Attack on the Redan

by Garry Douglas Kilworth

  ATTACK ON

  THE REDAN

  Other novels by Garry Douglas Kilworth

  Fancy Jack Crossman Novels:

  The Devil’s Own

  The Valley of Death

  Soldiers in the Mist

  The Winter Soldiers

  Other fiction:

  Highlander

  Witchwater Country

  In The Hollow of The Deep-Sea Wave

  Spiral Winds

  House of Tribes

  A Midsummer’s Nightmare

  The Navigator Kings trilogy

  Constable & Robinson Ltd

  3 The Lanchesters

  162 Fulham Palace Road

  London W6 9ER

  www.constablerobinson.com

  First published in the UK by Constable,

  an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd 2003

  Copyright © Garry Douglas Kilworth 2003

  The right of Garry Douglas Kilworth to be indentified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  ISBN 1-84119-450-6

  eISBN 978-1-47210-406-9

  Printed and bound in the EU

  This one is for Bill Fedden –

  who served with me at Masirah and

  Strike Command – a warrior

  on the golf course

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  1

  ‘There must have been an army.’

  This enigmatic statement had erupted very suddenly from the lips of Sergeant Jack Crossman of the 88th Connaught Rangers, an Irish regiment with a drinking problem. The statement and the problem had little to do with each other, except that in a nearby sutler tent there were some rangers carousing the night away. Their sometimes bawdy, sometimes sentimental songs had been interfering with the conversation between Fancy Jack and his close friend Rupert Jarrard, an American war correspondent. Consequently both men had settled back in their chairs, one with his beloved chibouque pipe, the other with his cigar, and had slipped into separate reveries.

  ‘What?’ answered the startled Jarrard. Jarrard stared at the shining face of his companion. The American had been somewhere else. On the island of Run, to be precise. He had been reading recently about the nutmeg and its subsequent influence on world history, and his imagination had taken him to the source of the nutmeg tree, a small island in far eastern waters. He had actually been standing on a cliff buffeted by balmy breezes, picking precious nutmegs, which in a distant century would have made him a very wealthy man, when the eruption had occurred from the mouth of the sergeant. ‘What are you yelling about man? You almost had me swallowing my cigar.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Crossman, leaning forward, ‘it just occurred to me. Look, when the three wise men, or the three kings, or whatever you want to call them – when they travelled to the birth of Christ, they wouldn’t have made the journey alone. No. They would have had an army with them. We don’t think about that. We don’t depict it in our illustrations.’

  It was a warm clear night, without any dew, the moon shining mistily through a thin layer of cloud. Fireflies turned a nearby drystone wall into a miniature universe of swimming stars. Crossman never failed to be fascinated by fireflies, which seemed to him to have the secret of a natural source of energy. The horse-drawn carriages of the siege railway which now passed through Kadikoi on its way up from Balaclava harbour had come to a standstill during the dark hours, but the two men could hear the clink and clatter of tools in the distance where the Russians, under their inventive engineer Colonel Todleben, were busy repairing the damage caused by allied guns. The Sebastopol defences were attacked daily with vigorous intent. Every night the Russians doggedly patched up the holes.

  Jarrard tapped the ash off his cigar. It fell like fine snow through the beams of the lamplight to the stone floor of his small room. ‘I should be used to these outbursts from you, but I’m not. You and Archimedes would have made a fine pair, with your eurekas. All right, tell me. Why was there an army with the three wise men?’

  ‘Look at it logically. They were, if not great kings, very important chieftains. They were carrying priceless gifts. Their journey would have taken them through all kinds of landscapes – bandit country, deserts, foreign places where they were not known. There would be hostile tribes and lone robbers. They would pass through areas where they were likely to be attacked by wild beasts – lions, bears, that sort of thing, drawn by the scent of the domestic livestock, if not the men. They would need an escort to guard them and their precious caravans . . .’

  ‘Why do you assume a caravan?’

  ‘Oh, Rupert, it’s obvious! If it isn’t three men, riding hell-for-leather through the night, which for reasons I’ve already gone into it wasn’t, then there has to be a retinue. Animal-transport needs fodder, people need food. There would have been a herd of goats, which naturally brings in goatherds. Fowl for eggs and meat. There would have been camels to carry the fodder and firewood, for they would need fires during the freezing desert nights, and of course to cook their food, boil any suspect water. Camels need handlers. Things break, things snap. A blacksmith, perhaps, certainly a saddlemaker and a harness maker, to repair the tack . . .’

  ‘Wouldn’t one man suffice?’

  ‘No, Rupert, a saddlemaker and a harness maker have different skills.’

  ‘Not on the Frontier,’ snorted the American. ‘We could turn our hand to anything out there.’

  ‘Yes, but we’re talking about a proper ancient civilized society, Rupert, not your rough-and-ready wild west of the Americas. No, there would have been both, perhaps more than one of both. There would have been cooks to prepare the food, tent carriers and erectors – all right, I grant you, these could have been the same men. Then these wise men, these kings, would need to be served. Possibly by young maidens. Such normally pampered creatures would have been waited on, hand and foot, back in those times. They would not be used to fending for themselves.

  ‘There would have been some sort of pagan priest with them – Christianity, after all, was but a newlyborn nestling in stable straw at the time – they would need a holy man to see that the travellers observed the correct rituals and properly followed the rules of society. There would have been a scribe to keep a journal of their travels, to mark the names of slaves now close to their home country who escaped in the dead of night, to note punishments handed out to idle servants, hostlers, grooms. Do you see where I’m going, Rupert? The list builds and builds. When you get caravans of this size, carrying gold, frankincense and myrrh, you need to protect it in the dangerous lands through which you have to travel. There would have been an army, Rupert. An army of some considerable size.’

  Rupert Jarrard sighed, impressed in spite of himself. His musings on the nutmeg, on the battles it had caused between powerful nations, on its unique, humble origins, had been interesting enough, but Jack had the edge with this army thing. It was always the army with Jack. It was as if he were trying to justify his choice of career. He was forever trying to make others see th
e importance, the necessity of armies. Only the other day, Jack had spoken at length about the warrior cult, the warrior worship, of most civilized nations, pointing out that the plaques and plates on the interiors of church walls glorified two main professions: the clergy and soldiering. Bishops and generals, rectors and majors, vicars and captains. The clergymen were there because they owned the place. Why were the military there? Jack thought it was because the warrior was universally admired.

  ‘All right, Jack. There was an army. I grant you that. Why, d’you think, Matthew and his crew didn’t mention it?’

  ‘Because it didn’t need mentioning, Rupert. Where you have kings, you have armies. You don’t waste words on the obvious.’

  ‘And you, in your pipe dreams, were riding beneath those desert stars, that one bright star, a trooper in a king’s army.’

  Crossman smiled. ‘I was, Rupert. I was there, consulting my astrolabe, navigating, finding the shortest route over the mountains . . .’

  At that moment, Jack Crossman’s words were completely drowned in a crashing which had the farmhouse juddering and shaking on its meagre foundations. The noise, and the earth movement it caused, made both men turn white with shock. Rupert pulled out his pocketwatch and stared at it for a moment. Four a.m. A barrage had begun. Out there on the lines some 800 allied guns had roared forth their message to the Russians: we are going to pound you. There had never before in history been such a cannonade. The Russians would know, if not by their spies by the very strength of the barrage itself, that an assault on their defences was coming. Their angry reply was not long in coming, from the mouths of the enemy’s cannons.

  When he could, during one of the infrequent lulls, Jarrard asked, ‘Is your regiment going in, Jack?’

  ‘Reserve,’ replied Crossman with a little asperity. ‘We’re being held in reserve.’

  ‘Still, that might mean action.’

  ‘Yes, it might. But we won’t have been the first to go in. It’s the Redan, after all. One of the two keys to the city. I know, the 88th helped to take the Quarries, but that won’t loom large in future discussions on the Crimean campaign, believe me. The attack on a fortification like the Redan will. The Russians think it’s impregnable. No fortress ever is . . .’ The guns crashed and thundered again, covering the tail end of his bitter words.

  Crossman was, as were most of the soldiers and civilians in the Crimea, convinced they were in the last stages of the war. Sebastopol was about to fall. Spies like Crossman had witnessed carts of straw being taken into the doomed city, presumably in readiness to set fire to the houses and boats that the Russians did not want taken. There were the French trenches in front of the Malakoff, full of French soldiers ready to take that other key to Sebastopol’s defences. Just as the British parallels held their own troops, around a third the size of the French army, ready to storm the Redan. The portents were good, the French Caesar and the British Caesar had steeled themselves, and the final act of the war was about to be written, so they thought.

  ‘Will you be with the 88th reserves?’ asked Jarrard, in another relatively quiet period. ‘Or shall you watch from afar?’

  ‘I’m told to be in a high place and watch. Major Lovelace and I will be glued to spyglasses, attempting to note any weak points in the enemy’s defences. My men will be there though. You should hear Wynter whining about it. Peterson, Yorwarth, they’re ready enough. Yusuf Ali will be with his irregulars. Gwilliams will be where he wants to be, of course, being only attached to the British army.’

  At the mention of the other American who graced the life of Jack Crossman, a barber-and-bone-man, clever with a razor in all its various uses including the nefarious ones, Rupert Jarrard scowled. Crossman believed they were jealous of each other, the two Americans, neither necessarily more educated than the other, but definitely from different social backgrounds. Americans were of course few and far between in the Crimea, though there were all kinds of nationalities there amongst the civilians. Jarrard would have enjoyed being unique, as would Gwilliams. It is a failing of men in general that they wish to be regarded as special.

  Crossman noted the frown and said quickly, ‘And you, Rupert? Where shall you be when the final attack takes place tomorrow.’

  ‘Today, Jack. It is already tomorrow.’

  ‘You’re right, of course. But where shall you be?’

  ‘Oh, with the crowds, watching. I shall go for the human story, as well as the battle. I don’t think my readers will really care much who wins. Of course there will be new immigrants – Russian, French and British – who will takes sides, but for the most part they’re dispassionate observers of a foreign war . . .’

  ‘Oh, I think you’re wrong there, Rupert,’ interrupted Crossman, taking a final puff of his long-stemmed chibouque. ‘I think your countrymen will be very interested in the action.’

  A few hours later and Sergeant Crossman was on his high place with his commander, Major Lovelace. The pair were not bosom friends, but they understood one another. The fact that Crossman came from a family of aristocrats helped to surmount certain obvious barriers, the difference in rank being the greatest of these. Both had been to Harrow school, at different periods. Both were army men to the core. They believed that the warrior was necessary for the stability of civilization. One was coldly ruthless in his professional attitude, the other constantly questioning and forming arguments for the distasteful methods he needed to employ in his work. One had chosen his role as spy and saboteur, the other had been thrust into it.

  This work they did, sometimes involving assassination, was both as old as time, yet as fresh as last spring. It was constantly changing. The attitudes towards it in high places varied between utter contempt and complete belief in its necessity and place in a modern army. One cared about this, the other did not. Lovelace was a modern soldier, one who would go to the ends of the earth for information and destroy anyone who got in the way of his mission. Crossman, though he believed himself up to the mark, was simply a frustrated inventor and engineer, who held old-fashioned ideas about a soldier’s honour. Although he was not one of those who still believed a soldier should stand up and be shot in order to waste the enemy’s ammunition, he did not believe the end justified any means. War was changing its face, he could see that, but he wasn’t sure that the new face was better than the old, or that it was an honest one.

  ‘Look at that mob of civilians down there,’ muttered Lovelace, peering through his spyglass in the dull greyness of the early dawn. ‘Ghouls. Vultures. Some of them aren’t happy unless they go home to bed having seen soldiers blasted to pieces, arms and legs flying in different directions, heads taken off shoulders by round shot.’ He swatted at a cloud of flies in front of his face, momentarily distracted. The flies were a menace. Those in the trenches waged constant war on them and considered them as much the enemy as the Russians. ‘I see Mrs Durham amongst the ghouls,’

  ‘My God, sir. Some of the French are going in already.’

  It was Crossman who had spoken. He had been viewing the ground in front of the Malakoff, which the French were due to attack in thirty minutes, to coincide by agreement with the British attack on the Redan. Lovelace swung his own glass round to the scene indicated by the sergeant.

  ‘Hell and damnation!’ he exclaimed. ‘What the devil are the French playing at? Someone’s blundered – again. What is it with these commanders? Can’t they ever get anything right for once?’

  Indeed, it seemed that one of the French commanders, jittery with nervous tension, had mistaken a mortar shell for a signal rocket and had taken his men in ahead of the attack time. These mistakes were becoming more common as the war progressed, leaders being so terrified of criticism and rebuke, fearful of being accused of tardiness or cowardice, they listened to their hearts, not their heads. Thus the worry of things going wrong caused them to go wrong. Here was a prime example of a commander giving rein to his fear-driven instincts rather than obeying his orders.

  ‘Oh – Lord
– save us,’ murmured Lovelace, as his spyglass caught the waves of French washing forwards, to be cut to shreds by the wall of grapeshot which came out to meet them from the Russian guns. Two batteries blazed into the hapless soldiers. Men were left staggering amongst the bodies of their comrades. From where Crossman and Lovelace were standing they looked like puppets with broken strings.

  A second wave went in towards the Malakoff. Some of them miraculously managed to escape being seriously hurt in the storm of metal from the guns. These actually reached the ditch surrounding the Malakoff, but were exposed to fire from the riflemen ranged two deep on the parapet of the fortifications. They began to go down now in ones, twos and threes, instead of dozens and scores. There was no shredding of bodies, no flying limbs, but a simple crumpling or felling of a brave Frenchman.

  And they were brave. So very brave.

  Crossman watched a party of blue-jackets carrying a long, heavy siege ladder. Several of them started out. One by one they dropped away, as they were shot or stepped on a fougasse, until only one man remained. The ladder was of course too heavy for him. Nevertheless he tried desperately to drag it nearer to the walls of the Malakoff through the mud. It hardly went more than a few inches before this last bold fellow was shot and the ladder was left forgotten, as French soldiers ran past it, first one way, and then later – by then a great deal fewer in number – the other. Crossman felt the frustration. He itched to be down there, picking up that ladder, calling for others to help him, so that he could take it forward and scale the walls of the enemy.

  He then took in the view of the ditch before the Malakoff. It was choked with dead and dying men. The scene was appalling from this vantage point. So much worse than actually being in the battle. Down there one saw comrades fall in ones and twos, but the heat of the battle, the yellowy haze that hung over the field, the smoke from the guns, the very real fear, the daze of not quite knowing what was happening around him – all these served to limit a combatant’s vision and awareness. Here, on a cool hilltop, with the clarity of a boy playing soldiers on the floor of his bedroom, Crossman could see what an ugly mess guns and rifles could make of a mass of soft human flesh. It was carnage on a grand scale. It was obscene.