joined.

  They reached the meadow assigned to them as a temporary base, put the men to immediate work, the sergeants with Mexican experience chivvying them to dig latrines first of all. Everything else could wait, but an insanitary bivouac would kill them quickly.

  “Looks like war makes a profit for some people, Mr Schafer.”

  “It does, sir. The scarlet women and the sellers of bad whiskey are making a fortune. Confine the men to camp, I would suggest – at least until we have got them settled. Is this to be our permanent place, sir, or do we expect to move again?”

  “Who knows, Mr Schafer? The colonel will organise the camp first, then tomorrow he will go hunting for a general to give him orders, or so I reckon.”

  “Brigadier McDowell has the command in Washington, gentlemen. He is a regular soldier of good reputation and will be anxious to make an end to this wicked insurrection. I spoke to him this morning and he tells me that he will delay his advance until the battalions from New England have all come in. The Eastern States have generally taken longer to get their men in hand than we needed – most of them being city boys and never having fired a long arm in their life. The general reckons they will need a month or two to settle in when they get here – they ain’t never lived rough before.”

  The assembled officers nodded knowingly; those who had read at all were aware that conventional military opinion was that farm boys made far better soldiers than city slickers ever could. The young man from the farm was used to the outdoor, self-reliant life, and mostly had hunted the local forests and hills since childhood; he was also used to heavy labour, could be expected to be stronger, fitter, better fed than the product of the office or factory floor. The military writers made much of the Prussian experience, claiming that the Germans would often declare a battalion to be fit only for Engineering or Pioneer duties solely because it was made up of townsmen.