Attack on the Redan

by Garry Douglas Kilworth

  Crossman was not concerned about the invasion of his privacy. ‘My father does not enjoy having a common soldier for a son.’

  ‘Ah.’ Bertie Durham stared at Crossman’s brick-red uniform as if noticing it for the first time. ‘Can understand that. Wouldn’t really like a son of mine amongst the ranks. Not now I’ve got out of ’em myself. But,’ he added generously, ‘I shouldn’t stop speaking to him, if circumstances forced the issue. A father should speak to his son. A son should honour his father. Those have always been my sentiments. I expect you have yours, but they’re mine.’

  Lavinia Durham placed an ivory hand on her husband’s sleeve to indicate that she approved of this little speech.

  A long vacuum followed, which was finally broken by Rupert Jarrard. He said, ‘I had occasion to shoot my own father once, when he failed to greet me at the breakfast table.’

  They all stared at him, shocked and appalled by what went on in ex-colonies, now that they were governed by the sons of immigrants.

  Jarrard grinned. ‘Not really, but I felt the silence had gone on too long and I couldn’t think of anything interesting by way of conversation.’ He suddenly turned accusatory. ‘Say! You believed me, too – didn’t you? You actually believed I could shoot my own pa over a trivial matter like that. We’re not that wild over there, you know.’

  ‘Of course we didn’t, Rupert,’ said Crossman. ‘You just caught us unawares.’

  Jarrard was not mollified. He excused himself to the ladies and then went outside to smoke a cigar. Crossman joined him a few minutes later, with chibouque in hand. Together they puffed away. Once they were mellow with tobacco, Jarrard said, ‘I hear it’s going to be a rough one, this coming battle – rougher than usual.’

  ‘So I’m told.’

  Jarrard stuck out a hand. ‘Good luck, old fellah.’

  ‘Thank you, Rupert.’

  ‘And if you don’t come back, you can be sure I’ll write a long and interesting obituary on the life and times of Fancy Jack Crossman. I’ll have half America mourning your passing.’

  ‘That’s very kind.’

  ‘Think nothing of it.’

  A Russian man-of-war roared into a great pillar of flame, thus lighting up the small hours of the night. It had been hit by French guns and continued to burn beautifully as troops gathered in the early dawn to march down to the trenches. One soldier near Crossman likened it to the candle of God, saying it was a good omen for the coming battle.

  Crossman thought the man an optimistic fool.

  ‘Your objective,’ said the captain who addressed Crossman’s company, ‘is the salient angle of the Redan.’

  Crossman stared across the divide, unable to see the fortification which the officer was indicating, but able to picture it in his mind. It was a very narrow objective – perhaps too narrow – and he knew this might indeed add to the difficulty of taking it. The Russians would have a happy time of it, firing their canister and grapeshot down such a lean avenue. Men would go down like ripe wheat under a shotgun blast. He heard a lieutenant mutter ominously, ‘This looks like another eighteenth of June.’

  It was the Light Division, of which Crossman’s 88th Connaught Rangers were a part, who were to lead the assault on the Redan. To those veterans who had been in the Crimea since the first landing – perhaps a tenth of the whole division – it seemed a cruel choice. They had been bled of their seasoned troops by dint of defending the batteries and guarding the approaches to the Redan, for many a long weary day. For the most part, those men around Crossman, gathering in the 4th parallel on the morning of 8th September 1855, were mere boys. They were as green as the grass on the uplands and in their inexperience they felt they had to show nothing but bravado concerning the coming battle, whereas it was the veterans who quaked. They knew, from the numbers around them, that they were going in with a fraction of the force the French were using against the Malakoff. They knew that the slaughter of the last assault in June was going to be duplicated on this day. It seemed to them, and they could not understand the mindset of their commander-in-chief, that they were merely going to repeat the earlier mistake which had led to the carnage of their regiments.

  ‘If we could go in with full regiments,’ said one veteran, ‘instead of these driblets that are left, we might stand a chance.’

  A freshly arrived soldier answered cheerily, ‘If ifs and ands were pots and pans, there’d be no need for tinkers.’

  Crossman knew that this boy would most likely be a casualty before the evening came and this thought grieved him almost more than the death of Yorwarth. It grieved him because it could be prevented. Why had they chosen the Light Division to go in first? The division was worn out and weary from sickness, lack of sleep, culled numbers and sheer hard war-work. The Light Division should have been in reserve, not at the forefront of the battle. It was their right as battered troops from the last identical assault, to go to reserve. Yet here they were, ready to swarm out over that killing ground, to attempt in like fashion what had already failed.

  Even now, while still in the trenches, one or two were wounded, coming under fire from the Redan. The British batteries had been pounding the Redan, hour after hour, for several days now. A constant roar filled the air around the trenches, with the Russians replying in kind. An artillery man had told Crossman the previous evening that he believed over 100,000 shells and round shot had been sent winging towards the enemy.

  ‘If each missile hit just one man,’ the corporal had said, ‘there would be no one left over there when the attack came.’

  But of course it was not like that. In fact Crossman knew from experience that when the infantry attack came it would seem as if Russian numbers had hardly been affected. What happened to all that iron was beyond him, for it was enough to make a small mountain when gathered together. The French had recently begun firing their cannon in unison: up to 250 guns opening up at one instant. The reports were that this rain of heavy metal was creating havoc amongst the Russians. According to observers the enemy were suffering terrible losses. Yet Crossman would wager when it came to sending in the infantry there would be an army to meet them.

  In the period before noon the Light and 2nd Divisions were given their tasks. There was to be a covering party of 200, a ladder party of 350, a storming party of 1,000, and 1,500 supporting troops. Crossman was in the supporting party. During the morning, fellow soldiers who knew him gave him nods, for though he had been an infantry sergeant, he had never been one of those who treated privates badly. He heard the name ‘Fancy Jack’ whispered a few times, usually from veterans to newly arrived troops, and they looked his way with wide eyes.

  The wind was blowing straight from the north, raising the dust and driving into the faces of the 88th as they moved from one parallel to the next. The Russian guns fired grapeshot at the trenches, which zinged and whined from stone and metal, sometimes clattering amongst the hurrying soldiers. It fell not as the gentle rain from heaven, but came as hard hot iron from hell. They had a wicked time of it, moving along the shallow saps, some of them casualties before the charge had even begun.

  At one point in their travels forward to the Quarries, they came upon a limping bewildered civilian, who was knocked roughly aside by a colour-sergeant. What this lame fool was doing out there on the battlefield was a matter for conjecture, for he simply allowed himself to be buffeted and pushed out of the way without a murmur. When Crossman looked back, astonished by the civilian’s presence, he saw the man sitting on the ground with his trouser leg rolled up, inspecting his knee.

  At noon the guns suddenly grew quieter and the high note of a French bugle replaced their thunder. At that moment Zouaves sprang out of the French trenches like a swarm of cats and began running towards the Malakoff. The French sappers took with them a secret weapon: a movable bridge, which they used to span the ditch in front of the Malakoff. Over this bridge they went in great numbers: far more than were being used by the British to attack the Redan. It seemed that despi
te the preliminary barrages over the last few days the Russians were not expecting an attack at such a time in the day. Attacks normally took place just after dawn, to get the most light out of the day, rather than at noon. The French soldiers were in the Malakoff before its commander knew what was happening.

  A few moments later the French tricolour was hoisted above the ramparts. From that point on, hard fighting took place, as the Russians sought to drive the French back from whence they had come. An enemy Forlorn Hope was thrown at General Pélissier’s brave men, but was repulsed by the French soldiers who poured across the divide between their trenches and the Malakoff. Before long, French artillery was in place and pounding the Russian attackers with great thumps.

  The raising of the tricolour found the British troops still waiting on their banquette, ready and eager to go, but unable to move without a signal from their commander. Crossman’s heart was in his throat. Perhaps it would be all right? The French seemed to have taken the Malakoff with ease. Perhaps the fight had gone out of the enemy and this would be a victory for the British too. These were his hopes, as he waited impatiently for the call to charge. He had forgotten the fact that the British troops were so few in number, compared with the French, and that they had a more difficult fortification to scale.

  Suddenly Crossman heard the call, ‘Forward men! Come on! Come on!’ Only some of the men moved at first, confused a little by the ragged response of their officers. There was no concerted attack, more a motley rush by the youngsters, and a more measured unhurried walk by the veterans. Crossman saw one or two old hands pause to light their pipes, leaning on their muskets as they did so. Only then they continued with narrowed eyes towards the Redan, puffing away on harsh tobacco.

  When Crossman left the banquette and walked through the smoke of war towards the salient, he was cold and dead inside. He felt neither fear nor exultation. There were black blizzards of grapeshot sweeping towards him in hot waves. As they passed over and around him, leaving him unscathed, he saw others fall. Some were hit by a single piece and went down whole. Others were struck by a tight swarm, their bodies torn to shreds. A soldier to the left of him had his head taken off by a tight cloud of canister. His skull simply exploded into thousands of fragments. The corpse took another step forward, then fell sideways amongst the other dead and wounded. Crossman stepped around it, as if in some evil dream. A young ensign took a round shot in the stomach and was propelled, bent double, back a hundred yards, to land in a crumpled heap of flesh in the trench from which he had sprung just a few moments earlier.

  The pungent smell of gunpowder bit into Crossman’s nostrils, informing him that he was still alive. He found that hard to believe, watching men go down like skittles in an alley, some with musket balls, some with the cascading showers of exploded shell, some with canister and grape. How could the soldiers survive such squalls of metal, which swept across the battlefield, taking men’s legs from under them, tearing off their arms, thwacking into chests protected by only a thin layer of cloth? Yet survive he did and with him several others. How strange it was to look around through the yellow gloom of gunsmoke, in the deafening thunder of rifle and gun, to see the ground littered with friends and strangers, yet still be standing.

  He saw Wynter go past him, walking the other way, carrying an officer on his wiry shoulders. Wynter did not see him. Wynter’s eyes were staring a thousand yards in front of him. The officer was still alive, though one of his legs was missing, the stump bleeding profusely down Wynter’s back.

  Crossman looked ahead again, saw the 88th rallying at the base of the salient, where the abattis had been shattered by allied guns. Looking up he could see the walls, bristling with muskets, some pointing down at him. Grey figures were up there, hordes of them, firing muskets, throwing down rocks. Crossman raised his rifle and fired. The enemy were also falling like lone birds from the ramparts of the Russian defences above him. They came down as broken pigeons, their coats fluttering, their arms loose. Some screamed on the descent. Others were silent. They fell into the ditch below, in amongst the bodies of the redcoats, to be pierced by the bayonets of dead or wounded men whose weapons were jammed upright. It was a pit of spikes in there, a wild animal trap spearing careless men.

  As the ladders went up, and Crossman began to climb, he told himself, I must not fall. Yet he did fall, when a rock struck his shoulder and dislodged him. He plummeted into that mass of bodies and spikes. His landing was soft and he fell between the bayonets. Still feeling numb inside, he automatically crawled out of the corpses, got to his feet, and started to climb the ladder again. It was pushed sideways from the wall at the top with a forked pole. This time the ladder fell on top of him and crushed his left hand. He sat up and held it out in front of him. It was floppy and useless below the elbow. There was a pain now, but it was distant, almost as if it belonged to someone a long way away. Reaching inside his coat he took out his private weapon, his revolver, and seeing a Russian leaning over the ramparts above, shot him dead.

  Another ladder went up and he shinned up it quickly, hooking his good arm in the rungs. Men were ahead of him, others came after. He found himself at the top and like his comrades who had gone before, jumped in amongst the Russians. He fired once, twice, a third time, into the mass of bodies, hearing only a single groan from a man whose nose was almost touching his, as the fellow’s hands flew to the wound in his stomach. In the mass of heaving bodies, a burly Russian soldier, weaponless it seemed, grasped him by the shoulders and heaved him backwards.

  Crossman slid headfirst down the ladder he had climbed, knocking men off on his way. His foot caught in the rungs halfway down and he dangled there. He started to haul himself up when a bullet pierced a hole through his cheek, tearing his lip on its way out of his open mouth. His leg suddenly gave way and he slid the rest of the journey to the bottom of the ladder, where a soldier stood yelling at him to, ‘Get out of the way! You are blocking our climb!’ Then the ladder was pushed off again, stranding those who had made it on to the ramparts, and crashed down upon the man who had been berating him, but this time missing Crossman.

  Crossman blew a bloodspit-bubble and groggily got to his feet.

  ‘Come on! Come on!’ shouted a fresh-faced lieutenant, having reached Crossman’s shoulder in another wave of attackers. The young man had his cap on the point of his sword, holding it high to encourage his company. Most of the soldiers in this company were mere boys, barely trained, and they faltered and fell back on being blasted from above by massed musket fire. The lieutenant cried to them, to remember their duty, and know who they were, but his words were cut short when a ball struck him in the temple and he dropped where he stood. His company scattered, looking for cover that was not there, using the bodies of their fallen comrades to attempt to block that withering fire from the sky.

  Crossman had the horrible feeling that the day was already lost. He knew that they were charging the enemy with raw recruits, some of them barely able to use their rifles. He suspected there would be no Union flag flying from the Redan, as there was a tricolour on the Malakoff. Yet feverish hope still burned within him.

  He picked up the lieutenant’s sword and waved it in the air.

  ‘Come on, men!’ he cried, hoarsely. ‘We can still take it!’

  He turned to look at the salient, to see that only three of the original six or so ladders were still in place. There should have been twenty or more. Several of the ladders had been left behind in the trenches, an oversight for which someone would pay later. Others had been abandoned halfway somewhere along that deadly 250 yards to the Russian defences.

  ‘Up, up!’ he shrieked. ‘Out of your holes, rabbits.’

  A few dribs and drabs of the frightened young men darted forward from shell holes, but when several of these fell under the savage onslaught of musketry from above, the others stayed where they were, hunched down behind any sort of barrier they could find. They seemed paralysed by the noise and carnage around them. There was no fire in them
, as there had been in those at the Alma and Inkerman. In his heart he could not blame them. Wicked iron was everywhere: a dust-storm of death. Looking around him, Crossman could see no senior officers. They seemed to have all gone down in the first wave. Near to him was the headless body of a major. Further over, in a tangled mass of dead men, the corpse of a colonel.

  Crossman gave up on the young soldiers and limped over to where a Royal Engineer was trying to construct a ramp over the ditch. He stood by him, assisting him, waving encouragingly at those who dared to come to cross the ditch. His mouth kept filling with blood which he regularly spat out. The crushed hand was giving him great pain. But his head was clear for the first time during the battle. He felt as if were there, really there, and not in some yellow-hazed dream. Yet it was as if the place on which he was standing was gradually sinking down into hell. The devil and his demons were dragging them into a morass of blood and fire.

  Then he saw something which made him smile. Away on the right flank, a young officer, not much more than a boy, was coolly lighting a cigar. The youth was leading by example. Once his cigar was lit, the young officer urged his men on, pointing to the parapet, telling them it was but a step, no further. A great rock from above thumped into the mire at Crossman’s feet, upending him with the force of the impact on the ground. When he regained his feet, another officer began prodding him towards the ladder. The sword was gone, so was his revolver. Still he did as he was expected to do, and began to climb again, hooking his left arm through the rungs, and using his good hand to heave himself aloft. The officer remained below, yelling, ‘I want soldiers in formation and under obedience!’

  For the second time Crossman actually stood on the ramparts of the Redan. But the whole works was jammed with men, mostly Russians. The enemy were heaving, surging forward in great numbers from the open rear of the fortification. A captain was trying to rally the British, to force back the oncoming mass. There were too many. There were far too many. They squeezed the British soldiers up against the stonework. A sergeant was crying, ‘Where is that damned ammunition? We are out of it here! We have none to return fire!’ Hand grenades flew through the air. A moan of defeat went through the British soldiery and some turned and jumped, down into the ditch below. Those lucky enough to land softly struggled out and ran. Others fell on broken ladders or bayonets, and suffered for it. Crossman was knocked over in the retreat and fell the whole way, to knock his head on the ground below. He lost consciousness.