The Winter Soldiers

by Garry Douglas Kilworth

  ‘Keep together,’ he said to his men, as they fell in behind the Highland Brigade. ‘Just follow where I go.’

  The march took them through meadowland – similar to the downs of Sussex and Hampshire – which was studded with small stone houses owned by Tartars. There was some fighting going on around these dwellings, minor skirmishes it seemed, and a little while later Crossman learned that looting and pillaging was taking place. Allied soldiers were running amuck, despite orders to the contrary, and the houses of civilians were being ransacked and, in some cases, destroyed. Jars of olive oil, poultry, livestock, religious obects, nothing was safe or sacred. Wanton destruction as well as stealing was taking place and the whole scene left a bad taste in Crossman’s mouth. While he knew there would always be an element of low life in any army, it was to be hoped that looting did not become a widespread and commonplace act. It seemed that here on this expedition, it had. Officers had lost control of small breakaway groups of soldiers and the civilian population was at their mercy.

  After an initial stand, the Russians retreated, leaving the battle-expectant allies to walk into Kertch unopposed. The Cossacks were little better than the looters, setting fire to haystacks and farmhouses as they went. The Tartars were caught between the two forces. Massive explosions shook the ground as the Russians blew up their own magazines. The air was full of acrid smoke. In the background was the constant gabble of Tartar homesteaders pleading with French, British and Turkish soldiers to be left unharmed and their wives and children to be spared.

  Crossman and the peloton had been left by a salt lake which had been a resting place for dozens of different birds until the landing. Now, the mighty explosions from the Russian magazines, the sound of cannon and howitzer, of mortar and musket, had driven them to the skies. They circled about the lake, flying erratically, no doubt thinking that Hell had opened up. There was a jetty going out into the lake, with two small craft moored to it, which Crossman’s ‘pioneers’ had been ordered to destroy. As they were laying the charges a woman came from behind a patch of reeds and begged them to leave the boats undamaged. It seemed they belonged to her husband and son, who fished in the lake. In the end Crossman could see no gain to the allies in destroying any of it and he left the jetty intact as well.

  ‘What a mess,’ said Gwilliams, disgustedly. ‘Who’s in charge here? Why don’t some general come an’ put a bit of order into the scene?’

  Allied soldiers were running, grabbing, running on again. Not far away a French corporal was setting fire to a chicken coop. Near him were two British soldiers, one of whom took a long pull from an earthenware jug, only to gasp and spit out a mouthful of fluid. ‘Oil,’ he cried, smashing the jug on the rocky ground. ‘Damned cookin’ oil.’ In the distance a gang of Turks had dragged a mattress from a hovel and were in the process of tearing it apart, possibly in the hope of finding some hidden treasure, but also because their blood was hot and they were acting out of frenzy rather than reason. Still more Turkish soldiers were ripping through fishing nets, hung out to dry, with their bayonets. They were laughing like children.

  Ali shrugged, as if to say, ‘This is life,’ and spat on the ground.

  Wynter said, ‘Spoils of war, sergeant. You can’t deny ’em. When soldiers have had such a bad winter as we’ve had, why, they’re entitled to a bit of compensation from the enemy. If I see somethin’ laying around, not doing anything, why, I shall have it just like that.’

  ‘Those houses don’t belong to the enemy,’ Peterson said. ‘They’re civilians.’

  Yorwarth said, ‘No such thing as civilians in a war. I’ll wager those Tartars give the Russians all the help they need. I’m with Wynter on this one. You got to take one side or the other.’

  ‘I don’t like looting at any time,’ said Crossman, firmly. ‘If I catch any man stealing, I’ll see to it that they’re flogged. You hear that, Wynter?’

  ‘Lord Wellington didn’t like it either,’ Peterson came in again, always reluctant to let an issue hang. ‘He would never have it. I mean, think about someone going into your village, in England, just taking all your grandmother’s things and wrecking the house. It don’t bear thinking of, does it? Imagine your village church ransacked. Good Christian people don’t do that sort of thing. It doesn’t make it any better here, just because they’re foreign. Lord Wellington would have said so.’

  ‘What do you know Lord Wellington would have said?’ snarled Wynter, as usual feeling he was under attack. ‘Anyways, Lord Wellington didn’t need to take stuff. He was a rich man. It’s all right for lords who have everythin’ they want in life. Some of us have to scrape by, don’t we? Some of us could do with a ham or a jug of cider, if it’s goin’ free.’

  ‘Wellington was one of your English gods,’ muttered Gwilliams, then added a strange contradiction, ‘but he weren’t no angel neither.’

  ‘No, but he didn’t like looting. You could be shot for looting, in Wellington’s time,’ Peterson said, dogmatically, as if Gwilliams were hotly arguing the point. ‘Look at them! They should be in Bedlam that lot. They’ve gone staring mad. Ripping up mattresses! Sergeant,’ her voice had an alarming note to it, ‘watch out! Over there!’

  A man with a musket came from behind a blazing hayrick. He fired determinedly into the peloton as they stood gawping at him. Luckily the musket ball was spent after fifty yards and dropped with a plop into a compost heap ten yards to the right of Gwilliams, the outermost man. The Tartar farmer who had fired the weapon now ran off, leaving his ancient firelock smoking on the ground. When it was recovered by Ali, they discovered it had been fired so many times the bore was not far off that belonging to a small cannon and the ball must have rolled round and round inside it like a marble in a drain pipe before being thrown out of the muzzle. Ali shook the musket and it rattled heavily, its parts being so worn and loose they hardly remained together. Studying the worm-eaten, worn stock, the Turk said the user had been lucky it did not blow up in his face. He finally threw it into the salt lake, putting it out of harm’s way.

  When Crossman’s peloton entered the town, later in the evening, he heard that even the museum had been plundered. Ancient Greek artefacts had been stolen, or smashed. This museum had housed one of the finest collections of Hellenistic art in the region. The looters had even employed droschkies and arabas to haul their plunder away.

  ‘What for?’ he asked, shaking his head. ‘Do they even know what they were stealing? What would a soldier want with a vase decorated with the portrait of a Greek god, or the bust of an Athenian general?’

  No one could answer him. There had been a specific order to respect private property, yet this had been ignored by many soldiers of all armies, though Crossman liked to think that the British were not as bad as the Turks and French, but then the thefts and destruction had not been confined to the latter alone. There were British soldiers, perhaps even British officers, amongst the looters. When he was able to dismiss the columns of black smoke from his mind, and the chaos and turmoil that usually succeeds the sacking of a city, Crossman was able to appreciate the beautiful architecture of the place and the superiority of its position on the shores of the Black Sea. The public buildings were expansive and elegant, and the formal gardens and parks well tended. There were good views of the sea, even from the little stone house where they stayed the night. Inside, the house had clean white walls, which Crossman ordered the men not to deface. There were mats on the floors and pictures on the walls.

  The peloton stayed at the house for some time. Their services were in demand during this period, mostly for destroying enemy forts and defences of no use to the allies. They were also used as manpower, along with the line regiments, to shift huge quantities of stores left by the Russians: grain, flour, oil. Some of these stores were set alight. Ships and guns were captured, though many were destroyed both by the allies and by the Russians themselves. It seemed the two sides had tried to outdo one another in their barbaric efforts to destroy Russian property. An invasi
on by the Visigoths or Vandals could not have left a worse mark.

  When they were on board ship again, sailing back to Balaclava, Peterson remarked that she did not know what was worse: a battle where men and horses were blown to bits, or an attack on a town where the houses were gutted and fire used to raze property to the ground. Both types of warfare had their ugly faces. ‘When I was young,’ she said, ‘I used to think that at least war cleaned out the old and made way for the new. Burn down a town and build a fresh clean one in its place. But it’s not like that. Things don’t burn all the way down. Some buildings are left standing, especially the ugly stone ones. What you get is a hotch-potch, not a clean start.’ Then she was sick over the side and out of any subsequent conversation.

  Crossman reported his observations to Colonel Hawke, including the plundering of civilian and public houses.

  ‘So, the whole show was a success, eh? Good, good. That’ll make some of Raglan’s favourites sit up. I understand a lot of those sycophants were against the expedition. Well, they’ll have to swallow their words now, won’t they?’ He rubbed his hands together, then looked up into Crossman’s eyes. ‘Yes, yes, of course, the looting. Most unfortunate. Any soldier caught looting should be severely punished. Still, that’s to do with the regiments’ commanders. Only they can judge the conditions under which the attack took place and whether the men overstepped the mark. What’s important is that the attack was a success.’

  Crossman realized that the colonel was one of those who had pressed Raglan to go ahead. He would obviously be the subject of good reports for having advocated that the expeditionary force be sent to Kertch. He asked Crossman if he had heard of any blot on the attack at all, for it all seemed too good to be true.

  ‘None that I know of, sir. In fact I was told that not a single allied soldier was killed in the fighting, though there was one accidental casualty of which I’m not sure. Oh, there was one incident. The 10th Hussars . . .’ Hawke leaned forward, alarm on his features. Surely this was not going to be another Balaclava on a small scale? ‘The 10th attacked, or were attacked by, some Cossacks. I was employed on leading a party of officers into the hills at the time. You’ll remember that I once made an escape from Kertch along that stretch of the country and I was asked to point out the main routes to and from the town. We were on a hillside when we observed the 10th running into several squadrons of Don Cossacks. One or two of the 10th were taken prisoner.’

  ‘They weren’t decimated?’ said Hawke, quickly.

  ‘No, no, nothing like that. It was a minor skirmish, with the 10th getting slightly tangled and receiving the worst of it.’

  Hawke leaned back again, relieved. ‘Oh, that’s all right then.’

  Yes, thought Crossman, that’s all right. Only a few light cavalry troopers rotting in some Russian prison. That’s quite all right. But then he managed to see the thing through the colonel’s eyes, and realized he, Crossman, was being churlish. The colonel had to retain the broad view and his relief was justified. If such an action, with the loss of no lives, could shorten the war then it was for the good of all concerned that it had taken place. With the Russian supply lines cut, Sebastopol would fall that much sooner. Sebastopol had to fall, even Crossman was sure of that, and when the city was taken perhaps there would be even more chaos and confusion. The taking of Yenikale and Kertch was a small preparation for the overrunning of the much larger city. Lessons had been learned very cheaply and the allies had to be grateful for that.

  ‘Now,’ said Hawke, ‘I want you to sit in that chair in the corner. We’ve got a visitor coming. Before he arrives I want to say it was well done of you to gather all that information on General Enticknap. Very well done. We’ve got him well and truly in the bag, so to speak. This is one fox that won’t get away. He’s coming to see me now.’

  Crossman’s skin crawled in alarm. ‘What am I needed here for, sir?’

  ‘Oh,’ Hawke shuffled some papers on his desk, clearly nervous, ‘as a sort of witness. Just in case things turn nasty, sergeant. I’ve sent for two marines as well. They won’t come in unless I call them.’

  ‘Sir,’ replied Crossman, ‘I really don’t . . .’ But before he had time to finish the sentence, a tall man entered. He was indeed a general and Crossman did not need to guess what his name was. Crossman stood up and saluted. Hawke did the same. Then Hawke waved Crossman back down into his seat again, and resumed his own. The general stood in front of the makeshift desk looking puzzled.

  ‘Colonel Hawke, is it?’ he said, crisply. ‘What is all this? Since when do colonels ask generals to see them?’ He glanced to the side at Crossman, trying to lose himself in the corner shadows. ‘What is all this?’ repeated the general, clearly uncertain of himself. ‘Who’s this sergeant? Connaught Rangers? That’s Colonel Shirley’s battalion, isn’t it?

  Crossman came to attention. ‘Yes, sir. 88th.’ He could stand this no longer. ‘You’ll be wanting to speak with the general alone, sir,’ he said to Hawke. ‘I’ll wait outside.’

  ‘You’ll wait in here,’ ordered Hawke.

  But Crossman shook his head and marched out of the room. When he got outside the building there were two armed marines posted one either side of the door. They stared at Crossman, who shrugged and stepped away from them, to wait beneath the window. Soon after he had left the voices inside began as a murmur, raised in volume gradually, until the two officers within were shouting at one another. One of the marines grinned at Crossman, and said, ‘Argy-bargy?’ Crossman did not deign to answer. He looked away into the distance, feeling extremely uncomfortable. The voices inside began to subside, until Crossman could recognize only the tone of Colonel Hawke. After a very long speech, during which there were only grunts from the general, Enticknap emerged from the building looking very shaken. His face was an ashen colour and there were veins standing out on his temple. He stopped and turned, to stare at Crossman.

  ‘Damn sneak,’ he said, as if Crossman were a schoolboy who had snitched on him to the headmaster. ‘What do you mean by spying on me, sergeant?’ His voice filled with contempt and loathing. ‘That’s a foul profession, you’ve found yourself. Spying on your own people.’

  ‘Special duties, sir,’ muttered Crossman, into his beard. The two marines were staring at him, no doubt wondering about this soldier with a ‘foul profession’. He cleared his throat. ‘No choice in the matter.’

  ‘Huh!’ The general stalked away.

  Hawke yelled for Crossman, who went back in again now.

  ‘Dismiss those marines for me, Sergeant Crossman,’ Hawke snapped, ‘then come back inside.’

  Crossman went outside. ‘You’re not needed.’

  ‘Well, there’s a how d’ye do,’ one of them said, while the other, who had spoken not a word the whole time, simply shrugged and slapped his comrade on the shoulder, indicating they should be on their way. They ambled off, trailing their weapons and falling into a deep conversation. The one who had remained silent until now turned and gave Crossman a half-wave, before nodding at something his companion was saying.

  Crossman reluctantly entered the room again, but instead of finding Hawke in a temper, as he expected, he found the colonel exultant. ‘Ha! He’s on his way home.’ Then, remembering Crossman had disobeyed a direct order, he wagged a pencil at him. ‘Not a pleasant task, I admit. But he was guilty of corruption, you know. Next time you disobey my orders, sergeant, I’ll take those stripes. Understand me?’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. I just couldn’t stomach it.’

  ‘Couldn’t stomach it? What? You think I enjoyed it? Totally necessary, sergeant. I’d rather charge the Redan than go through that again, though. Slippery snake he was. Offered me a bribe. Oh, not outright, but I can recognize a bribe when I hear it. Anyway, we’re shot of him.’

  ‘Are you sure, sir? He looked pretty angry to me.’

  ‘Angry, yes, but he doesn’t want a scandal. A court martial would ruin him for life, and he knows it.’

  ‘You real
ly think Lord Raglan would agree to the court martial of one of his favourite generals?’

  ‘No, but when I lay all the evidence before him, he’ll make damn sure Enticknap doesn’t remain in the Crimea, believe me. He’ll despise you, for bringing the thing to my attention, but I shall say I knew nothing about it until you placed the matter in my hands today. That’s what I told Enticknap. I said one of your men had overheard conversations and you had followed them up. Sorry, sergeant, but someone’s got to take the blame. Well, that’s it then. Business over with.’

  Business over with. Not for Crossman though. He had two more encounters within the next day or so, in which the business reared its ugly head again. One was when his father accosted him on the waterfront at Balaclava Harbour.

  ‘Heard about you. Nasty, rascally business. I’m talking about Enticknap. There can’t be two sergeants in the 88th who do that filthy work. Didn’t like Enticknap, but one doesn’t slink around digging dirt.’

  ‘It wasn’t my idea, Father. I was ordered to.’

  ‘Pah! If I ordered you to steal the queen’s washing, would ye do it, boy?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘There you are then.’

  How his father had got to the core of the truth, Crossman did not know. He doubted Enticknap wanted such information spread about the landscape, so it wouldn’t have been him. Hawke too would have been close mouthed about the affair. The whole enterprise relied on everyone keeping things to themselves. Crossman sat on his bed for an hour, thinking things over, then sent for Gwilliams.

  ‘Did you give a Major Kirk some information, Gwilliams?’ he asked, sternly. ‘About General Enticknap?’

  ‘Major Kirk?’ replied Gwilliams, in his gruff North American drawl. ‘Yeah. That was me.’