Victory at Sebastopol

by V. A. Stuart

  “Now as to the plan of attack, gentlemen,” the Naval Brigade Commander went on. “As I told you a few days ago, the signal for our attack will be the hoisting of the French Tricolour on the Malakoff. There will be a covering party of two hundred, a ladder party of three hundred and twenty, a storming party of a thousand, and fifteen hundred support troops. These—”

  “Are we to supply ladder parties, sir?” a youthful Lieutenant asked eagerly.

  “These will be supplied in equal numbers by the Light and Second Divisions,” Captain Keppel said, as if there had been no interruption. Turning to the boy who had asked the question, he added with a wry smile, “Like Sir Colin Campbell’s Highlanders, we shall be in reserve. That is to say, we shall have a reserve party of fifty volunteers, standing by—the rest of the Naval Brigade will stand to their guns. It is no exaggeration to say, gentlemen, that your shooting tomorrow, if it is accurate and rapid, may make a material contribution to the success of the assault. Whilst we cannot hope to silence fifty enemy guns, we shall do all in our power to put out of action as many of those guns as shot and shell can reach.” He issued precise orders as to the supply and allocation of ammunition and then turned to Phillip, lowering his voice, “Have I read your thoughts aright, my dear boy … would you welcome the opportunity to rid yourself of the scapegoat stigma you have borne so patiently?”

  “Indeed I would, sir,” Phillip assured him, his throat suddenly so tight that he had difficulty in getting the words out. “I’d give anything in the world for such an opportunity, sir.”

  “It may cost you your life,” his Commander warned.

  “I wouldn’t consider the price too high, sir.”

  Keppel eyed him thoughtfully from his diminutive height and nodded. “No, I don’t believe you would! Very well—you shall have the task every Officer in this Brigade would like me to give him. Take charge of the ladder party, Phillip. Volunteer fifty reliable men but remember—yours is a reserve party. You will only go in if the others fail to reach their objective.”

  Phillip gave him a grateful, “Aye, aye, sir,” and went to choose his men.

  The assault troops paraded at nightfall and were in position long before dawn. Unlike the French, the British had not built a concealed road or even an adequate banquette to enable an extended line of attackers to make their advance on a wide front. The men had to move forward from parallel to parallel through zig-zag communication trenches, in some confusion in the darkness and often slowed to a snail’s pace. When they reached the fifth and final parallel, they found themselves halted since the forward saps, which could accommodate only twenty files at a time, were already occupied by the covering and ladder parties, whom they had been instructed to follow.

  A long wait ensued, which sorely tried the courage and patience of even the most seasoned campaigners and reduced many of the inexperienced youngsters to shivering panic. The day dawned at last and a strong northerly wind, which had risen during the night, drove clouds of stinging dust into the faces of the tensely waiting troops and added considerably to their discomfort. But the British batteries were keeping up a vigorous and accurate fire, to which the enemy gunners, in both the Malakoff and the Redan, made only desultory reply and spirits started to rise, although an Officer of the 88th, who had survived the first attack in June, confided grimly to Phillip, “They’ve not been put out of action. They know we’re about to attack and they’re conserving their ammunition until we do.”

  At 11:30 a bugle-call from the French lines heralded the opening of the attack and General MacMahon’s Zouaves charged across the intervening 25 yards in fine fashion and were into the Malakoff with scarcely a shot fired. With the rest of the division, followed by artillery, advancing to their support along the specially constructed roadway, the Russians were taken by surprise and their resistance lasted for only a short time. As they were driven back, the French Tricolour could be seen floating from the ramparts, and the order was given to the waiting British troops to advance on the Redan.

  They did so, in some disorder, due to the narrowness of the saps and trenches from which they had to climb, and the hitherto silent guns of the Redan met them with a withering fire of grape and roundshot and cannister, which drowned the cheers they had given so eagerly as they started across the two-hundred-yard expanse of open ground which separated them from their objective. The ranks of the covering and ladder parties were thinned long before the Rifle Brigade skirmishers reached the abattis; those who managed to get past it came under musket as well as cannon fire, from guns mounted en barbette at the top of the escarpment. A number of green-uniformed Riflemen reached the ditch but got no further, flinging themselves into it or into such cover as they could find in shell-holes or behind rocks, where they lay, seemingly paralyzed by the terrible hail of shot and shell raining down on them, unable to go on. A few blazed away uselessly at the towering fortifications with their new Lee Enfields but most lay motionless, pinned down by the barrage.

  Only about six of the Light Division’s twenty scaling ladders were carried as far as the ditch; the rest were scattered amongst the rough, tussocky grass which covered the approach to it, the bodies of the men who had borne them piled about them or crushed beneath their rungs. As the first wave of the storming party prepared to leave the trench, Phillip turned to his waiting seamen.

  “Come on, my boys!” he bade them. “It’s our turn now. Follow me—but don’t bunch close together and keep your heads down!”

  They could scarcely hear him for the roar of the guns but they understood his gestures and raised sword and obeyed without hesitation. With eight men to each of the 24-foot ladders they ran, bent double and in silence, not wasting their breath in an attempt to cheer or urge each other on, for they had seen what had happened to those who had gone before them. The smoke and dust afforded them some cover but the Russian guns were laid accurately on the open ground which they must cross and the gunners needed neither sight nor sound of their target—they had only to fire and keep on firing.

  Phillip stumbled through the inferno like a sleep-walker, now tripping over a dead or wounded soldier lying in his path, now reeling from the blast of an exploding shell. Before he had covered twenty yards, he had to take the end of a ladder from whence the bearers had vanished somewhere in the smoke, one with his head blown from his body. He was choked and half-blinded, convinced that each breath he drew into his tortured lungs would be his last. Only instinct and an obstinate determination to see his ladder in position drove him on, for this was worse, infinitely worse, than anything he had ever experienced before. The enemy fire never slackened, men were falling like ninepins all about him and he knew that it would be a miracle if one of his ladders reached the escarpment.

  Hearing a scream of agony behind him, he turned to see that another of his party had fallen, a big gunner’s mate, who had reminded him of Thompson and who now lay on the rocky, dust-covered ground clutching a shattered leg. There were now only four of them staggering drunkenly under the weight of the ladder, where before there had been twice that number, but he glimpsed two of his other parties—incredibly with their numbers intact—to his left and he pressed on into the smoke, with no idea of how far they had come or how much further they had still to go. Then he saw the ditch directly ahead of him, with a party of engineers working like beavers, under the direction of an Officer, to construct a ramp across it. The Officer grinned at him, his teeth gleaming white in his powder-blackened face, and raised a hand in welcome.

  “The Royal Navy, God bless ’em!” he yelled. “Be the first to take advantage of our bridge, Commander!”

  Phillip found himself grinning back, as he waved his two parties to go ahead of him. “I’m a bit short of hands,” he said breathlessly. “If you could lend me a couple to get our ladder across, I’d be grateful.”

  “I’ll lend you a hand myself,” the young Lieutenant offered. “My job here is finished, thank God.” He gripped the end rung of the ladder with a hand that was raw a
nd bleeding and said grimly, his mouth close to Phillip’s ear, “These aren’t properly organized stormers, for heaven’s sake! They are coming up in driblets, by ones and twos, stunned and paralyzed. They’ve none of the dash and élan one expects from British soldiers in an assault. Look at them! They’re just clinging to the foot of the escarpment, where they are out of the line of fire, and letting their Officers go in through the embrasures alone.”

  He was right, Phillip saw, looking up. As he watched a youthful ensign, in the uniform of the 90th Foot, who had clawed his way up the crumbling slope on hands and knees, hurled himself over the top of the parapet with sword held high and a cheer on his lips, but not a single one of the soldiers with him followed his example. They stayed where they were, crouched under the over-hanging gabions of the gun embrasures, and did not stir.

  “They’re young soldiers,” he defended. “Most of them have only been out here a few weeks and the poor little devils have spent all their time in the trenches, I understand, learning to keep their heads down and little else.”

  “Then why pick them for this vital assault?” the Engineer Lieutenant demanded unanswerably. “God forgive whoever made that decision!” He sighed, as Phillip and his party placed their ladders in position. “Well done—you’ve added fifty percent to the number we had here. Perhaps it’ll encourage some of the poor little trench warriors to mount ’em. Er—my name is Ranken, by the way—George Ranken.”

  “And mine is Hazard. Are more ladders wanted, do you think?”

  “The ones we have are not being used,” Lieutenant Ranken pointed out. “But here come some of the 88th—perhaps, after all, Commander, we have not laboured in vain.”

  The 88th was an Irish regiment which, Phillip knew, had distinguished itself in the earlier battles at the Alma and Inkerman and he waited expectantly as a party of about sixty men emerged from the smoke and came pounding across the ramp, led by two young subalterns. Both Officers mounted the nearest ladder without pausing to draw breath but only a dozen men and a grey-haired sergeant, who was bleeding from a wound in the chest, made any attempt to follow them. The rest, as if with one accord, dived for cover at the foot of the slope and when, a moment or so later, the sergeant fell close by them to lie moaning with the pain of a fresh wound, it was Phillip who ran across to drag him to shelter and two of his seamen who volunteered to carry him back in search of medical aid. The men of his regiment did not move.

  “You see?” Ranken said bitterly. “And it’s not only our men who are behaving like this. The French took the Malakoff in grand style and appear to be holding it, but they have twice been driven back from the Little Redan, I was told. And I saw, with my own eyes, one of their regiments in full flight from the Central Bastion, just before you got here.” He gestured wrathfully to the escarpment above their heads and to the red-coated soldiers clinging, face downwards, to its lower slopes. “They would run too, if they didn’t feel safer where they are and fear to return through the barrage. In the name of heaven, where are our reinforcements? We shall never take even the salient with those yellow-livered boys!”

  “The support troops and reserves have a thousand yards of zig-zags and parallels to traverse, in single file, before they can advance,” Phillip told him, recalling the orders which had been issued a few hours before. “And by this time they’ll be hideously congested, I fear, since the wounded are to be evacuated by the same route.”

  The Engineer Officer groaned. “For which brilliant feat of organization we can thank our General Staff, I suppose! Few of them ever come near the trenches, you know—gilded popinjays that they are. The only one I’ve ever seen is Henry Clifford, General Codrington’s aide, who is a most efficient and gallant Officer. Devil take it, this is the eighteenth of June all over again, except that the butcher’s bill is likely to be even higher and—“he broke off to mop his brow as his sergeant, a tanned, imperturbable veteran, came to report the ramp securely in place. “Good!” he approved. “Collect the men, Sergeant, and prepare to withdraw. We’ll fall back to the quarries.”

  Phillip looked at his own battered party, now reduced to fifteen men, armed only with cutlasses, and Lieutenant Ranken, guessing his thoughts, offered the suggestion that they should be sent back with the wounded. “Take them to the quarries. It’s closer—they’ll only have about fifty yards of open ground to cross. We can do no more here, Hazard. No one can, until the support troops arrive … if they ever do. I’m taking my fellows back. They’ve done all and more than they were ordered to do and they are highly-trained men—there’s no sense in getting them killed for nothing. I should suppose the same applies to your men, does it not?”

  It did, of course, Phillip thought and, although stretcher bearers were now starting to come up, there were too few of them to deal with all the wounded. His men could make themselves useful and …

  “Sir—look over there, sir!” One of the seamen, a fair-haired giant named Oxtoby, was pointing excitedly in the direction of the British trenches and Phillip’s heart lifted with pride as, through the eddying smoke, he saw a line of red-coated infantrymen advancing with bayonets fixed, in splendid, disciplined deployment.

  “The Fusiliers!” Ranken exclaimed. “The 23rd … now that’s the way to come into battle! They make a brave sight, don’t they, as steady as if they were on the parade ground.”

  Their commanding Officer at their head and scorning the sap—which would have brought them out in the driblets Ranken had complained of—the 23rd were coming from the main forward trench as a whole regiment. As they crossed the open ground, they had to run the same terrible gauntlet of fire as their predecessors but they did not falter. Inevitably they suffered casualties but they closed ranks and retained their formation until they were right up to the ditch. Reaching it and cheered on by their Officers, they crossed and made for the scaling ladders, ascending to the parapet and, still as a cohesive whole, jumped on to it and over, into the interior of the Redan. A few of the men who had been clinging to the gabions, fired by their example, went after them and Phillip exchanged a swift glance with the Engineer Lieutenant.

  “Let’s try and rally some support for them, shall we?” he suggested and Ranken nodded, the light of battle in his eyes. “They deserve no less,” he agreed. “But I shall still send my men to the quarries. They’re not infantrymen.”

  He rapped an order to his sergeant but, before Phillip could do the same, Oxtoby drew his cutlass.

  “We’re with you, sir,” he stated firmly. “All of us—we didn’t carry them bleeding ladders all this way for nothing, sir.”

  With his fifteen seamen at his back, Phillip climbed up to the parapet, yelling at the top of his voice to the scattered infantrymen to join them. One or two did so but the majority appeared too shocked even to hear him, until a bare-headed young bugler of the 55th scrambled past him and with complete disregard for his own safety, stood on the broken sandbags at the summit of the escarpment and sounded the advance.

  “Good man!” Ranken shouted hoarsely. “Oh, good man!”

  Inside the Redan was a shambles and Phillip recoiled in horror at what he saw. Bodies lay scattered everywhere he looked and the men of the gallant 23rd had been brought to a halt at last under a terrible cross-fire from an enemy they could not see. The Russians were sheltered behind strong defences and they were well supplied with ammunition. Musket balls, shells hurled by hand, their fuses lit, and grape from guns which had been turned inward rained down on the scarlet-uniformed attackers, until the salient was strewn with their dead. Here and there, small pockets of men were engaged in desperate, hand-to-hand struggles with Russian infantrymen brought in as reinforcements but, hack and thrust though they might, they were being steadily, mercilessly driven back.

  There were plenty of weapons lying about and, directing his party to arm themselves with muskets, Phillip was able to pour in a telling volley which put out of action the crew of a brass cannon, which had been spraying grape with devastating effect on a knot of
men of different regiments, who had formed themselves into a defensive square. But there was no spare ammunition and the infantrymen, when they had emptied their pouches, could only resort to the bayonets and panic spread swiftly, when more and more enemy reserves came pouring from concealment to meet them. Finding themselves outnumbered, the young soldiers broke and fled back from whence they had come, flinging themselves over the parapet in blind terror. Russian marksmen, firing down from the safety of their embrasures, picked off those who managed to gain a foothold on the crumbling slope, and the Officers, endeavouring to cover their men’s precipitate retreat, died where they stood in twos and threes or small, heroic groups, refusing to surrender.

  “This is hopeless, Commander Hazard,” Ranken gasped, seizing Phillip by the shoulder as they were pushed back towards the apex of the salient. “For God’s sake, the enemy are bringing up fresh reserves and we have none!” He pointed with a broken, bloodied sword at an advancing column of tightly-packed Russian infantrymen which, as he spoke, fanned out to fire an echoing volley into the remnants of a company of Fusiliers and then knelt to reload. “We’d better try to make an orderly withdrawal, if even that is possible.”

  Phillip, having no breath to speak, nodded his assent. He contrived to keep what was left of his party together and they retreated to the parapet, fighting off Russian bayonets for as long as they could with any weapons that came to hand. The giant Oxtoby was a tower of strength. He laid about him valiantly, first with the butt of a newly-issued Rifle Brigade Lee Enfield, then with his cutlass and finally with his bare fists, a grin of pure pleasure lighting his round, moon face, which only faded when a fragment from a bursting shell took him in the chest.

  “I’m finished, sir,” he whispered, when Phillip dropped to his knees beside him. “But it was worth it! I … I had me … bleedin’ money’s worth. Before heaven … I did.”