Attack on the Redan

by Garry Douglas Kilworth

  Lovelace agreed, not because he wished to, but because he wanted to end the conversation. The major felt uncomfortable speaking about a superior officer, a general, in the presence of other officers. To change the subject, he asked Hawke, ‘What’s happening at Kars?’

  The question concerned the main fort in Turkish Armenia, which had been besieged by Russian forces. Inside Kars were thousands of trapped Turks, in very bad conditions. It was the situation in the Crimea reversed, with the allied forces suffering malnutrition, disease and constant battering from enemy fire from within their defences.

  ‘Oh, the gunner is holding out.’

  From the way Hawke said it, it sounded as if there were one man inside the fortress town. He was in fact referring to a Colonel Fenwick Williams who had been sent to Kars as Lord Raglan’s liaison officer with Zarif Pasha, the commander of the Turkish forces. Another gunner, Major Teasdale had gone with him. Between them Williams and Teasdale had tried over the past few months to raise morale and improve the town’s defences. An Irish general who was serving in the Ottoman army, General Gunyon, had appraised them of the situation several months previously and the pair had gone in and immediately requisitioned grain and other necessities. They were becoming something of a legend amongst the Crimean officers, some of whom would have changed places with Williams or Teasdale in a second, simply for the fact of their celebrity status.

  Not only was this mirror image of the Crimean war going on at Kars, close to the Turkish border with Russia, but the British navy had been busy on various waterways too. In the Pacific there were two British squadrons at work, one under Admiral Stirling, the other under Admiral Bruce. They had harried Russian shipping in their region, just as Admiral Dundas’s fleet was blockading ports in the Baltic. The effort to end the war was being made on more fronts than one, but soldiers in the field are concerned with their task only. There was not really any great interest in men like Lovelace and Hawke for the good work the navy was doing. Soldiers like them were concerned only with the fall of Sebastopol, and they wanted their contribution to that fall to be seen and appreciated.

  ‘Good, good,’ replied Lovelace, listlessly. ‘If you’ll excuse me, sir, I’ll be getting back. I want to go into Sebastopol tonight. I’m sure the Russians are cooking something up. It’s in the wind. I need to go in and have a look for myself.’

  Hawke raised an eyebrow. ‘A retaliation attack on our trenches?’

  ‘I don’t know. Something. I must go in and see what I can discover.’

  ‘Take the lieutenant with you. He still needs field work.’

  Hawke was referring to Lieutenant Pirce-Smith, an ex-Guards officer who had transferred to a less elite regiment to escape underhand treatment by officers from aristocratic families. Despite his grand double-barrelled name, Pirce-Smith was from a humble background, which did not fit well with the Guards.

  ‘All right. I know he prefers to come with me, rather than with Sergeant Crossman, who I’m told bullies him.’

  Hawke laughed. ‘Fancy Jack. Yes, I’ll wager he does.’

  Lovelace downed his drink and then, after a little thought, said to the colonel, ‘Sir, I wonder – I would like to do something for the sergeant. Some sort of recognition. What do you think?’

  The colonel’s eyebrows went up. ‘What were you thinking of?’

  ‘Oh, you know – something. Something fairly grand.’

  ‘Ah. Yes. Well, I’ll see what I can do. I’m not without influence, these days. Now that Lord Raglan has gone, perhaps it’ll increase. So far as I am aware, Simpson does not regard our work as the skulking of scoundrels, as our former commander did. You never know, he might approve.’

  ‘Good. Thank you, sir.’

  Lovelace knew where he would find Pirce-Smith.

  The lieutenant was fond of shooting, it being the sport of gentlemen. Pirce-Smith went out of his way to do anything and everything like a member of the gentility, his father having been the resident vicar of a chapel attached to a large wealthy country estate of a nobleman. Pirce-Smith had been raised with the son of the house, Stanhope Winslow, who had also joined the Guards. Stanhope had not been one of Pirce-Smith’s tormentors, but had done nothing to discourage his brother officers. The pair had parted on cool terms. A few days later Lieutenant Winslow had been killed at Inkerman, his legs shot away from him. He had bled to death over the course of several hours, unable to reach help. Pirce-Smith now wished they had parted on better terms with one another. There is nothing a man can say to his friend once that friend is dead.

  Although he would not admit it to himself, one of the reasons Pirce-Smith disliked Sergeant Crossman so much was because the sergeant was from the kind of family Pirce-Smith envied – would have given his eye teeth to be part of – yet Crossman had rejected it all. Here were two men desperate to cast off their fathers: one because his father – though loyal and true to wife, friends and employers – was not genteel; the other because his father was an aristocratic tyrant who made every effort to own people as well as property. They would have swopped places in an instant, these two young men, and walked away with sunny thoughts in their heads. Neither knew his place in Victorian society, both preferring another station.

  Lovelace went into some foothills, at the entrance to which was a graveyard. He passed, on the way, a very young and desultory looking private by a line of corpses still left for burial a week after the attack on the Redan. The cadavers were bloated, lying as they were in the sun, and the apathetic private was walking along the row piercing their stomachs with a bayonet to let out the gases. Lovelace, not ordinarily one for niceties, felt a great distaste for this treatment of the dead.

  ‘Is that absolutely necessary, soldier?’ he asked.

  The private stopped, blinked, and then said, ‘S’orders, sir. Them mioght burst on un, an’ then where’s we be?’

  ‘I’m sure the corpses won’t explode.’

  ‘Oi’m just doin’ the orders, sir. One hofficer tellt me.’

  ‘All right.’

  The bayonet went in again with a phut sound and the ballooned belly of a soldier deflated visibly. Lovelace winced. If he had a son lying there he would have been utterly appalled. But things went on behind the backs of civilians which would have horrified them. He remembered the corpses in Varna harbour. The dozens, hundreds, of soldiers who had died of disease on the way to the Crimea. They had been weighted and cast into the sea to dispose of them quickly, but the gory bodies rose to float around, bumping against the boats. Ghastly business. He remembered the ships full of wounded men, crossing the Black Sea from the Crimea to Scutari Hospital in Constantinople. They had left without doctors or surgeons on board, and with dying men crying for water. The hospital itself was awash with rats and fleas. In the beginning there had been no bedding for the patients, no proper sanitation, no one to change bandages which remained in place for months. He recalled the nights after the battles, when the sorely wounded still lay out there on the field, screaming for attention, yet no one able to go to them, bring them in, give them any kind of nursing or comfort.

  This is how we treat our dead, he thought. Men of courage, who had died for their country, their regiment. Men who had left their families in an Irish village, a Welsh town, a Scottish city, an English hamlet, and who had fetched up on this foreign shore. Many had died slowly. Many had died swiftly. Few had gone out intact. Those who died of the cholera, or dysentery, or some lung disease, had left with all their body parts. Others had been scattered over wide areas. Some had simply ceased to be.

  Lovelace wondered if those who sat in parliament had any idea what real war was like these days. It was no longer a game. It was a serious business, too serious to be in the hands of amateurs. Most of the senior officers had no idea what they were doing. Many of them were there because they came from the nobility or were wealthy. The best general in the army was not leading it, because the best general in the army was probably a cobbler’s son, or a farrier’s boy, and therefo
re a private or NCO.

  Not that families of breeding did not throw up the odd brilliant soldier: of course they did. Lovelace himself was proof of that. Natural soldiers came from every walk of life. Just as a duke could be a wonderful carpenter and a goose girl could run a country estate. There was natural talent in any human being, from whatever station in life. But the system did not allow for it, could not use these skills to their best advantage. In the beginning, when British warriors were rough tribesmen, the biggest and the toughest and the cleverest man rose to become chief. But then, as always, dynasties were formed, oligarchies carved themselves a niche, and hereditary rights became more important than natural skills.

  Some men in the government, Lovelace supposed, must have seen war. Those who were ex-soldiers and sailors. Yet still wars continued to be bungled in a most appalling way. Lovelace hated inefficiency, loved expediency. He was an open admirer of Machiavelli. A woman he had once known had compared him to a well-made sword. ‘Clean, bright and deadly,’ she had said. Lovelace did not mind that. He was an Englishman and the English made superlative blades. He had studied English sword-making and knew it to be a superior craft, even an art, in his own country. Anglo-Saxon sword-makers had been forging peerless blades long before the Spaniards of Toledo or even the now renowned Japanese.

  If he were a sword he would use his cutting edge to the best advantage. His skills were not best used at the front of the battle, but working behind the lines. Intrigue, sabotage, information gathering, assassination, forming secret armies within the enemy army. If he could turn enemy soldiers against their officers, that was for the better. If he could remove a great general with a pistol shot from the shadows, so be it. His skills were not universally admired, he knew, by gentlemen of his own class. Dash, verve, blind courage, élan. These were beloved of his kind. Talents that lay open to observation in the bright light of day. His were closed, carried out in darkness, secretive, cryptic. His brilliance had to be shaded in polite company. But he knew they were necessary tools in modern warfare and he was determined to use them to their full.

  ‘Lieutenant!’ he called now, on climbing a slope and seeing Pirce-Smith, wearing tweeds and shooting boots, a long old-fashioned sporting gun under his right arm, walking along like some earl out looking for his Sunday lunch. ‘Have you bagged anything?’

  Pirce-Smith looked up and saw his superior officer. His eyes gleamed with great pleasure. The lieutenant was one of the faithful, one of the followers of the creed of Lovelace, and he admired the major above all creatures on the earth. Of course, as with Crossman, Lovelace did not let Pirce-Smith see all his facets, for the young man would have melted away in horror, and anyway, that was the major’s stock in trade, keeping secrets, especially about himself. No man knew him well. No man knew the whole Lovelace. No man ever would.

  Pirce-Smith held up a brace of hares. ‘Dinner,’ he said.

  ‘Well done. Let me see that piece, will you?’ Lovelace reached out for the sporting weapon, but Pirce-Smith smiled and kept it tucked beneath his arm.

  ‘No, no, sir. I’m mindful of the rule you have taught me. Never let yourself be disarmed, even by someone posing as a friend. You’re testing me, I’m sure.’

  Lovelace’s face darkened. ‘Don’t be a damn fool, lieutenant. I’m a sportsman too. I merely want to see who made it . . .’

  Pirce-Smith was upset. He passed the weapon to the major.

  ‘Sorry, sir, I had thought . . .’

  Lovelace smiled now and shook his head sadly, and tutted, while turning the firelock over in his hands. ‘Lieutenant, you must learn not to take notice of sudden mood changes in bullying majors. This is your property, you should have insisted and held on to it. How am I ever going to teach you? One day someone is going to wander up here, take this out of your hands, and blow your head off. Sergeant Crossman would never have allowed me to take the only weapon in his possession. You are in the business now and are fair game for any assassin.’

  Pirce-Smith was now thoroughly miserable. ‘Failed again, eh, sir?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. But never mind, you will learn, eventually – if you’re not dead by then.’

  Pirce-Smith reached into his pocket and pulled out a pistol.

  ‘Ah.’ The major laughed. ‘You are learning, just a little, but I would have beaten you to the cock, you know.’

  ‘The gun is not loaded, sir. The pistol is.’

  Lovelace nodded again, this time thoughtfully. ‘Good. But this monster – how do you hit anything with it?’ He looked down the barrel. ‘It’s archaic.’ There was no rust on the hunting weapon, but it was black with age, the stock was worn almost to a stub, the barrel was slightly loose and the hammer was pitted, corroded.

  ‘It was my grandfather’s. We’re not a wealthy family, sir. I’m very fond of it.’

  ‘I’m sure you are, but wouldn’t you like my matching Lefauchaux shotguns? Pinfire. The very latest. Well, not the very latest, because my Purdeys have arrived and they’re actually just a little superior to the Lefauchaux.’

  Pirce-Smith’s eyes widened in disbelief.

  ‘You’re offering to sell me your shotguns? But sir – I am most grateful, most grateful indeed that you should offer them to me first – if I am the first you have asked – but I’m afraid I just haven’t the wherewithal. As I said, my father is not a wealthy man and I have no money of my own.’

  ‘They’re a gift, lieutenant. Say no more about it.’

  The eyes widened even further.

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t . . .’

  ‘Of course you damn well could. Now stop looking at me like a newly-born calf at its mother. The guns are yours. You’ll make good use of them, I’m sure. Shooting is a passion with you, isn’t it? I enjoy it too, but that’s mostly because I like playing with precision-made instruments of death, not because I delight in potting hares. It’s the machine that excites me, the action, the noise and the destruction it creates. Blue gunmetal. The smell of expensive gunpowder. Now you sir, are the true hunter amongst us. I am the popinjay who likes the show of the thing.’

  ‘Well, I shall accept your gift, sir,’ said Pirce-Smith, stiffly, clearly overwhelmed by this show of generosity, ‘but you must allow me to give you something in return. I’m not sure what.’

  ‘Oh, a pleasing bottle of Chardonnay will suffice, man. I’m always up for that. Now, we have work to do. Peterson has gone missing in a raid. There’s a chance she’s alive. We need to slip into Sebastopol and ask a few questions.’

  ‘Right, yes. Lance-Corporal Peterson, you say?’ Pirce-Smith looked doubtful.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking, but don’t say it, or you’ll spoil a flowering relationship, lieutenant. Peterson is one of our own. We look after our own.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course.’

  The two officers returned from their mission later and went to see Crossman together, in his room above the hovel.

  ‘Bad news, sergeant,’ said Lovelace.

  ‘She’s dead,’ said Crossman flatly.

  ‘No, she’s not dead. She’s being held. In a farmhouse, north of here.’

  Crossman blinked. ‘Not in Sebastopol? But why . . . ?’

  ‘Tell him, lieutenant.’

  Pirce-Smith explained, ‘We came by the information too easily, sergeant. It’s clear they wanted us to know. Our informants said that their informants . . .’

  ‘You know we keep several buffers between us and the actual source,’ interrupted Lovelace, ‘or we wouldn’t last a day.’

  ‘Yes, of course, sir. What you’re saying is that Peterson is being used as bait, to draw someone?’

  ‘You, we believe,’ replied Pirce-Smith. ‘She’s been given to the Cossacks. As I say, they have her at this vineyard to the north. It’s our belief that they want you to go and try to rescue her. All the indications point in that direction.’

  ‘The bloody Cossacks,’ muttered Crossman.

  The sergeant had had several run-ins with Cossacks and so
far had come off best. They had their spies amongst the many civilians in the British and French camps, just as Lovelace’s spies walked the streets of Sebastopol. They knew he was responsible for several deaths, off the battlefield, amongst their numbers. There was an incident at a French-owned farmhouse, where Crossman’s peloton had killed a few Cossacks. And they had crossed swords several times in the Fediuokine Hills. He had subsequently foiled an attempt on his life, killing his would-be Cossack assassins. They hated him for it. There was a price on his head and the blue warriors, those famous horsemen of the steppes, were determined to even the score somehow.

  ‘Now,’ said Lovelace, as Crossman was absorbing this piece of news, ‘clearly we can’t leave her there. I shall get together some people – Captain Goodlake will help – and we’ll go and get her.’

  ‘They’ll kill her as soon as they know I’m not coming,’ Crossman said. ‘She won’t be worth anything to them then. You’ll find the farmhouse empty.’

  ‘That may happen, of course.’

  Wynter and the other soldiers had been listening intently from their own room and Wynter shouted up, ‘Poor old Peterson. Well, that’s war for you, an’t it?’

  The officers and sergeant knew that Wynter was expressing his opinion on the subject. He did not want to walk into a trap, even if he knew it was a trap. Crossman wondered whether the others felt like that too. Ali would go anywhere with him, but Yorwarth and Gwilliams? Perhaps they were of the same opinion as Wynter. Let waiting dogs wait?

  ‘I have to go, major, you know that.’

  Crossman’s voice was quiet but insistent. Pirce-Smith nodded. Lovelace followed suit. ‘All right, sergeant.’

  ‘All right what?’ cried Wynter, who had crept up the stairs and was now listening outside the doorway. ‘I an’t going.’

  ‘You’ll do as you’re told,’ snapped Lovelace, angrily. ‘Unless you want a flogging, corporal.’

  ‘That’s right, that’s just it, an’t it?’ whined Wynter. ‘Give us a choice, eh? Flogging or death.’ His keen eyes pierced through the gloom and he could now see Major Lovelace’s expression. He suddenly remembered he wasn’t speaking to his sergeant, who was sometimes lenient, occasionally allowing a certain amount of insubordination in order to give Wynter an escape valve for his frustrations. The major did not require anything from Wynter. His life would never be dependent on the soldier’s loyalty. The lance-corporal realized instantly he had overstepped the mark and immediately changed his tone. ‘Sorry, sir. Din’t mean nothin’ by it. I’ll go, o’ course. I an’t sure whether the other two . . .’