Attack on the Redan

by Garry Douglas Kilworth

  When he came to, the battle was in its last throes. A bayonet pinned his left side to the ground. He tried to pull the blade out but had to give up, being too weak from loss of blood. Around him was a slumped mass of wounded or dead soldiers. Grapeshot still swept in swathes across the area from the Redan to the trenches. Retreating men were spinning over like hares caught by shotgun fire. It was ignominy. Crossman knew the day was lost and he groaned in sorrow, seeking refuge in unconsciousness again.

  Some time later, during the dark hours, the bayonet was removed from his side. He felt himself lifted up and carried. He remained in a state of stupor, until the point where there was a grating, snarling pain that ripped through his body. It was too much to bear and he screamed with the horror of it. The pain stopped but he still lashed out at his attacker. A rag doused in chloroform was quickly placed over his nose and he swooned yet again. This time when he woke he had a raging headache. Too weak to move even a limb, he simply lay there, waiting for death to envelope him. At that moment he was careless of life: it mattered very little to him whether he stayed in this world, or let go and entered the next.

  He continued in this state for several days, neither fully alive, yet not quite dead. A young man fed him with soup from time to time, forcing it between his lips with a wooden spoon. He drank it down in a desultory fashion, only vaguely aware that the person feeding him was speaking a foreign language. As he grew stronger and his mind began to clear, he realized he was answering. The language was French. Somehow he had ended up in the French camp. They had found him, with one of their parties out looking for wounded, and had taken him back to their own lines.

  A period of high fever and anxiety followed. A bout of pneumonia almost carried him off. But he was well cared for and fought his way back, the will to live growing stronger in him every day. Once he poked his tongue through the hole in his cheek. For this he was chastised by a visiting surgeon, who spoke to him sternly. He promised the man that he would not do it again, yet like a child he did at the first opportunity. It held an irresistible fascination for him, that hole in his cheek.

  ‘Am I to live?’ he asked the young boy, who was not much more than fifteen years of age. ‘Will I heal?’

  ‘The surgeon says so.’

  He was a round-faced youth with large muddy-brown eyes. A shock of dark hair sprouted from his head. His French dialect told Crossman he was from the south, probably Marseilles. He was eager to please and was forever hovering around Crossman’s bed.

  ‘What are my injuries?’

  ‘You have a flesh wound in the side. Your cheek was shot through, but that is healing well. And of course, there is the arm, but there is no gangrene. You should be grateful for that. I’m the one who cauterized it,’ said the boy, proudly. ‘My name is Pierre. I am to be a surgeon when I go home.’

  ‘My ankle hurts,’ said Crossman, aware that he sounded ungrateful for the attention he had received.

  The boy lifted the blanket at the bottom and looked, saying, ‘It is no longer swollen, sir. It was quite bad, a blue colour, but the swelling has gone down now.’

  Alarm suddenly shivered through Crossman as the full implication of the boy’s previous speech entered his reasoning.

  ‘What’s the matter with my arm?’

  Pity showed in the boy’s eyes and Crossman lifted his right arm up to stare at it.

  ‘The other one,’ said Pierre.

  He raised the left. It ended in a stump about halfway between the elbow and where the hand should be. He could not believe it. Using his right hand he wafted the air around the end of the stump, for he could feel his left hand. It was there, aching where it had been crushed. Yet, it was not there to view. A lump entered his throat as the realization flooded his brain. His hand had been amputated, up beyond the wrist. He was crippled.

  ‘Oh my God,’ he murmured, appalled. ‘Oh my dear God.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Pierre, looking unhappy. ‘You can do many things still.’

  ‘Can I, by Jesus?’ snapped Crossman, suddenly in a great fury. ‘Who gave you permission to cut off my hand? Where the hell is the surgeon? Bring me the bastard who did this . . .’ He tried to raise himself from the straw pillow, but flopped back down again. Now he started sobbing, the shock rippling through him. ‘Chloroform. I should have known. I should have stayed awake. Where have they put my hand, boy?’ He started to look around him, seeking his severed appendage.

  Pierre hurried away. Crossman looked around him, looking for sympathy, but the beds all down the long hut were full of men far worse off than he. There were those without legs, those without any arms whatsoever. Some had festering wounds of the trunk, the head, the arms, the legs. Others had bandages around their eyes and were temporarily or permanently blind. By the time Pierre returned with a surgeon, he was in remorse for his harsh words, although still feeling very sorry for himself at that moment. A talk with the doctor restored his dignity. By the time the surgeon left him, Crossman was bitter but accepting of his condition.

  ‘I could be dead, I suppose,’ he said to himself, strangely enough in French, presumably because that was all he had heard for some time now, ‘but at least I am alive.’

  ‘That’s what I’ve been telling you,’ cried Pierre. ‘At least you are alive! Others have not been so lucky. And the Russians have gone, sir. The battles are over. There are no grey uniforms in the streets of Sebastopol.’

  He cried, ‘Sebastopol is empty?’

  ‘There are some people there, but no soldiers.’

  Another man then came to see him. A corporal clerk by his fussy looks and his quill and paper. He brought with him a stool on which he sat by Crossman’s bed.

  ‘Now that you are awake, Englishman,’ said the newcomer, ‘I must take your name and your regiment, so that we can report who you are to your people.’

  ‘Serg— Private Jack Crossman, 88th Foot,’ he said to the Frenchman. ‘But I should like to get word to a Major Lovelace, of the Rifle Brigade.’

  ‘Ah, yes – but you speak very good French? Have you a relative maybe, living in our country?’

  ‘No – I was taught it at school.’

  The corporal looked sceptical, knowing that a private in the British army was likely to be a peasant without access to a good education. He said nothing on the matter, however, but took down the meagre details. After asking a few more questions he left Crossman in the care of Pierre, who also had others to attend to in the hut. For the next few hours Crossman indulged in some deep thinking, trying to see beyond the sorrow of his lost hand, to a point beyond, where practical matters took precedence over feelings.

  Crossman did not know why he asked to see Lovelace and not Pirce-Smith or even Jane. He wanted a person he knew reasonably well, yet not someone close enough to make for an emotional meeting. There was a need for a rational impartial discussion, without any melodrama. Not that Jane would have had hysterics – she was not the kind of female to indulge in such carnivals – but her eyes would show her feelings. Crossman needed someone who was cold and indifferent to suffering. That was Lovelace. Whether a major might feel it was beneath him to attend a private soldier’s sick bed was another matter. Crossman thought he might come, though, considering their history. But who could tell, with field officers?

  Lovelace duly arrived, six hours later.

  ‘Hello, old chap, been in the wars?’ he said, jovially.

  Crossman gave the major a fierce look, but Lovelace was not to be stared down.

  ‘So, I understand the injuries are pretty minor, except for the hand of course.’

  ‘If you consider a hole in the cheek, a dislocated ankle and a bayonet which barely missed my kidneys minor, yes – I fare pretty well,’ replied Crossman with a touch of frost. ‘In fact I don’t know why I’m not up and dancing a quadrille.’

  ‘There’s no need to be sarcastic, Private Crossman,’ said Lovelace, ‘I have come to your bedside as ordered.’

  ‘I didn’t order it, sir. I
requested it.’

  ‘Just so. Let me see the arm, old chap.’ Crossman held up his stump, still covered in a bloody bandage. ‘Ah, that dressing needs changing.’ Lovelace took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves. ‘I’m pretty good at these things. Boy?’ he yelled in French. ‘Another dressing here. Some clean water in a bowl and a sponge if you please.’

  Pierre gave him a look that would have withered an oak, but he fetched the items. Lovelace then proceeded to change Crossman’s dressing, swabbing down the stump, drying it, putting on some balm that Pierre had brought along with the water. When he had finished, the major put on his coat again, nodding at the limb. ‘No gangrene. Excellent. They are good surgeons here, are they not? The French have always been skilful at this sort of thing. They have had to be I suppose, considering the drubbings we’ve given them in the past.’

  ‘I – thank you for that, sir – but – I asked you here for a specific purpose. I must know. Have I been made sergeant again? For my part in the battle?’

  Lovelace’s facial muscles stiffened. He looked grim.

  ‘I am afraid the answer to that must be no.’

  Crossman, who had half-raised himself from his bed, fell back with a hollow groan.

  Lovelace’s face now broke into a smile.

  ‘You’ve been made lieutenant instead.’

  A hot wave of disbelief swamped over Crossman.

  ‘Lieutenant?’

  ‘Not even an ensign,’ cried Lovelace, gleefully. ‘You skipped over that one like a roe deer. The queen has been dishing out ensigns like confetti, but yours has been upped one. It was mostly Colonel Hawke’s doing. He was prepared to fight for it like a tiger. Not that there was much opposition, for there are certain parties who have been aware of your wartime activities. Men of power who are behind our clandestine operations. They see how necessary such things are in modern warfare.’

  ‘But the battle? Did someone see how well I fought?’

  Lovelace shrugged. ‘Perhaps, but you have received no mention for it, though all the reports are not yet in. Wait a bit, are you the soldier who assisted an engineer in constructing a makeshift bridge?’

  ‘I didn’t so much assist him, as give him my encouragement.’

  ‘Then you have a witness! He said there was an 88th soldier, a sergeant without his stripes. There. A witness. He also saw you climb one of the ladders and throw yourself like a wildcat into the fray, even though you were unarmed at the time and sorely wounded.’

  ‘And what of the others? I saw Wynter carrying a man.’

  ‘He saved his company’s captain and has been made sergeant for it, plus a big medal coming his way.’

  Crossman ground his teeth. ‘Wynter? A sergeant? What is the army coming to? It took me years to get that rank. Yet here he is, stripes on his arm, and still a whiner in his early twenties! Where is the justice?’

  Lovelace was not sympathetic. ‘Things happen in war that do not happen in peacetime. In the normal course of things, Wynter would have been discharged a private at age sixty. But you know, he has turned into the most strict disciplinarian. He is very keen that his men should be smartly dressed and the best at drill in the regiment. A tyrant for correctness, so I’m told. They are the worst, I understand, the reformed rebels. They turn into these satraps whom the troops both hate and admire.’

  ‘I cannot believe it.’

  ‘True, I’m afraid. And Peterson is gone, on a ship bound for England. You know she searched the battlefield for your body? Yusuf Ali and Gwilliams too. They scoured the land for your remains. Yet here you are, safe and well – an officer and a gentleman to boot. You have a servant now, of course. His name is Gwilliams. He was glad for the job. I’ve sent him to find Pirce-Smith, who will be directed to join us here.’

  ‘I am hardly well, sir.’

  ‘Call me Nathan.’

  Crossman was puzzled. ‘Call you what, sir?’

  ‘By my Christian name, Nathan – we are brother officers now. Of course, in the line of duty, you will address me properly, but we are two friends here, one at the bedside of the other.’

  ‘Nathan Lovelace? It sounds strange. I never knew you had a first name. It never occurred to me.’

  He gave Crossman an amused smile.

  ‘Too cold and hard, am I, to have been christened? I have three, actually. Charles Nathaniel Edward – but I prefer to be called Nathan by my acquaintances and friends.’ He paused, then said, ‘Now listen to me, and I will not take no for an answer. You will remember Lieutenant Dalton-James, the predecessor of Pirce-Smith? Yes, of course you do. You may also recall he was killed in civilian clothes? He rushed into the battle at Inkerman in his shooting jacket, boots and trousers. I still have his uniform. His note – one of those notes we all leave for our friends and relations should we fall – stated that I should find a good home for it. Well I have. He would be pleased if I passed it on to you. It is a particularly splendid uniform, for he was quite well-heeled, was our old lieutenant. You are about the same size. I’m almost sure it will fit perfectly. We can get one of the French cantinières to alter it if not. There is a sword and all that goes with it. What do you say?’

  Crossman was close to tears. ‘I have to be honest and say that the lieutenant did not like me a great deal.’

  ‘Oh, as to that, he admired you enormously, but it would not have done for him to say so. No – you are correct, he did not like you, but it is not his wife I’m asking you to accept, but his uniform. He knows, wherever he is now, that you will do it proud, I am certain.’

  Crossman tried to wipe away the wetness from his cheeks, but unfortunately attempted it with his missing hand.

  ‘Damn thing,’ he said, crossly, to hide his emotion, ‘I keep forgetting it isn’t there.’

  ‘Curious, ain’t it? I’m told one has a ghost limb after the real one has been removed. But I’ve never seen anyone try to use it before now. I am truly sorry about the hand. But there are plenty of men with a limb missing who’ve gone far in the military. Look at old Raglan. He made marshal. And there was Nelson. A man for the ladies as well as a fighter. You’ll soon find ways of getting around the handicap – oh, sorry, didn’t mean that. I meant of course that you’ll get used to the fact that it’s missing.

  ‘Now, there’s one other thing before I leave you to your rest and to wallow in your promotion. Your Miss Mulinder. She has been going frantic. When I told her I believed I had found you, she asked to come with me, but I said no. I was not sure whether you wished to see her.’

  ‘Yes I do, but not yet.’ Crossman struggled up and with Lovelace’s help put a pillow between his back and the wall. ‘I would like to be able to meet her in the new uniform. I know that sounds rather crass, but I have something special to ask her – something I am at last able to ask her. Could you stall her for a day or so? Until then? Say I am really bad-tempered at the moment and do not wish to see anyone at all. No, no, that wouldn’t keep her away. Simply say I do not want visitors until I am on my feet, but don’t tell her where I am, then she can’t come looking for me. Does she know of my promotion?’

  ‘No – I thought you would like to be the one to tell her.’

  ‘Please keep it a secret for a while.’

  The major nodded, then continued with, ‘You’ve got a few medals coming too, by the way. Apart from one or two of ours, the French want to give you one – they seem to hand them out to all those wounded British soldiers they’ve found and subsequently nurtured, as if they’ve taken them for their own. And the Turks have given you a very impressive lump of metal – a huge heavy shiny thing of fake gold – quite garish and vulgar-looking if you ask me. I’m glad I didn’t get one.’

  ‘What is it for?’

  ‘I understand it is for fighting alongside them – well, for fighting alongside one of them, namely Yusuf Ali. You’ll probably topple over with the weight of the thing.’ He hesitated before adding, ‘Here’s an idea. You could pin it to your left sleeve, to sort of restore your bal
ance.’

  ‘Your jokes, Nathan, are in appalling bad taste.’

  ‘I know,’ grinned the major, ‘but I enjoy the telling.’

  Crossman now wanted to know of the outcome of the war.

  ‘Ah, as to that, I suppose you know Sebastopol was deserted by the Russian army. They built a bridge of boats over the harbour to the north side, as we suspected they were doing, and marched away without a by your leave. We tried to destroy it of course, but failed.’ He grinned. ‘We should have had your peloton do it, then the job would have been done well.’

  ‘You know I never approved of that – letting them leave saved lives.’

  ‘You would have done it, if ordered to do so, and you know it. That sack of morals you carry with you will help to hinder your progress in the army if you’re not careful. Anyway, that is by the by. The Russians blew up their magazines and some of the forts before they left, as well as other buildings. I was one of the first to enter. Many of those left behind were in a terrible state, but they are being cared for. How strange it was to stand on the Redan amongst the ghosts.’ He paused once more, for reflection, before continuing. ‘I am not one of those who remains gloomy about the failure to take the Redan. It was but one event in a long war. There are two aspects to the battle. One is that we drew Russians away from the Malakoff, thus assisting the French in their successful endeavours. The other is that though we did not take the works, we showed our teeth, and the result was that they ran with their tails between their legs. It was a victory to be sure. Had they retreated after the Battle of Inkerman, we should have called it a resounding one. Because of this last hiccough, many have the blue devils. I say that is wrong. I say it was a great victory, overall, and never mind that such a few could not work a miracle on the last day. The sad thing is we didn’t manage to blow up their pontoon bridge, as I planned. They got away scot free.’