A Regimental Affair

by Mallinson, Allan

  Hounslow Barracks, a few days later

  The major general commanding the London district was a shrewd man. He knew all there was to know about the interior economy of a regiment, and likewise its drill, but all of this knowledge he had gained in the brigades of foot guards. Of cavalry regiments he knew nothing beyond what they had in common with the infantry, which was not a very great deal. He knew what to look for in a horse, as did any general officer. But he was all too aware that Waterloo light dragoons would demand a careful eye. He had therefore assembled a small inspecting staff of officers from the cavalry and horse artillery, under the command of a Waterloo veteran lately promoted colonel. And a month or so before, he had set the colonel the task of devising a scheme by which the Sixth’s handiness in the field might be tested.

  On the day of the inspection, General Browning and his staff rode into the barracks promptly at ten o’clock.

  ‘General salute; prese-e-ent arms!’ Lord Towcester’s voice carried easily across the closed parade square.

  The officers’ sabres lowered to the present just a fraction ahead of the lieutenant colonel’s guidon – as was proper – and the trumpeters, dismounted, sounded the first five bars of the lieutenant general’s salute, as was a major general’s due.

  The commanding officer trotted up to General Browning on his blood chestnut to inform him that 467 officers and men of the 6th Light Dragoons were ready and awaiting his inspection. The general nodded in acknowledgement and then reined his charger left to begin his ride down the double rank of dragoons, as the band struck up airs from Figaro, reported to be his favourite opera.

  The real work of the administrative inspection had been completed the day before, when the staff had examined every ledger and given every private man the opportunity to raise any grievance. They had found the Sixth to be in good order, and there had been no notices of grievance. The deputy assistant adjutant general – a major of the Coldstream – had reported to the general that the regiment seemed somewhat sullen compared with when he had seen them last in Belgium, but added that there had been so many new recruits that perhaps it was not too surprising that they should lack the old confidence. General Browning was alert to the point, however, and as he rode along the front rank he too thought the men’s eyes lacked just that something he had seen so often in the eyes of light cavalry – a special sort of alertness, eagerness perhaps. Well, he was confident that Colonel Freke Smyth would find out right enough when he put them through their paces on Chobham Common. Then he would know whether he had a regiment he could rely on. For he could not rid himself of the doubt, one way or other, that nagged him still about the affair in Skinner Street: the death of a young cornet in his district (and the Duke of Huntingdon’s son, too) was not something that went easily with him.

  After he had gone up and down the ranks the general complimented the commanding officer on the fine appearance of his men. Then the regiment rode past their inspecting officer in troops, first at the walk and then at the trot, wheeling and giving ‘eyes right’ as pleasingly as Browning would have wished to see in his foot guards.

  ‘Be so good as to have the trumpet-major sound “officers”, Lord Towcester, if you please,’ the general said when he had dismissed the parade.

  ‘All officers, my lord?’ asked the trumpet-major, saluting as he drove his right foot down at the halt.

  Lord Towcester looked at the general.

  ‘Just the troop leaders and their subalterns.’

  The trumpet-major saluted again, turned to his right and marched off five paces to blow the officers’ call.

  The quartermasters and other non-combatants – the paymaster, surgeons and veterinarians – looked relieved when the call ended with the G, for the next four bars would have summoned them as well as the squadron officers.

  Ten minutes later the squadron officers were assembled in the mess ante-room. ‘Sit down, gentlemen,’ said General Browning as he came in. ‘I wished to see your faces before the real business of the day began. And to say that of one troop I hope to see very little, for I have told your colonel that I intend taking it to act as enemy for the entire scheme.’ He glanced at Lord Towcester.

  ‘A Troop, General. Captain Hervey’s.’

  Hervey bit his tongue. Someone quite evidently had to be the enemy, but it implied that his troop was the one whose services the lieutenant colonel was happiest to dispense with. He rose to identify himself.

  ‘Very well, Captain Hervey. Report at once with your officers to Colonel Freke Smyth. He will inform you of your duties while I give my intention to the regiment.’

  ‘It should have been the junior troop – F,’ said Seton Canning when they were outside.

  ‘I don’t want to hear your opinion of the colonel’s decisions,’ Hervey snapped, seething with anger, though not, in truth, at Seton Canning, for he had worked up his troop so well in the past week that he wanted to see them tested.

  Hervey’s discouragement was allayed to an extent, however, when he learned what Colonel Freke Smyth had in mind for them. They were not simply to send men here and there with false reports, or to hand the usual piece of paper to an officer: There is an infantry picket on the high ground to your front. Instead they were themselves to manoeuvre as a troop in the face of the rest of the regiment, which was to advance as if covering an infantry division on the march to first encounter.

  ‘These are your boundaries, Captain Hervey,’ said the colonel, pointing out the roads and streams across Chobham Common, which he had come to know so well in the last week. ‘There will be officers from the Blues on either flank to ensure that neither your troop nor the regiment transgresses them, and Major Jago from the horse artillery will be my eyes and ears with you yourself throughout.’

  Hervey opened his sabretache to make notes.

  ‘And, mind you,’ warned the colonel, looking him fiercely in the eye, ‘there is to be no faking – no giving way to the other troops just to make them seem crack.’

  The thought had not occurred to him, but Hervey knew it must at some stage, for it was only natural to want his regiment to show well.

  ‘Major Ormonde from the Blues will ride with you, too,’ added the colonel. ‘You are to explain your intentions to him before any manoeuvre, and if he disapproves you are then to follow his express instructions. Is that quite clear?’

  ‘Quite clear, Colonel.’

  ‘Good. Then let us now to the detail.’

  Hervey had assembled his officers and NCOs in the old tap-house by Chobham Rise. He had left his troop in the hands of Serjeant Armstrong (managing to contrive some plausible reason for not leaving them with the serjeant-major), who would bring them to the rendezvous as soon as their marching order and supply was ready. When Hervey had taken command of the troop he had asked to see the field standing orders, and had been surprised to learn that there were none. So he had dug up an old copy of those that Joseph Edmonds had written before they left Cork for Waterloo, and issued them to his squadron for his own scheme. He hoped that these would gain him a march, for without regimental standing orders there were bound to be discrepancies between troops, entailing last-minute alterations as the commanding officer noticed the lack of uniformity. And Hervey knew that he would need that time, for his orders were for the troop to throw out a vidette line across the whole of the regiment’s frontage.

  ‘And so, gentlemen,’ he emphasized, coming to the end of his own orders, ‘my intention, repeated, is simply this: the first half-troop, as the contact troop, will observe the advance of the regiment from the Great Park at Windsor, and will fall back along the lines I have indicated.’ He pointed to the excellent new map from the Ordnance Survey, from which the NCOs had made their own sketches. ‘On the flanks, and a full three furlongs behind the contact line, are to be videttes guarding against flanking marches. In the event of the enemy’s attempting such a manoeuvre, the videttes are to give battle briskly and to make out as best they can until relief comes. I do not wish a
ny of the remainder of the contact troop to exchange fire with the enemy unless it is absolutely unavoidable.’ He looked at each man to emphasize the instruction. ‘Let me remind you that in an action such as this, the great object is to see. Fighting is merely a means to this end. There are other means superior and less hazardous, as we demonstrated on our scheme. Barrels clean then, gentlemen, and swords in their scabbards unless it is impossible to move within sight of the enemy.’ It was as well that he laid emphasis on this now, for the true instinct of a light dragoon, he knew all too well, was to draw his sabre and make straight for his man. Outpost work was never so exciting when they were denied a skirmish.

  ‘Now,’ Hervey continued, ‘the communicating troop shall be formed of the second division. You will establish your relays in the places marked. I shall remain – so far as is possible – on this centre line.’ He pointed to the old Windsor road running north–south across the common. ‘From here I shall send orderlies with reports to the controlling staff at Chobham. With me shall be a corporal and dozen men which you shall nominate.’ He looked directly at Cornet St Oswald, who nodded in acknowledgement. ‘And these shall be held ready, at a moment’s notice, as my reserve. So, having now repeated my intention, do any of you have a question?’

  For some time no one spoke. That much was pleasing, thought Hervey. His plan must be straightforward and his explanation clear.

  At length Seton Canning looked up from his map. ‘If I can cover the front and have a few men spare, is there any reason why I should not patrol forward of the Bourne, rather than simply awaiting the enemy’s advance?’

  ‘There is no reason that I am aware of from the staff’s point of view,’ Hervey replied, glancing at the directing officers, Majors Ormonde and Jago. ‘And in ordinary I should urge you to do so, but by my calculation you will scarcely have a man to spare, let alone a patrol. See what comes, though. You know which is the priority. If you can do more, then so much the better. Are there any more questions, gentlemen?’

  There were none.

  ‘Well, let’s go to it. And remember, the general’s orders are that we face the enemy, not friends. Good luck!’

  It was the better part of two hours before Lieutenant Seton Canning was able to report that his line of videttes was secure. Just after two, he galloped back to the old coach road where Hervey had planted his flag, and there with Cornet St Oswald they made the necessary adjustments and arrangements for the relay points. It had been many years since the Sixth had carried guidons in the field, but Hervey’s trumpeter carried a lance with a yellow pennant and the letter A in blue, so that his troop leader’s position should be known at once. By night a lantern, with red and yellow glass, would indicate the same, for Hervey had many a recollection of delay and confusion searching out a headquarters in some Spanish village in the pitch dark.

  ‘Do you have any men to spare to patrol forward of the Bourne?’ he asked his lieutenant, more hopeful than expectant.

  ‘No, sir. In truth I could do with twenty more for the vidette line, for the country is so trappy on the left flank I’m concerned the enemy might slip through.’

  Hervey looked at Cornet St Oswald.

  ‘I could spare half a dozen, though private men only.’

  ‘Good man! Send them to first division at once, then.’ He was gratified by St Oswald’s willingness to cede that number. The cornet’s priorities were right enough.

  As the assembly broke up, Hervey looked at his watch: almost half-past three, a full hour ahead of the time they had been given to have the line set. He commended his two officers. ‘Yes, gentlemen, very satisfactory indeed! I shall ride forward and check some of the videttes and pickets, and then I shall take post back here by the appointed hour. We are in for a long hard night. I trust there are fires burning now for a warm dinner?’

  Seton Canning and St Oswald smiled. Of that he could be certain, they said.

  Hervey set off up the old coach road with his new covering-corporal (Troughton had indeed shown well in the past fortnight, and had sewn on his chevron only the day before), along with ‘Susan’ his trumpeter and Private Johnson. He found the picket well sited at the bottom of a shallow hill where the regiment’s advance guards would most likely have to commit themselves to one of two routes through the woodland. The NCO in command told him that Lieutenant Seton Canning had ordered both lanes to be blocked, so that the action of the advance guards, in attempting to clear the blockage, would reveal the intended route of the main body. The dragoons had been busy, therefore. They had felled four trees across the sandy lanes, closing them very effectively, and had put up chevaux de frise, which would cover the picket’s withdrawal nicely if the enemy’s scouts pressed them too hard.

  Corporal Sykes had always been a steady man, thought Hervey – his own groom, indeed, when he had first joined for duty. It was good to see him wearing his second stripe to such effect now. ‘Where is the vidette?’ he asked cheerily.

  ‘A furlong to the front, by the spinney, sir.’

  Hervey could see the spinney clearly enough, on the crest of the rising ground, but not the vidette. ‘I see no dragoon. Has he taken post yet?’

  ‘There’s a couple of men, sir. I’ve put a youngster with Broadhurst – a very promising lad he is too. They won’t show themselves except to signal.’

  ‘Well done, Corporal Sykes. I’ll ride up there to see what they can see.’

  ‘Shall I come with you, sir?’

  ‘No, that’s not necessary. I’ll ride straight there and straight back.’ He turned to his escort. ‘Stay here for the present. There’s no call for kicking up more dust than necessary.’

  Lance-Corporal Troughton looked alarmed. It was mock battle, but a covering man had his duty all the same. ‘I shouldn’t by rights let you off by yourself, sir, even to a vidette.’

  Hervey had once taken a spontoon in his leg because he had got too far ahead of his coverman. Corporal Collins would have said the same as Troughton, and he was pleased he’d picked a man who could think for himself and was not afraid to speak up. ‘No, you’re right. Johnson, Medwell and Corporal Sykes to remain here then. Corporal Troughton comes with me.’

  Hervey put his gelding into a canter towards the vidette. He had still not got used to the idea that Jessye was no longer his charger. Besides anything, Harkaway was so green. There again, he had rather abandoned Harkaway. The splint had put the horse off the road for the best part of a year, it was true, but Hervey felt he had not seen to his schooling properly since then. Indeed, Harkaway had done scarcely a thing for two years but gorge himself on the green grass of East Cork, and Hervey had been hard-pressed in the last month to get him to bend even a little and bring his quarters under. The gelding had a good mouth, though, and a good turn of speed, and above all he was honest. Hervey thought he could have him right by the time they went to Brighton. Gilbert, the grey, would take longer, however, for he was foaled a full two years later. If he could just keep Harkaway between himself and the ground for the duration of the major general’s inspection, he would be well satisfied.

  ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ said Private Broadhurst, coming out of the spinney and saluting from the saddle of his little bay trooper. He spoke confidently, with a trace of a smile, evidently taken by the captain’s visiting his vidette.

  ‘Good afternoon, Broadhurst,’ said Hervey, returning the salute and encouraging him to make the smile definite. ‘An English summer’s day. What better thing could there be than a vidette!’

  ‘Ay, sir. There’s nowt better.’ And Broadhurst meant it. A more straightforward, uncomplicated dragoon had probably never drawn pay. His accent was that of Johnson’s county, but from a little further north, and not nearly so pronounced. Even so, the other dragoons had dubbed him ‘Johnson’s nip’ when he had first joined the troop.

  ‘Have you seen home since returning from France?’ Hervey swished the flies from Harkaway’s ears. He would need the citronella soon.

  ‘No, not yet, sir.
I was hoping to have leave before the year’s out, though. After Brighton, that is. I’m keen to see Brighton.’

  Hervey nodded. Harkaway was getting restless as the flies swarmed thicker. ‘Where is your coverman?’

  Broadhurst smiled at the idea he should have a coverman. ‘Private Wick, sir? He’s a good’n, and only eighteen. He’s posted the other side of the spinney keeping watch on the road. Shall I lead you through?’

  ‘Yes, please. I want to know his orders.’

  Private Wick heard them coming, but only turned to salute when they were beside him, so determined was he to have first sighting of the enemy. He had joined after Waterloo, and fretted that he had not yet seen action, especially of an evening in the wet canteen when the stories of that day were being retailed.

  ‘Good afternoon, Wick,’ said Hervey, smiling encouragingly at him. ‘Do you see anything at all?’

  ‘Nothing, sir. There’s not even a rabbit moved since I was posted.’

  Hervey searched the ground with his telescope. It revealed nothing too. He handed it to Wick. ‘See if things look different.’

  Private Wick had never looked through a telescope before. ‘No, sir; not different, just closer.’

  Hervey liked that, and smiled to himself. Of course things only looked closer. But a telescope was worth more to a dragoon on outpost duty than a carbine – yet the Ordnance had none for the issuing. ‘Right then, Wick: tell me your orders.’

  The young dragoon began without hesitating an instant. ‘I am to watch the road and all to my front between the white house on the distant far hill, sir,’ he pointed with his sword arm, ‘and the line of the stream to the right. And I am to tell Private Broadhurst as soon as I see anything at all.’

  ‘Anything?’

  ‘Ay, anything, sir. Private Broadhurst says that the enemy might disguise himself as even an old gypsy woman.’

  He said it with very serious purpose. And he was right, for Broadhurst had known ruses like that in Spain. ‘And what then shall Private Broadhurst do on report of a sighting?’