The First to Land (1984)

by Reeman, Douglas

  There seemed to be no more cannon-fire. The enemy were probably saving their strength for the next morning. Perhaps the last one. He watched his young cousin and wanted to say something which might bridge the gulf. At the same time he knew Ralf would resent it. Perhaps his total independence was all he had to sustain him.

  Blackwood said simply, ‘I shall miss you.’ It came out unintentionally. Just like that. He was surprised to discover that he meant it.

  Ralf looked up, his eyes very pale in his nigger-black face.

  ‘Don’t. It’ll be over for all of us soon.’ He tightened his belt and waited for the others to pick up the grenades. Then he said, ‘I hope the General will be satisfied.’ Then he turned on his heel and walked out. He did not even look back to see if Addis and Roberts were following.

  At the outer barricade de Courcy and the colour sergeant waited to see them through the shattered gateway.

  Ralf noticed that many of the corpses had been dragged away. As if a dead army had risen and marched from the killing-ground.

  The night breeze was warm on his bare shoulders and he was grateful for the cup of whisky which Swan had got for him.

  Ralf touched his trousers pocket and felt the brass telescope hot against his thigh.

  He wished he had really known his father. From the portrait which hung at Hawks Hill he had looked more like David, he thought. He tightened his jaw. Maybe it was David he was really trying to impress.

  Ralf glanced angrily at the first pale stars.

  ‘This way. Follow me.’

  He thought suddenly of the boy Adams, the way he wanted to help and serve him.

  The realization hit him like a fist. It was not just Adams. Like it or not they all depended on him now.

  ‘Wake up, sir. It’s time.’

  Blackwood rolled over and groaned as Swan released his grip on his shoulder. As his senses returned he wished he had not given in to sleep. It made him feel weak, vulnerable, his whole body protesting. It was very dark. Not for long.

  Swan held out a mug of tea. ‘Best I could do, sir.’

  Blackwood nodded thankfully. ‘Any news of my cousin?’

  Swan eyed him steadily. ‘No. Probably too early.’

  Blackwood said, ‘I’d like to have a shave.’ Swan got to his feet. The request did not surprise him. It was odd the way blokes made the effort before a last battle. He had already seen some of the marines rolling and packing their kit, their faces strangely dedicated, as if nothing else mattered.

  He had heard that it had been common enough in the great days of sail. Clean shirt and a good meal before hell broke loose.

  Blackwood stared up at the sky as he sipped the scalding tea. There was more hot water than tea leaves, he thought. Everything was suddenly in short supply.

  He wondered if Ralf was still safe or out there unable to move in either direction. A wide detour, he had said. If he was too long he and his two volunteers might be the only survivors.

  He looked round as Swan returned with his shaving kit. Ralf might already be a prisoner, gasping out his life, praying for death. He heard a dog barking somewhere, a few hasty footsteps as the remaining coolies were released from their work removing enemy corpses. What did they think about it? They surely could not believe the Boxers to be invulnerable to foreign bullets any more?

  He thought too of Friedrike at the mission building. Gravatt had told him that it was now being defended by the German marines, the Seebataillon. It might comfort her to hear her own language around her.

  Swan handed him a towel and he cleaned his face, the skin tender after a quick shave. Bravado, another gesture, what did it matter? He got to his feet and stared at the horizon. There was still smoke and a few sparks across the sky, but he could see the outline of the buildings, a gradual lightening which meant an early dawn.

  ‘I want you to go to Mr Gravatt.’

  Swan checked his rifle. ‘No bother, sir. ’E’s taken care of everythin’.’

  Blackwood ran his fingers through his hair. It felt full of grit, dirtied by gunsmoke and sweat.

  He heard Gravatt approaching and straightened his back.

  Swan saw his composure return, the outer confidence which the other took for granted. He felt moved by what he saw, to know he had always shared it.

  Gravatt reported, ‘All available men are in position, sir. Some of the wounded have joined them. They can keep the spare rifles loaded.’ He added with sudden bitterness, ‘There are enough of them!’

  Blackwood climbed on to a slab of stone and lifted his glasses. It was still too dark to see much. If he was wrong about the Boxers they might rush the outer wall and use it as a defence while they fired directly on to the inner barricades.

  There was a sudden bang and seconds later the first shell exploded at the foot of the wall. Blackwood did not need to see it; he could hear the worn stones crashing down, splinters whining overhead or cracking into the barricades.

  He had been right. The enemy intended to make so many breaks in the wall that they could attack several places at once.

  Crash.

  Blackwood said, ‘Tell them to keep down. The Boxers are firing more often this time.’

  A gold rim of sunlight touched one of the tallest buildings then vanished momentarily in a cloud of smoke and fragments as another shell exploded.

  He felt Swan remove his revolver and then murmur, ‘Only three shots left in it, sir.’

  Blackwood loosened his sword and said nothing. He no longer trusted his voice. He would feel better when action was joined. It was always like that. The madness. The wild excitement which could preserve or kill with equal indifference.

  He heard O’Neil dragging an ammunition box beside the machine-gun, and Sergeant Chittock unsheathing the Colours. Individual acts of defiance but with little hope left.

  The cannon fired once again and Blackwood felt the ground vibrate as more stones and bricks rained down. The wall had been built a long time ago, strong enough to withstand muskets and pikes. It was no match for shellfire.

  The sunlight continued remorselessly to lay bare the battlefield, the other lower wall where they had made their first appearance at Tientsin. Blackwood thought of Admiral Seymour’s anticipated arrival in Peking in a single day. That was two weeks ago, a century.

  He levelled his glasses. ‘Bugler, sound the alarm!’

  On either side of him he heard the marines preparing themselves. The click of rifle-bolts, the nervous movements along the sandbags as each man tried to find the best vantage point.

  He heard the Boxers’ horn, mournful but threatening, and pictured the mass of men beginning to form up, to move towards the hated foreigners with gathering momentum.

  ‘Stand-to!’ Fox was everywhere as usual. Eventually he planted his boots at the place where the barricade had almost collapsed. He would not move unless he fell dead.

  Sergeant Greenaway was on the left of the line, and Blackwood found time to notice he had chosen a position amongst some of the youngest marines, new recruits such a short while ago. An ancient warrior to most of them, but he could give them strength when they most needed it. That was now.

  Blackwood shouted, ‘Hold your fire until I give the order!’

  If they fired too soon the first wave of attackers would take cover behind the wall. As the light continued to strengthen he saw the great holes and gaps in the outer wall. Impossible to defend, but still good cover for the advancing enemy.

  Hidden on the other side of some sand and grain bags he heard someone repeating over and over again, ‘Oh God, oh God’ – like that time on the mad dash downriver.

  He balanced his revolver in his left hand and drew his sword with the other. Three bullets Swan had said.

  He wiped his face with his sleeve.

  Come on, you bastards! He glanced quickly at Swan. He had imagined he had shouted the words aloud. But Swan was concentrating on a gap in the wall directly opposite the barricade. There were lots of fallen stones on the insi
de. The enemy might stumble, others would certainly be thrusting them from the rear. It would give him time to bring several of them down, he thought.

  The noise was deafening, and dust from thousands of running feet drove towards the waiting marines like a desert sandstorm.

  ‘Ready!’

  The rifles moved slightly and then settled on their selected targets.

  ‘Fire!’

  The charging figures were pouring through the shattered gateway and the gaps along the wall, others knelt on the outer barricade and fired across the shell-pitted ground.

  Blackwood waved his sword. ‘Again, lads!’ He yelled at the nearest marine, the one who had been sobbing prayers. ‘Take aim, man, don’t waste them!’

  ‘Fire!’ The order was almost lost in the lethal clatter of the machine-gun. The front ranks seemed to bend and fall or were stamped underfoot by the press of figures behind.

  It was hopeless. They were almost here. Blackwood saw two marines step back from the barricade, as if unable to face the onslaught.

  It was now or never.

  He climbed on to the barricade and shouted above the din, ‘Meet them! Come on, the Royals!’

  The madness gripped all of them as they leapt from their hiding places and met the oncoming mob out in the open.

  Blackwood parried a pike to one side and drove his blade through an Imperial soldier’s neck. As he tore the sword free he swung it across the front of a marine who had dropped to one knee, his fingers locked around his thigh as the blood shone to match his fallen bayonet.

  Oates sounded his bugle again and again, it was the only sound to carry from one end of the embattled line to the other. The Boxers surged against the barricade, and tried to pull the marines down amongst them. The bayonets darted and lunged, and here and there a marine found time to reload his rifle and fire into the screaming mass of faces which could not move forward or back.

  Corporal O’Neil yelled, ‘Quick, me boy! Put your weight on this wheel, we’ll give the gateway a burst.’ He stared horrified as his friend the gun-layer fell backwards, a gaping hole punched between his eyes. O’Neil sobbed, ‘Oh, Willy! Not you too!’

  Then he dragged his friend aside and threw himself at the machine-gun yelling curses and obscenities as he worked the firing-handle until his hand seemed blurred. Once a bullet cut across his forearm and left a livid, black scar, but O’Neil barely noticed.

  At the centre of the line some of the Boxers, one carrying a yellow standard, hurled themselves over the top. Some were impaled on bayonets, another shot down by one of the marines who had been wounded earlier.

  Lieutenant de Courcy shouted, ‘Can’t hold ’em, sir!’ He fired his revolver until it was empty and then charged into the fight with only his sword.

  Blackwood saw the colour sergeant clinging to his staff, his eyes squinting with pain as blood ran from two wounds in his shoulder. But he clung to the flag, for it was what he had always done. When the truth came to him at last he managed to pass the flag to a wild-eyed marine and gasp, ‘Don’t let go, Dago! Not fer nothing!’ Then he died.

  The explosion when it came felt like an earthquake, as if it was many miles away and did not concern them at all.

  Blackwood locked swords with a yelling Chinese officer, pushed him against the barricade and then drove the blade into his stomach. The dying officer was still shouting as he dropped. Hate, surrender, Blackwood did not care which. In his mind all he could recognize was the gigantic explosion. Ralf and his men had done it. It must have taken more than mere courage to wait for daylight and the first shots from the cannon. Every available Boxer and soldier must have gathered for the attack after the shells had done their work.

  ‘Cease firing!’ That was Gravatt, instantly supported by the bugler.

  Blackwood stared dazedly as the enemy melted back towards the wall, over the dead and dying and through the gaps without firing another shot.

  Blackwood sheathed his sword. It clung to the scabbard, sticky with blood.

  Gravatt shouted wildly, ‘They’re on the run!’ He waved his cap in the air. ‘Look at ’em go!’

  The explosion must have caught the enemy completely off-balance, Blackwood thought. Then he looked along his line of breathless, bleeding marines. Fox still a ramrod amidst chaos and horror. De Courcy gritting his teeth as a marine bandaged his wounded hand. He had seized a Chinese blade to push it away and might lose all his fingers. But his face said it all. I am alive.

  Blackwood walked slowly amongst his men. Several were dead, and more wounded than otherwise.

  The Boxers would come back. They had to. Without Tientsin in their hands they would be in the same position as Seymour.

  Blackwood saw O’Neil carrying Private Willy Hudson away from the machine-gun. He glanced briefly at Blackwood who was moved by the tears on his battered face. He carried his friend to the nearest building and laid him to rest there. Then he snatched up a rifle and said brokenly. ‘No more ammo for th’ Nordenfeldt, sir. I’ll stand with you.’

  Sergeant Greenaway yelled, ‘’Ere come three o’ th’ bastards!’

  A few rifles lifted and steadied as the figures tumbled through a smashed barricade.

  Blackwood held up his hand. ‘Belay that!’

  In their stolen clothing, their faces still liberally smeared with soot, Ralf and his two marines walked slowly through the dead Boxers. They stopped at the barricade where the battle-shocked marines peered despairingly at the rising dust above the enemy camp.

  Ralf said huskily, ‘I thought we were too late.’ He looked across at Colour Sergeant Nat Chittock who lay with one arm outflung, unwilling to the last to release his precious flag.

  Blackwood grasped his cousin by the shoulders. ‘You were bloody marvellous, Ralf. It knocked the stuffing out of them.’

  Ralf studied him emptily. ‘They’ll be back.’ He tore off the Boxer smock and threw it to one side. ‘We laid all night with the other corpses.’ It seemed to amuse him. ‘I stink.’

  Blackwood dropped his arms to his sides. They were like lead. But Ralf was right. Gun or no gun they would be back. He looked at the marines who stood along the barricade. There were great gaps between them. He doubted if there were more than thirty who were still able to fight. But at least Ralf’s action had given them time to regroup, then to fall back to the city-centre, or wherever Hay intended to see it through to a bloody conclusion.

  ‘Get the wounded under cover, Toby.’ He nodded gratefully as Swan handed him a canteen of water. It was like wine. Perhaps it was; Swan could do anything.

  Blackwood took another grip on himself. If he cracked now – He swung round and said, ‘Share out the ammunition.’ He realized he had spoken sharply and saw Gravatt watching him.

  Ralf said, ‘I’ll see to it.’ He looked at him and added, ‘Then I’ll be back.’

  Blackwood walked to the barricade. They would be together when it happened.

  Sergeant Greenaway said, ‘Private Smith is signallin’, sir!’

  Blackwood wanted to weep. So soon? The enemy were wasting no time to take their revenge on the ragged flag and those who continued to defend it.

  ‘Up, lads!’ Fox picked up a rifle. ‘Move yerselves!’ But when his eyes met Blackwood’s they told the truth. It was already finished.

  Blackwood raised his glasses and saw the solid mass of Chinese surging about in the dusty sunlight, a few banners still waving here and there; it was like something from a nightmare.

  The sun touched on gleaming sabres and suddenly as he watched spellbound Blackwood saw the horses for the first time. Cavalry, a solid wedge of them charging straight for the stampeding mass of Boxers and troops.

  I must be going mad. Blackwood recognized the tall headgear of the riders, Cossacks, their heavy sabres slashing a path right through the enemy. He blinked to clear the mist from his eyes. Troops too. Bayonets fixed. He could even hear the raucous call of a bugle.

  Gravatt whispered, ‘Dear God, it’s the relief!’
r />   Blackwood lowered his binoculars and pressed his hands on the empty machine-gun. The enemy was in full retreat. First their shells had been destroyed, and now they were caught between two fires.

  It seemed to take an eternity for the first of the relief force to reach them. The Cossacks remained at a distance, or galloped after a few groups of Boxers, their sabres more than a match for the Long Knives.

  Fox bellowed, ‘Fall in there! Smarten yerselves up!’ He sounded angry that soldiers should see them like this.

  The first to arrive in the gateway was an army lieutenant colonel mounted on a fine grey stallion. He reined up just a few yards from the Royal Marines and looked at them for what seemed like an age before he said anything. Then he dismounted and returned Blackwood’s salute.

  He said quietly, ‘I’ve seen a lot of battles in my service, Captain Blackwood.’ He glanced along the swaying line of filthy marines, and saw their determination to hold on. ‘But never anything like this. We thought you were already dead.’ He faced the marines and saluted them stiffly. ‘Now I must find Colonel Hay.’ He seemed strangely unwilling to leave a scene which he knew he could never forget.

  Blackwood said, ‘Then on to Peking, sir.’

  The officer eyed him sadly. ‘You are relieved, Captain Blackwood. You and your men have done more than enough.’ He glanced towards the drifting smoke. ‘Where are the rest of your company?’

  Blackwood bunched his hands into fists to control his sudden emotion.

  ‘These are all of them, sir.’

  The lieutenant colonel looked at Sergeant Major Fox, at Ralf, his young features a mask of disapproval even now, at Swan, and Oates, and all the survivors.

  He said half to himself. ‘What do they say about your Corps? The first to land, right?’

  Blackwood thought of the others who were not there. Of Bannatyre and young Earle, Sergeants Kirby and Davis, Corporals Lyde and Handley, Chittock, the colour sergeant. And all the other rough graves which had marked their course to this place.

  He heard himself say, ‘And the last to leave.’