A Good Soldier

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  Colonel Howell said crossly “What you are saying is that the Hindus of the Forty-Seventh will mutiny. I would not dare mention such a warning to their commandant. It is not my habit to insult my brother senior officers.” He became less stern and even ventured a vinegary smile. “If I hinted at such depravity to the Forty-Seventh’s Colonel, I would expect him to call me out: and not at dawn tomorrow, by which time he will be many miles up the Hooghly, but immediately, to settle the matter by such light as the moon affords. Really, Hugh, it is not like you to be an alarmist.”

  The Colonel rose. His officers accompanied him out of the mess to stroll to the riverside to see the 47th go abroad and say goodbye and Godspeed to the officers, to wish them fresh honours in the war.

  Ramsey became aware of a tall figure advancing at the same leisurely pace under the shadow of the trees at the roadside. Then he saw a second man there.

  He turned his head to speak to Lumsden, walking at his side. “I told Sher Mahommed Khan he could go straight to the jetty.”

  “I told Karim Baksh he could do the same.”

  “Look over there.”

  Lumsden’s orderly, a Muslim from the Punjab, almost as tall and broad as the Pathan, was following a few paces behind the latter.

  “Must have been having a look at the parade.”

  Ramsey did not think so and he felt a prickling up his spine but made no comment. Both orderlies were in plain clothes and both, he knew, carried knives. He could not see them, but a Pathan without a knife was inconceivable and so was a Mussalman of Karim Baksh’s sort.

  A kind of pontoon bridge had been laid from the bank, across moored fishing craft, to the paddle steamers and the two big lighters each of them towed. A considerable crowd lined the river: British officers and their wives, sepoy officers and other ranks, British civilians, Indians from the bazaar area. There was much conversation and an air of expectancy. Ramsey noticed that his orderly and Lumsden’s kept as close to them as they could; and then he recalled something that had made him uneasy before he left the mess but which he had scarcely heeded because there were so many pleasant things to talk about.

  He touched Lumsden on the arm. “There’s no artillery going with the Forty-Seventh, is there?”

  “No. Why?”

  “I thought I heard limbers and gun horses on the parade ground.”

  “Must have imagined it, so much noise going on.”

  But Ramsey knew that he had not imagined it and anxiety was gnawing at his mind. He knew his Indian history, he had heard from both his father and grandfather the details of events at Vellore eighteen years ago. The recollection perturbed him.

  “About time the Forty-Seventh appeared.” Lumsden’s patience always expired quickly.

  The time of departure had been chosen for several reasons. It would be during the coolest hours of the day. Everyone aboard could sleep while the steamers and their tows covered the miles, instead of spending hours awake in boredom. Officers and men could feed well before embarking.

  Ramsey had just replied “It seems they’re doing themselves not too wisely but too well at mess,” when a shouting from the parade ground rose above the level of the chatter at the riverside, and the crowd fell silent, turning to stare towards the square, which was out of sight behind buildings and trees.

  The roar of cannon echoed across the cantonment: once... twice... thrice... four times.

  And the shouts became louder, with intermingled screams. Ramsey and his brother officers had heard dying, wounded and blood-thirstily aroused men screaming on the field of battle too often to mistake these noises now. Instinctively they began to run towards the parade ground.

  Sher Mahommed Khan’s voice at Ramsey’s elbow said “I am here, Huzur, and Karim Baksh is with me.”

  Four times more the cannons fired as officers and men pelted towards the source of the growing tumult that rose from the ranks of the 47th Regiment of Native Infantry. Officers and civilians who had brought their ladies by carriage cantered away homewards. The frightened Indians from the native town hurried back there.

  When Ramsey arrived at the square the reek of powder hung over it and clouds of gun smoke drifted darkly across what remained of the parade. He saw that a battery of artillery was drawn up facing the infantry’s left flank. Dead and wounded sepoys lay on the ground. Two British officers lay motionless at their posts between the companies and the flagstaff before which stood the Commanding Officer. The Adjutant sprawled face-down a couple of yards behind him.

  Some of the sepoys had broken ranks and stood with rifles at the ready, facing their comrades.

  “The idolaters have refused to go aboard the ships, Huzur, believing that they would turn round and carry them past Calcutta and over the Black Water to Burma.”

  Ramsey gave Sher Mahommed Khan a hard look. “You knew of this?”

  “Had I known — or Karim Baksh — we would have spoken, Sahib.”

  “You must have suspected: why else follow Lumsden Sahib and me so closely?”

  “These matters are as difficult to see as a crow flying on a moonless night, Sahib. When we saw the guns of British batteries going on parade we knew the Colonel Sahib of the Forty-Seventh was preparing for trouble. We did not think the men would be foolish enough to defy him, knowing what would happen.”

  A hush had settled over the sepoys on parade and over the watchers. Stretcher-bearers were picking up the wounded, surgeons were at work. The groans and cries of the injured hung loudly in the still, clammy night.

  The artillery regiments of the Honourable East India Company’s Bengal, Madras and Bombay Armies had not been formed until 1749, some years after the raising of the infantry regiments. The first artillery companies had consisted of British officers and troops with separate Indian companies attached to them for pulling the guns and hauling ammunition. Later, complete Indian gunner units were formed, with the usual British and Indian officers. In 1824 two-thirds of the Bengal Artillery were British and the 47th’s commandant had taken the precaution of asking for one of these batteries to form up on one flank of his regiment and facing it.

  In the long silence the attention of the sepoys — some Hindus among them — who had stepped out of the ranks to point their rifles at their rebellious comrades must have wavered. From the centre of the parade a man shouted. A sepoy in the front rank fired and his Colonel staggered back, a hand to his chest. Before he hit the ground one of the Mussalmen had shot the murderer. Again voices called from among those further back and the companies surged forward, yelling.

  The loyal sepoys fired a volley, the nine-pounder artillery pieces fired almost as one, momentarily deafening those on the parade ground and those around it. Bullets sent men toppling and staggering, round shot tore through them, scattering heads, torsos and limbs. The charge halted. The gunners had quelled the mutiny as they had at Vellore.

  Ramsey had never suffered such a landslide of his deepest emotions. His affection and respect for the Indian soldiers was founded on comradeship in battle and admiration for their fighting qualities. Even now, when they horrified him, he told himself in his confused mind that what he had seen was an exception for which their British officers were to blame. It seemed to him an admission of failure that their Colonel had asked for artillery support instead of having confidence in his men and himself. The 47th Native Infantry had come on parade as a homogeneous entity in which each man should have been secure in his faith in the others, whatever their rank, nationality or religion. It had been deceived from within itself into disintegrating into jostling, howling, bigoted, murderous disorder. A moment later it had been smashed in a retribution which had surely destroyed its soul and its future existence as irreparably as the bodies of those who were being born away on litters and in handcarts. He shared their sufferings at the same time as he admitted that he deplored their actions.

  Officers and men from every guard post in the cantonment were arriving at the double. The sepoys who had stood firm while the rest of the
47th N.I. mutinied and refused to go aboard the waiting river craft made the surviving mutineers lay down their arms at bayonet-point; then, with bayonets and musket-butts, they formed them up anew. Under the orders of its Second-in-Command, what was left of the 47th marched off: the innocent to barrack rooms or married lines, the guilty to be locked into empty spare barracks.

  Ramsey was astonished and ashamed to find himself shaking. He looked at his hands but they were steady. Still he felt himself quaking. He spoke and his voice was firm. What gripped him was an internal seizure that made him feel as though his whole body and soul were trembling with vicarious humiliation and disgust. He felt sick and the nausea was not imaginary.

  “Come on, Alec, let’s go back to the mess. By God! I need a whole bottle of brandy after that.”

  “And I.”

  When they looked around, Sher Mahommed Khan and Karim Baksh had gone.

  *

  Brandy did not help Ramsey to fall asleep that night. The hush that lay over Barrackpore, the bazaar area as well as the cantonment, was not the living silence of an ordinary night; it was like the quiet of a graveyard or a place that has been stricken by plague.

  This did not disturb him. He had no presentiment of further evil. It was a tragedy that the guns, in firing on the mutineers, had inevitably killed many innocent men as well as the guilty. The Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims were not divided into separate companies: they stood side-by-side in their ranks and files; not even the castes were divided and a Brahmin might fall in shoulder-to-shoulder with a Vaishya or Sudra, whose shadow falling on his food would defile it. The cannon balls had impartially mashed the bodies and ripped off the limbs and heads of Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus. News had reached the mess that not one of the Muslims had failed to show his loyalty, that most of the Sikhs had refused to mutiny. There would be no resentment at the death and maiming of faithful soldiers. They were tough men who followed a hard calling. They did not expect life to be fair or theirs in particular to be easy. They were, moreover, sustained by their belief that their co-religionists had died as martyrs and gone to Paradise. So there was no retaliation or vengeance to fear from the surviving Sikhs or Muslims or their sympathisers in other regiments.

  It was not foreboding that kept Ramsey awake, it was sorrow, a feeling of contamination and the procession of ugly pictures through his mind. He also felt guilty by association because the mischief had befallen at all. Surely, with more than 200 years’ experience in India and with a Sepoy Army whose existence went back almost a century, his fellow countrymen could have devised a way of averting such dramas? No practice which was obnoxious to the Hindus’ castes or to the beliefs of Muslims or Sikhs had ever been forced upon the soldiers. But that was negative, an acceptance of others’ customs and a respect for their rights. What positive action had been taken? Assurances from Christian commanders were not enough. Perhaps the sepoy officers and troops believed what their general told them, but it was the regimental commanders who had the real influence. The burden of convincing their men that they were not going to be transported by sea, that the salt had not been defiled, should not have rested on lieutenant colonels. That was the responsibility of the Governor General, through his officials, and of the General Staff. Why had not the rascals who spread rumours been seized and forced to recant in public? There was no need for squeamishness: they would have talked; there were many means of extracting the truth. Why had not a Brahmin in the crew of one of the steamships been made to announce publicly that it was true that they were going upriver? Why had not a priest from the main Hindu temple at Barrackpore been asked to travel with the troops as far as the ships would take them, to demonstrate that no caste law was about to be broken?

  It must have been possible to avoid that hideous scene. Ramsey broke out afresh in sweat despite the pankha’s breeze, as he pictured the spurts of flame when the rifles were discharged, the red glow at the bellowing cannons’ mouths, the sun-baked surface of the drill square with humps of scarlet where bodies lay twitching or inert, the red pools and rivulets shining in the light of the moon and the glare of the lamps and torches. It was a discordant symphony of bright colour punctuated by cries of agony that aroused his pity: not for the mutineers, who had betrayed a trust and an oath, but because they should never have had to mutiny from mistrust of the nation they served. The mutiny had disgraced the entire Bengal Army and therefore cast its shadow on him personally.

  His last musing before he did fall asleep was that another regiment would have to take the 47th’s place in Burma. Perhaps it would be “Ours”.

  *

  The rifles were crackling again, interspersed with the clap of officers’ pistols, but there was no cannon fire. Hooves were drumming along the hard-packed earth roads... the only horses he had heard were the gun teams... and there was no rumble of limbers... but the shouting had broken out just as he remembered it... was there to be no rest even in sleep?

  The shouting and shooting were loud... and as he came awake he realised that he was drenched in sweat... he raised his head and his cheek clung clammily to the pillow... a horse cantered past... he looked up and saw that the pankha was idle... damn that pankha quli... but how could he have fallen asleep with all this noise...?

  Ramsey came fully awake with a start. He leaped from his bed and ran towards the cupboard where his pistol was. A shot was fired on the other side of the bungalow and running footsteps sounded.

  Pistol primed, he wrenched open his bedroom door. In the moonlight coming through the un-shuttered windows of the drawing-room he saw four men. Three of them were in uniform; bearing the badges of his own regiment. The fourth topped the others by a head and wore the turban and garments of a Pathan. In his right hand he held a bayoneted rifle, in his left a long-bladed knife. He lunged and the bayonet took one of the sepoys between the ribs: the dying man fell backwards screaming curses.

  “Desist or I fire!”

  On either side of Sher Mahommed Khan a sepoy was feinting a bayonet attack. The one nearer to Ramsey had jumped forward with the point levelled at the Pathan’s stomach, while his partner went for the head at the moment that Ramsey shouted. The nearer man spun round and charged at Ramsey, moonlight running the length of the polished blade. Ramsey fired. His ball took the Indian full in the face and he had to side-step to avoid the mess of pulped flesh, bones and brains colliding with his chest as the dead man collapsed. Sher Mahommed Khan lunged again, the sepoy parried him and he leaped in with his knife. The blade slashed across the man’s throat and his knees buckled. He bent over the body to wipe the blade on its tunic, then turned and stood up, panting from exertion, his face oily with sweat.

  “The idolaters, Sahib. They have mutinied about the salt... to my shame, Mussalmen among them. Karim Baksh and I have been on guard all night.”

  “Ours?”

  “It is so, Sahib.”

  “Lumsden Sahib?”

  Sher Mahommed Khan did not answer. He turned to lead the way to Lumsden’s door, then stood aside to let Ramsey precede him.

  Lumsden had fallen across his bed with a bullet through the heart. Two sepoys lay dead on the floor. Karim Baksh squatted beside them, blood oozing from a bullet wound in his right shoulder and a bayonet thrust through the thigh. When Sher Mahommed Khan hauled him to his feet he sagged and they saw that blood ran also from his side.

  “Carry him to my bed.”

  Sher Mahommed Khan lifted his friend and followed Ramsey. They laid him on the bed and while Sher Mohammed Khan stripped Karim Baksh, Ramsey fetched soap, water, iodine and clean bed linen to cut into bandages. Karim Baksh made no sound of pain except his laboured breathing. It was only when they had staunched the blood and made him comfortable that Ramsey thought to ask about the servants.

  “The pankha qulis ran as soon as the mutineers arrived, Sahib. The others locked themselves in their quarters.”

  Karim Baksh’s speech was slow and feeble. “There were three of them who set on my sahib, Huzur. The Lieutenant Sahib k
illed one and I another, but the third, whom I wounded with my bayonet, ran. Would to God that I had taken his sword from him and run him through.”

  “His sword? He was an officer?”

  “Yes, Huzur, Jemadar Krishna Lal.”

  A Brahmin! The man Alec Lumsden had killed was a Muslin, in Lumsden’s platoon. The mutiny was not only by rankers or Hindus.

  “You did well, Karim Baksh. You have earned much honour.”

  “I did not save my sahib’s life, Huzur.”

  By now Ramsey had put on uniform. “Lock the doors and put up the shutters, Sher Mahommed Khan. Stay here while I go and see what is happening and tell the Doctor Sahib to come here.”

  “Sher Mahommed Khan’s place is at your side, Sahib. I do not need the Doctor Sahib.” Karim Baksh’s feeble voice was defiant.

  “That is right, Your Honour. If Your Honour will allow me a moment to put on uniform I will go with you.”

  Ramsey knew that it was useless to argue. This was one occasion on which his orderly would disobey an order. “Very well. I will call the servants to lock the doors and close the shutters, give me the keys and return to their quarters.” He would not trust them not to betray Karim Baksh if the mutineers returned.

  Running past the line of bachelors’ bungalows with Sher Mahommed Khan, he could see fires burning and hear British and Indian voices, men’s, women’s and children’s, calling, shouting, crying, screaming. Sporadic shots rang out but there was no boom of artillery.

  As they reached the married officers’ lines they saw a figure come reeling out of a gateway, flourishing a sword and gripping a raised pistol. For a moment Ramsey thought it was a renegade sepoy, then he recognised Yeats. He had pulled on trousers, an unbuttoned tunic and boots.

  “Patrick! Are you all right?”

  Yeats came swaying towards him, staggering and limping. When he was close enough, Ramsey saw that the left side of his face was covered in blood and that he had a terrible wound: a flap of skin from his brow fell over one eye. He sobbed when he spoke.