The Winter Soldiers

by Garry Douglas Kilworth

  ‘Should I take you home, do you think?’

  ‘Certainly not. I’ve seen petticoats before. I sometimes wear them myself.’

  The conversation might have grown even more dangerous if at that moment there hadn’t come the sound of firing. Almost immediately the French soldiers in the audience abandoned their seats and scattered in various directions, it being an open-air performance. The Travelling Gentlemen were the next to leave, hurrying to get a good view of any fighting from the nearest high point. Ladies were assisted from the area by their husbands and gentlemen friends. One of the actors shouted that the Quarantine Cemetery was being attacked by a large Russian force.

  ‘We’d better get you home,’ said Crossman, taking a longing look towards the area where the musket balls were flying. ‘Back to safety in case they break through.’

  ‘Surely, if they break through,’ reasoned Jane, ‘nowhere will be particularly safe?’

  ‘Well, that’s true of course.’

  Bugles and drums were sounding now. The French were rallying.

  ‘Look, Alexander, please leave me to make my own way. I can see you are itching to assist the French . . .’ An officer of the Chasseurs d’Afrique went striding by, presumably looking for his mount. Some of the horses loosely tethered outside the ‘theatre’ had been scattered in the rush of exiting patrons, and were now cantering around riderless.

  ‘No, I can’t possibly do that.’

  She agreed. ‘No, I suppose you can’t. I’m sorry to be so tiresome. If you hurry me back, you still might have time to return to the action.’

  ‘Not really my place, anyhow. If I had been here alone, or with my men, I should have joined in. But the moment has passed. The French look as though they have the thing in hand. Better we get you home.’

  ‘Home is several thousand miles away,’ she said, smiling.

  ‘Yes, so it is. Well, back to wherever.’

  All the way back the musketry rolled. The wind was from the west and so the sound of Russian bugles could be heard the whole time. Crossman told Jane that another bugle sound was that of his own Light Division, sounding ‘turn out’. Flashes from the muzzles of distant guns lit up the sky, followed by more crackling broken fire from muskets. Then cheers, from one side or the other.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be with your battalion?’ Jane asked. ‘Won’t they miss you at roll call, or something?’

  ‘I’m not exactly with the battalion. I’m on special duties.’

  ‘Oh. So long as you won’t get into trouble.’

  ‘No, I won’t get into trouble.’

  He took her back to where Lavinia was waiting. The two women then went off to the hospital, to see if casualties were coming in. Crossman went back to the front, to witness the action. He found to his relief that the French had held the attack and were driving the Russians back. On returning to Kadikoi there was a message for him. He was to report to Colonel Hawke immediately.

  Hawke was as usual at his makeshift desk and he gestured Crossman into the room.

  ‘We’ve got an expedition coming up, sergeant. Kertch. You know the area from your own raid with the canoes, do you not?’

  Crossman remembered it well. They had lost Clancy on that little trip. Drowned. It had not been the most favourable of his fox hunts. Getting there had been Hell and getting home had been worse. He hoped the colonel wasn’t going to ask him to canoe all the way there again. If so, there might be a few desertions from the peloton.

  ‘How will we get there, sir?’

  The colonel looked up. ‘Get there? With the Highland Brigade of course. Oh, you misunderstand me. This is not a fox hunt. I just want you there to assist the landing parties, should they need it, and report back to me on how things go.’

  Crossman suddenly became more interested. ‘So this is a large expedition?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ The colonel leaned back in his chair and lit a cheroot. As he puffed the smoke Crossman inhaled deeply. Hawke noticed this and offered Crossman one of his smokes. Crossman took it eagerly and soon the pair of them were creating quite a comfortable fug in the small room. ‘So,’ continued Hawke, ‘apart from the French forces, numbering about 3,000 in all, and the Turks, there’ll be the Highland Brigade – 42nd, 71st and 93rd. Marines of course. Left Wing of the Rifles. W Field Battery and some sappers and miners from 11th Company. You’ll go as a separate detachment of pioneers. You won’t have to do anything of course, except observe.’

  Crossman wasn’t so sure about this. His experience had been that once his commanding officer was out of sight, other officers felt obliged to order him and his men to do as they jolly well felt fitting. Should the sergeant argue they would put him in his place with amazing swiftness, telling him if he wished to disobey the direct order of a commissioned officer he might think about how demotion and fifty lashes might feel. There was not a lot of weight to having one’s own colonel if he was not in the field with you. Still, Crossman was not averse to work, if it was necessary.

  ‘And the object of the expedition?’

  ‘To capture the towns of Kertch and Yenikale, thus commanding the Straits of Kertch and cutting off the Russian supply route through the Sea of Azov!’ cried the colonel in delight, thumping his desk top and causing the rickety structure to collapse at one corner. He ignored this minor catastrophe and beamed at Crossman, who also felt a surge of happiness. ‘At last, sergeant! Some real action. Sieges are the very Devil. You sit on your arses and rot for months, years on end. This is a grand action. Well, not so very grand, I suppose, small in the context of other expeditions, but by God we need it badly. We need a victory of some sort. Alma is growing very thin. We have to give ourselves a box to stand on.’

  ‘I agree, sir. I totally agree. Who’s commanding the expedition? The French I suppose, since they’re putting up the most men?’

  ‘Not at all, not at all,’ chortled Hawke. ‘Canrobert has expressedly requested that Sir George Brown be in overall command. Can you warrant that? General D’Autemarre, leading the French, is furious of course. His own commander-in-chief recommending a British general, but there you have it, D’Autemarre must eat humble pie for the moment.’

  ‘How many ships?’

  ‘Oh, I should think above 600. Not so petty, eh? Not so small when you talk of those numbers.’

  They beamed at each other again, puffing on the cheroots.

  Crossman left the colonel and went to see his men.

  ‘We’re off on a sea voyage,’ he told them. ‘To Kertch.’

  Wynter’s mouth dropped open. ‘We’re not goin’ there again, are we? Blood and guts, Kertch nearly had me the first time.’

  ‘Boats?’ cried Peterson, not usually one to whine. ‘Does it mean boats?’

  ‘Ships. Yes, I’m afraid so. I know you get seasick, Peterson, but this one will be worth it, I assure you.’

  ‘Last time I went on a ship,’ Wynter complained, ‘I got a big chunk of wood stuck in me.’

  Gwilliams looked up. ‘See here, Wynter. It’s time I run up and down your spine for you. It’ll help your bones knit properly. That’s why you’re always so miserable, is my guess. Your bones don’t fit you. They’re all out of their sockets and joints. We got to get them to lock back in again, then you’ll be a happy man. Indians taught me that. If a man’s bones is out of kilter he’s bound to be a miserable cur. And that’s what you are, Wynter, a miserable cur. Look at me! I’m dying to sail on a ship.’

  ‘Ha, we’ve seen what you can do with bones, Gwilliams. Look at Yorwarth’s bloody jaws.’

  ‘Gwilliams,’ said Crossman, something occurring to him for the first time, ‘I’m not sure you can come on this one. It’s a military expedition. Army and navy. There’ll be French and Turkish forces there too. Officially you’re a civilian barber.’

  ‘And bone-man. Yeah, but look, sergeant, if I’m good enough to come with this bunch, I’m good enough to come anywhere.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can,’ said Crossman, doubtfully, ‘if
you really want to come. It might mean a full-blooded battle. In fact it most certainly will. You should be prepared for that.’

  ‘Hell, I’ve bin in the army too.’

  Crossman agreed that this was true. ‘What about you, Yorwarth? You’ve not said anything.’

  ‘Not straight anyway,’ murmured Wynter. ‘It always comes out crooked.’ Then he laughed at his own attempt at humour.

  Yorwarth replied that he would be happy to go anywhere that Wynter went, just to be on the spot when Wynter had his head blown off.

  The last was Ali, who did not deign to speak. He would of course go anywhere the sergeant went, since they were fast friends. Crossman did not even ask the Turk if he was going. He knew Ali would be insulted at such a question.

  ‘Right then,’ said Crossman. ‘Get your kit packed.’

  ‘Shouldn’t take long,’ grunted Wynter, ‘since we ain’t got none.’

  Rupert Jarrard came to see Crossman later that evening. They talked by candlelight. ‘I’m coming on the expedition,’ said the correspondent, ‘along with Russell and others. Fenton the photographer’s going as well. It should be quite a party.’

  Crossman was pleased about that. Jarrard was always good company. He suddenly realized something which had just come to mind. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you, Rupert, if you would like to meet my cousin Jane, who’s foolishly visiting the war.’

  Jarrard’s eyes glinted. ‘Met her. Mrs Durham introduced us yesterday. A very attractive woman. Unmarried, I believe.’

  The way he said it sent a jolt of annoyance through Crossman, which he realized with a sudden shock was jealousy. Why should he be so protective of Jane? Surely he would be happy for Rupert and his cousin to find some common ground? Yet, no, he was not, he admitted to himself. He put this down to the fact that he knew nothing about Rupert and women. For all Crossman knew, Rupert could be a philanderer. Crossman did not want his cousin falling in love with a libertine, certainly. No decent watchful male relative could sanction such a thing.

  Jarrard was the sort of man most women seemed to find attractive. Broad shoulders, longish curly locks, lithe, clear-cut features. Yes, Crossman was sure Jane would admire Rupert’s looks. As to his character, why, the American spoke with a soft burr, was exceedingly polite and charming to females, though he obviously had a roughness to his spirit from his days on the frontier. He could be very tough too. Crossman had seen the civility in Rupert change at a moment’s notice when he came up against rudeness or an imagined insult. Jarrard’s face would turn to granite and his eyes to ice, and he would put down such offence with a firmness that the perpetrator knew he would be wise not to arouse in the future. Apologies had almost always been forthcoming. Where they had not, they had been extracted by forceful means at six o’clock of a cold and frosty morning, on a patch of ground somewhere out of sight of the authorities.

  ‘Oh,’ replied Crossman, coldly. ‘Yes, she is unmarried, though that situation may very well change in the future.’

  ‘I hope it will,’ agreed Jarrard, not catching the change of mood in his British friend. ‘She’s not the sort of lady I would expect to become an old maid.’

  ‘No, she is not. I imagine she will be wed to some fine nobleman, and he will be lucky to get her. She’s much sought after amongst the ton, back home. I shouldn’t be surprised if she’s got a lord or earl dangling after her right at this moment.’

  ‘She didn’t give that impression, Jack. In fact she said to me directly that she had been unlucky in love.’

  Crossman’s eyes bugged. ‘You spoke to her that intimately?’ He was a little more than put out that he had spent a whole evening with Jane and had learned nothing of the sort. ‘That’s coming it a bit fast, Rupert. I mean, the two of you are almost complete strangers.’

  ‘Just happened to come out. I think I said she looked perfectly lovely, and she demurred of course, as a lady would, but I saw that my compliment had pleased her. Then she asked if my wife was accompanying me on my European travels, and I said I had no wife, and what with one thing leading to another, I eventually learned that she was unmarried but had recently been let down badly by a man. No, wait, I tell a lie, Jack, it was Mrs Durham who told me that. Yes, it was she who said your cousin had been “crossed in love” as she put it. I tell you what, Jack, I’m surprised you haven’t called the fellow out. If she was my cousin, he would be eating dirt by now.’

  Crossman’s mind was reeling. How was it that Rupert could talk in such familiar and confidential ways to Lavinia and Jane, and he, Jack, could only converse about clocks? It was grossly unfair. It made him feel like some country-bred dolt. Well, he was country-bred, but he didn’t feel he was a dolt. Not under normal circumstances. And here was this fellow Jarrard, a foreigner, a stranger, an itinerant, able to draw such secrets out of Jane within a few moments of engaging her in conversation. And what about this love affaire of his cousin? What was it all about? It was all a bit thick.

  ‘Was she – engaged to some fellow?’

  Jarrard looked stern. ‘You didn’t know? Yes, some rat back in London, I understand. Jilted her. Married another woman. A foreigner.’

  The wind went completely out of Crossman for a moment, but when he was able to fill his lungs again, he said, ‘I assure you, Rupert, if I had known about this oaf . . . Well, I’m here in the Crimea at the moment, so I couldn’t do anything immediately. But something will be done. Something will definitely be done.’

  ‘She has no brother and her father is elderly, so it has to be you, Jack.’

  ‘You found that out too?’ cried Crossman, miserably. ‘Did she tell you her whole life story in ten seconds?’

  ‘Oh, it wasn’t ten seconds, Jack. We spent the whole day out riding together. She’s a fine horsewoman, by the way. I expect you know that.’

  Crossman let out a strangled cry, like that of some animal caught in a trap, startling his friend into jumping off the cot he had been sitting on.

  ‘Are you all right, Jack?’ He looked into the glass he was holding in his hand. ‘Is it the wine? I agree it’s not top drawer.’

  Crossman calmed himself. It was difficult but not impossible.

  ‘No – no – I’m fine. The wine’s fine. Look, we both have to rest, Rupert, before the expedition. We may not be on the same ship together, but I’m sure we’ll meet up sometime in the next few days. I’ll look out for you.’

  ‘And I for you,’ replied Jarrard, warmly, taking his hand and shaking it vigorously. ‘Good luck, Jack. I’m sure you’ll fight like a maniac. Keep your head down.’

  ‘I will. I will,’ said the bemused Crossman. ‘I’m glad you’re coming.’

  And indeed he was, since it would keep the correspondent out of Jane’s way for the period that Crossman was absent.

  The following day Crossman and his men boarded the Arrow commanded by a Lieutenant Jolliffe. The flotilla set sail and headed out to sea. At first it seemed they were going the wrong way and Crossman wondered if the planned destination had changed, but on speaking with one of the crew it seemed this was probably to fool the Russians. Later, the ship changed course again and they were heading towards Kertch. Peterson, her wound now healed, gave way to her weak stomach. She spent much of the time hanging over the rail, knowing by experience that if she went below she would be ten times worse. Wynter jeered at her, but it was not above six hours at sea that he joined her and regretted his hasty words.

  Crossman was rather glad that Jarrard was not on the same ship with him, there being an awkwardness between them at the moment. However, when dusk fell and the flotilla moved silently on through the grey seas, he rather missed his friend. He wanted to chat to him about the new electric telegraph cable that had been laid. Now the Emperor Napoleon, in Paris, could send and receive messages to and from the war front in a matter of minutes. It was a miraculous device. Quite incredible. Crossman was so excited about it he tried to speak with Gwilliams, but while the North American was a classics scholar he had no inter
est in new inventions. Crossman was left musing to himself, staring up at the sails of the ship, wondering if there would ever be such a message system that spanned the globe. It seemed impossible, but many things previously thought impossible had come into being in this wonderful century of rapid progress.

  Even while Crossman was marvelling at the stupendous leap that telegraphy, combined with the code invented by the American Samuel Finley Breese Morse, had made to the world of communications a message had arrived on General Canrobert’s desk from an interfering French emperor. Within hours the flotilla had been recalled and the British ships crawled back to Kamiesh Bay under furious captains. The British and French troops were bewildered. Why had they turned back? Surely they had been in striking distance of their target. It seemed another of those mad decisions thrown up by this mad war.

  Peterson staggered ashore, grateful to be on dry land again after five futile days at sea. ‘I never want to go on another boat as long as I live,’ she announced, ‘unless it’s to go home to England.’ She might have got her wish if Colonel Hawke had followed through with his idea to chase Corporal Reece up and down the coast. But before he issued his orders Crossman and his men were on their way to Kertch once more. General Canrobert had resigned. General Pélissier was now commander-in-chief of the French forces and he was not so inclined to take notice of telegraph messages from someone as far away as Paris, be that someone emperor of France or no. General Pélissier ordered the flotilla to sail again. In the sea fog, Peterson cursed all French people, generals and emperors, fishwives and onion sellers, and said she hoped their livers would rot. She rarely forgave.

  Along with 3,500 British troops, 7,000 French, 5,000 Turkish, and an odd number of Sardinians, Crossman and his men landed on a beach near Kertch during a long evening. There was some sporadic firing from some Black Sea Cossack vedettes, who retired immediately after there was return fire. Shore batteries opened up and were answered by the guns from various allied ships. Crossman noticed a battle taking place between a British gunboat and some Russian vessels, even as he trudged up the sea strand, and the fog of war began drifting over the landscape.