Sweethearts and Wives (The Regiment Family Saga Book 2)

by CL Skelton

  ‘Sir,’ said the orderly, ‘is the colonel in there?’

  ‘He is. What do you want him for? Is it important?’

  ‘I dinna ken, sir.’

  ‘I don’t think that you should disturb him. He’s going to sleep now.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, but the guard commander telt me tae gan and gi’ him a message.’

  ‘Can you tell me?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘All right. If you’ve got to do it, I suppose you have to.’ The orderly got to Ian’s tent just as Ian was taking off his khaki doublet.

  ‘Yes, what is it?’ said Ian in a resigned tone.

  ‘Sir, the er ‒ the captain of the guard told me to report tae you, sir.’

  ‘Can’t it wait?’

  ‘It’s a Boer, sir, we’ve captured one.’

  ‘What the hell! Can’t the captain interrogate him himself?’

  ‘It’s no that, sir. This yin says he kens you,’ said the orderly. ‘Knows me? That’s ridiculous. I don’t know any Boers.’

  ‘Well, this yin talks like an Englishman and says that he kens you weel.’

  ‘You saw him, then?’

  ‘Och, aye, sir, he’s like all the rest o’ them. Dirty and smelly wi’ a beard that looks as if it’s never been washed.’

  ‘And the captain told you that I ought to see him?’

  ‘Aye, sir.’

  ‘All right, orderly, wheel him in.’

  A few moments later, accompanied by an armed guard, what must have been one of the most disreputable sights Ian had ever seen was ushered into his tent. He was tall, sunburnt, dust encrusted and he had an unkempt, straggly beard. His fingernails were black and there were sores on the backs of his hands. He wore ragged trousers, a torn, bloodstained bush jacket, and an ill-fitting slouch hat. The only thing that seemed strange about him was the way he stood, straight and firm, like a soldier. ‘They tell me that you claim to know me,’ said Ian.

  ‘I know you well, Ian Maclaren,’ was the reply. ‘Si vis pacem para bellum,’ he quoted the regimental motto.

  ‘My God,’ said Ian. ‘It can’t be.’

  ‘I’m afraid that it is, Ian.’

  ‘Donald Bruce. Donald, how are you, and where the hell have you come from?’

  ‘Kimberley.’

  ‘How did you get here?’

  ‘I walked,’ he replied. ‘I walked most of the way. I rode a little, then I shot the horse and ate some of it. It didn’t matter, I stole it from a Boer.’

  Ian suddenly became aware of the guard still standing there. ‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘I do know this gentleman. Go and see what you can get him to eat. Are you hungry, Donald?’

  ‘That’s an understatement. I haven’t eaten for three days.’

  ‘Well, sit down, man, for God’s sake. You look all in. What about your mother? She’s in Kimberley, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, she’s with the children.’

  ‘And Brenda, of course.’

  ‘Brenda is dead.’

  ‘Donald ‒ what can I say? Sorry seems a very inadequate word, but you know what I mean.’

  ‘The Boers killed her.’

  ‘That can’t be true. The Boers don’t make war on women.’

  ‘It was a shell. They’d been shelling us for a week when I left.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Donald. This must be a terrible thing for you to have to bear. I’ll get you a meal and see if we can do anything about clothing. Then I’ll have you taken to the rear. We’ve got a fight on our hands tomorrow.’

  ‘No, thanks, Ian. I don’t want that.’

  ‘You don’t want what?’ asked Ian, puzzled.

  ‘I don’t want to go back to the rear.’

  ‘But, Donald, you’re a noncombatant. You are a civilian. You can’t stay here.’

  ‘I want back.’ He almost spat out the words.

  ‘You?’ Ian could hardly believe what he was hearing.

  ‘I want back,’ repeated Donald. ‘I want back into the regiment. I left Kimberley nearly a month ago. Just after Brenda … I got out through the pickets. I slit a Boer’s throat. I took his rifle and ammunition. This is his hat and jacket. Since then, I’ve killed eight of the bastards. Five men and three women, and all I want to do is to kill some more.’

  ‘No, Donald, you can’t expect me to believe that. Not you, of all men.’

  Donald had hardly raised his voice. Practically everything he had said had been in the same flat monotone. He was simply stating facts and Ian knew it.

  ‘You know that you cannot come back, Donald,’ said Ian. ‘You were cashiered. I can’t go to the general and tell him that I have an officer here who was cashiered and now he wants his commission back. You know as well as I do what sort of reply I would get.’

  ‘Ian, I don’t care about a commission. You could take me on as the lowest private soldier in the regiment. As long as I have a gun, that is all I want.’

  ‘Well, you can’t have a gun. Not a Maclaren gun, anyway,’ said Ian.

  ‘But, Ian,’ pleaded Donald, ‘I want to kill Boers. Isn’t that the whole purpose of the exercise?’

  ‘No, Donald, you’re wrong, that’s not the whole purpose of the exercise. The whole purpose of what we are doing is to win this war with as little bloodshed as possible.’

  ‘Once I might have believed that. So you are not going to help me?’

  ‘Donald, for one thing, you are not fit. You can’t be. You need rest, and for this engagement tomorrow, every man must be fit. You can’t set yourself up as an avenging angel, no matter what has happened to you. You don’t have to tell me how tragic it was for you when that happened to Brenda. But you cannot blame the whole Boer nation for it, and you can’t go around killing their women. That is murder, Donald. You know that I ought to have you arrested for that?’

  ‘I don’t care if I’m arrested. I have been arrested before. Or had you forgotten?’

  ‘I know that only too well,’ replied Ian. ‘Do you remember why you were arrested?’

  Donald was silent.

  ‘You were arrested because you refused to kill. I didn’t agree with you, but I admired you as a man of principle. That was the reason. It started when you refused to kill Jimmy Grigor. Grigor had to do it for you himself.

  ‘I’m going to tell you something, Donald. You’re not going to like it, but I am going to tell you and you will bloody well listen. Grigor was shot because he bore grudges and because he was a violent man. You were kicked out of the army because you could not fight alongside your comrades, because you had too much feeling for the men you were shooting at. But now you are a different person from the Donald Bruce I knew and admired. You are like Jimmy Grigor.’

  ‘I warn you, Ian, don’t try me too much.’

  ‘I’m not afraid of you, Donald, and I’m not going to have you in the regiment. Not even as a private soldier. Don’t you understand? We do not want people like you in the army. The army is no place to work out a grudge. The army is no place for you to take your revenge. The army is a place where you do what you’re told and you obey the rules.’ There was no answer.

  ‘Your food should be here any moment,’ said Ian after a pause. ‘Eat and then you are going back to the rear.’

  ‘But ‒’ said Donald.

  ‘Don’t argue with me,’ said Ian. ‘There is no place for you in the army.’

  ‘I’ll come back, you know.’

  “Not to me you won’t, not to the Maclarens.’

  ‘Can I have my Mauser back?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then give me a safe conduct through the lines and turn me loose.’

  ‘No,’ said Ian. ‘I just want you to remember, Donald, that the army uses its soldiers, but the soldiers do not use the army.’

  ‘You won’t stop me,’ said Donald.

  ‘That’s as may be. But I’m not going to help you, and I’m damned if I’ll let you use this regiment to work out your hatred. You’ll have to find some other way.’
/>   ‘I shall.’

  An orderly came into the tent with a plate of stew. Donald ate ravenously. He did not speak and Ian sat and watched him in embarrassed silence. When he had finished his meal, Ian called for the orderly and told him to take Mr Bruce back to the R.A.M.C. lines at the rear.

  As Donald left, Ian said, ‘I’m sorry, Donald, but I had to do it this way. I promise you, though, that no one will hear about what you have told me tonight.’

  Without a word, Donald left him.

  Ian sat at the open flap of his tent gazing out at the black night sky. It had all been very upsetting, but there were other things to think of. He looked down the shadowy lines of tents. There were nearly a thousand of his men around him. A thousand men for whom he would have to devise some manner of safety from the gross stupidity of his commanders.

  He had been sitting there some little while when he saw the orderly returning.

  ‘You haven’t been long,’ he said.

  ‘No, sir. Mr Bruce teld me that he kenned the way, so I left him.’

  ‘You what?!’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. You’d better get some sleep now.’

  And Ian went back into his tent and tried not to think about Donald Bruce.

  Chapter Six

  The first grey streaks of dawn were appearing in the eastern sky when the bugles sounded reveille. Private Alasdair Maclaren rolled himself out of his blanket and sat up rubbing his eyes. Naturally, no one had told him anything, but he was well aware that they were going into action that day. The signs were all there. However, Private Maclaren was not worried. He was still going to be among the living when the day ended. He was untouchable and he was safe. Had not Marhi Crow told him that he would see her again before he died, and Marhi Crow was thousands of miles away. Private Maclaren believed what Marhi Crow had told him because she was a witch and she had the sight. He could afford to be brave; he might even win himself a medal. That would be a grand thing to take back home to the glen and show to his family in Drumnadrochit. There was no risk, so there was no cause for fear.

  Private Maclaren, as did all the other men in the battalion, got out his oil bottle and his pull-through. He put a smear of oil on a cotton square of two by four, slipped it through the loop in the end of the pull-through, and ran it a couple of times through the barrel of his rifle. He checked the action of the bolt and then, one at a time, he pressed five cartridges into the magazine. Ready now, he stepped out of the tent, which he shared with thirteen others, and blinked at the sun which was just beginning to show above the horizon. He shivered slightly in the chill of the morning, but knew that within minutes it would be warm and pleasant, and within an hour or so, hot and uncomfortable.

  He poured a little water from his water bottle into his tin cup and sat on the ground outside his tent, dipping the corner of the five-inch square of rock-hard biscuit into the water in order to soften it sufficiently for him to be able to eat it. He thought wistfully of a cup of strong, black tea, looking at his breakfast with distaste and pondering on the possible use of it as a missile.

  A little way down the lines Corporal Anderson was also loading his rifle, but before he inserted each cartridge, he carefully snipped off the end of the bullet. Having done that, he then got out the rest of his fifty rounds and did likewise. Corporal Anderson lacked Private Maclaren’s feeling of immortality and he was not going to take any chances. If anyone came at him, the dumdum would stop him dead, literally. Corporal Anderson had seen enough action to know that a good clean wound from a normal bullet would still leave the recipient able to function for a few seconds, and he had seen other men die in those few seconds. To allow such things as humanitarianism to affect his personal safety was completely foreign to Corporal Anderson.

  Over by his tent Ian Maclaren had his company commanders grouped around him.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘we are going to attack the Boer today, take Colenso, and clear the way to Ladysmith. The Boer is entrenched on the far side of the Tugela. Now, I did not trust the information which I received from H.Q., or at least, let me say that I wanted it to be confirmed. I sent Regimental Sergeant-Major Gibson to go out personally and do a recce. You will no doubt be aware that the R.S.M. has spent a lifetime moving unobserved on other people’s property, not the least my own.’

  There was a polite laugh which did not disguise the tension that they were all feeling.

  ‘It appears,’ continued Ian, ‘that there is a ford at the corner of the loop in the river which we are facing. That loop, for those of you who do not know, is shaped like a large elongated U. From where we lie, the U is on its side. We have to go into that, a little way, in order to get across the river. The ford ‒ by the way, they call them drifts out here ‒ is not going to be easy as the enemy is no fool and will have it well covered. Unfortunately, as far as I can see, there is no other way we can cross that damned river, so we just have to accept the fact that there are going to be casualties and that they may be quite heavy.

  ‘My orders are that the brigade will move out in about an hour’s time in column of eight with the Dublin Fusiliers in the van and ourselves following. I have received instructions from the brigade commander that we are to march in close formation.

  ‘Gentlemen, I do not like criticizing my superior officers but this command strikes me as somewhat foolish, to put it mildly. It will unquestionably offer the enemy an excellent target and result in major casualties. In view of this, I am now going to issue you with the following orders which I expect every one of you to obey. If I am wrong, then the responsibility is entirely mine. If I am right, there will be a lot of our men alive tonight who would otherwise have died.

  ‘We will march out in column of eight, but no man will be less than two arms’ lengths away from his neighbour or from the rank in front of him. We will follow close on the Dubliners and if they get stuck, we will not attempt the crossing, but take cover, and cover them as best we can from this bank. I don’t envy them and I’m damned glad that it is not us. One other thing. For your own safety, gentlemen, I would suggest that you do not wear your Sam Brownes and that you endeavour to look as much as possible like a private soldier.’

  ‘Why is that, sir?’ asked Robert Maclaren.

  ‘Because, Robert,’ replied his brother, ‘if you are faced with an advancing enemy, whom do you aim at? Who is your prime target?’

  ‘The commander, of course.’

  ‘Precisely. So obviously, any officer, especially a senior officer, makes a more desirable target than a private soldier. Therefore, gentlemen, I suggest that we do not try to look smart.’ Ian turned to Hugh Grant. ‘Are the ammo supplies to hand?’

  ‘Yes, sir. We have half a platoon bringing up the boxes in the rear of the battalion and every man has been issued with fifty rounds.’

  ‘Good,’ said Ian. ‘Well, there’s not much else that I can tell you. We shall have to play it by ear. One last thing. If you are ever in doubt, make your own decisions. I’ll back you in whatever you do. And make sure that, in the event of any of you becoming a casualty, the chain of command is clear and decisive within your own company. If you consider it necessary, you have my full authority to act independently.

  ‘You had better get away now and see that your subalterns and senior N.C.O.s are well briefed. Good luck to you all. It’s going to be a hard day.’

  For the first three-quarters of an hour, nothing happened. They marched along a well-worn track in the direction of the Tugela. Away to their right and near the railway line, they could see the tents of Buller’s headquarters, and shortly after that, maybe a mile further on, a couple of naval twelve-pounders with their crews standing idly around them. Away to the northwest they heard the sound of heavy guns as their artillery on the far side of the railway commenced their bombardment. The dragoons trotted past them, raising a cloud of dust, rattling and clanking and shouting well-meaning insults. Very shortly afterwards they passed the dragoons who had halted, ap
parently to await orders.

  It had been downhill for most of the way and by this time the river itself, now only a mile away, was clearly discernible. The track which they were following led right down to the river bank and the drift which Frankie Gibson had spotted. It was at this moment that General Hart galloped past on his charger.

  He glared at the Maclarens and shouted, ‘Close those men up! Close those men up!’

  Ian Maclaren tightened his lips and gave no orders. He turned to Hugh Grant.

  ‘Did you hear what he was saying, Hugh?’ he asked.

  ‘Not a word of it,’ replied Hugh, grinning.

  A few minutes later Hart careered past them again, heading towards where the Dubliners led the column. He reined in his horse when he got level with Ian.

  ‘Colonel,’ he called, ‘didn’t you hear my orders?’

  ‘What orders, sir?’

  ‘I ordered you to get your men closed up, see to it.’

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ replied Ian, ‘they must have drifted out a bit.’

  ‘Well, see that they drift back!’ shouted Hart, and then he galloped off.

  ‘Very good, sir,’ called Ian to the retreating figure.

  He turned again to Hugh Grant who raised his eyebrows.

  ‘I think I’ve lost my voice, Hugh,’ said Ian, and Hugh grinned again.

  They were about four hundred yards from the river when a young dragoon officer came up to the column at a full gallop. He spotted Ian at the head and called to him.

  ‘Where’s the general?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Ian shouted back. ‘I think he’s up at the head. If you see him, don’t ask him to come back here. What is it?’

  ‘Can you send a runner to tell him that we’ve spotted the Boer in strength on the other side of the river.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘They’re right along the banks but most of them seem to be covering the big loop.’

  ‘All right, I’ll get the message to him,’ said Ian.

  ‘Good luck to you, sir,’ said the dragoon. ‘You’re heading right for them.’ And he was away.

  Ian turned to Frankie Gibson. ‘Sergeant-Major, send a man up to the head of the column and give that message. You got it all right?’