by Jane Lark
But at half past eleven their conversation was interrupted by the sound of cannon fire. Ellen stood and turned looking towards the window. Another distant boom could be heard. Ellen looked back at the maid for an instant. She had paled to almost white. Pulled from the room by the sound, Ellen hurried downstairs and out onto the street.
Yes. It was cannon fire. Closer than the other day. Volley after volley sounded over the city.
Ellen looked back at the maid who’d followed, as others came out onto the streets.
What did it mean? Was Paul alive?
~
The first of the cannons rang out at twenty-five minutes past eleven in the morning on the 18th of June. But this time Paul’s regiment were more prepared. They had their orders for the battle, the best position to defend, and a day’s rest.
But when one hour past midday came, the cannons were still pounding, and Paul’s men were on the ground where they’d spent the hours since the cannon fire began; hiding behind the ridge, lying on damp bracken as rain seeped through the cloth of their uniforms. He was cold, but not because the day was cold. It was fear. Anxiety. Expectancy. A need to simply fight, pumped through his blood.
In the hours he’d lain here, he’d thought a hundred times of Ellen in Brussels, hearing the sound of the cannons and thinking of him.
He’d survived one battle; he only had to survive one more. Today, they all believed – would bring success or failure.
All the men about him lay still and silent, listening, waiting.
There were encounters taking place, he could hear rifles, horses, swords and battle cries, men exerting their strength to stay alive, but the battle was not close enough for Paul and his men to be called in to fight.
Aware of every beat of his heart, and every breath he took, Paul listened to the sounds as he waited, including the warning cries of rooks nesting in the trees above him.
At two o’clock finally there was movement close to them. A few hundred yards away there was a cry for Picton’s regiment, to “Rise up!” The sound of several hundred men rising followed, and the movement of swords and rifles.
Paul remained on the ground, with his men, watching Picton’s men move forward, pacing towards the brow of the hill. Beyond it shouts of “Vive l’Emperuer” rang out.
“Charge! Hurrah!” Picton yelled out suddenly, calling his men over the top. The men ran.
Paul’s heart pumped hard, waiting for his moment, certain it would come soon, as he looked right and left for the Lieutenant Colonel. His commander was holding back behind the ranks for orders.
They could hear the fighting increasing in intensity beyond the ridge, screams, shouts and rifle fire as the cannons still boomed.
Damn. Damn. He burned to be able to look through earth and see what was happening, but he’d been a soldier long enough to know how crucial it was to await orders from the men who had the oversight of the whole battle. He and his men simply needed to hold their nerve.
Wait. Wait.
Hollers of another charge came from beyond the ridge of the hill, and amid them more cries of “Vive l’Emperuer.”
Paul looked back at his Lieutenant Colonel who looked to the right for some signal. Then he turned sharply, looking at Paul first, and lifted his hand without a word, before looking on to others and bidding them rise with the same signal.
“Up.” Paul said in a low voice which swept along the row in a quiet wave of sound, and then the Lieutenant Colonel made a hand gesture encouraging them forward.
“March,” Paul ordered as quiet as before, taking a step himself that the men followed a step after, and so, silently, they paced forward, as the cries of the French became louder.
From the sounds, they were running up the hill, believing they were about to claim it.
Lieutenant Colonel Hillier came past Paul, riding at a canter but leaning low in his saddle, and he called them to halt and lift their rifles with another gesture.
“Present.” Paul said more firmly. A couple of hundred rifles were lifted to press against shoulders along the line of the 52nd.
Wait. Wait. They could hear the French army coming closer, a mass of sound beyond the brow of the hill…
His heart pulsed.
“Fire!” The cry rang out from half a dozen commanders along the line, as the French rushed over the top, in reams. The volley of shots scythed down men, as a look of horror flooded their eyes. They’d not known the British soldiers had lain hidden over the hill.
“Fire!” Another volley took down more men.
“Forward!” The Lieutenant Colonel shouted over the sounds of battle, and so they began to pace, winning ground a step at a time.
Now they were in the fray and over the hill Paul could see the thousands of dead and dying spread over the fields below.
The French were pushed back, but then they returned with a cavalry assault, forcing Paul to order his men into a square behind the Allied cannons. The cannons kept booming between assaults. When the French attacked, the gunners hid amongst Paul’s men as the Highlanders had the day before, but each time the French pulled back for another charge, the Allied gunners ran out to load and fire a round at the French.
Then suddenly from behind, a regiment of British cavalry swept through, mounted on huge grey horses, forcing the French back again. Their charge persisted as Paul watched, chasing the French to the far side of the field.
There, they struck down the gunners who fired the French cannon.
The British lines cheered as the French were called back to the edge of the field to regroup. But it left the British cavalry trapped.
They were killed.
An eerie silence fell on the fields they fought over as Paul glanced back to check his men.
None of the Allied lines were called forward; instead, orders reached Paul to say that Wellington was taking the opportunity to break the soldiers from their squares. As Paul and his men rested and drank water from canteens, messages were passed along the line, checking casualties and positions.
When the battle began again, Paul was on the hill, and like the whole Allied army, back in a square. Though this time, from within, the Lieutenant Colonel shouted orders to move them forward.
All the squares crept forward, pushing the French back and the fight down the hill as the French cavalry continually assaulted them and was repeatedly repelled. Neither side was conceding.
A new wave of French soldiers suddenly poured onto the field at nearly five o’clock and weary but determined, Paul, like the whole of the Allied forces on the hill was ordered to make his men form a line, four deep, as the French charged again. Volleys echoed on the air.
The fight could not go on much longer; they could not fight forever.
~
It was at about four that Ellen first heard of wounded soldiers arriving in the city. She’d seen people in the street and gone to find out the news. Returning to her rooms she’d slipped on her pelisse and hurried out towards the gate leading onto the Nemur road.
There were cartloads of men with limbs missing and open, bandaged and bleeding wounds.
Dear God. Her gaze scanned the men who’d been left lying on the street or were being carried into houses, her heart pounding as she looked for Paul. She did not see him. But as she glanced over the men, she was drawn forwards. She remembered the young soldier she’d waved to from her window. So many were younger than her.
Before she even knew it, she knelt beside a young man, asking what he needed.
“If you wish to help, I have a dozen things you might do…” Ellen turned as a woman spoke. “There’s water, and bandages, and we are looking for people to hold men who require treatment. Will you come?”
Ellen rose, and turned. “Of course, but let me bring water to this man first.” Like so she was swept into the mayhem of war. It was beyond anything she might have imagined as hundreds of men were brought back into the city, and as she worked, she constantly looked for Paul in each new cartful, and then, at a
bout seven in the evening, the first men began arriving on foot, hobbling, exhausted and bleeding.
Her heart beat out a steady rhythm, the pace of the drum the men had marched to as they’d left, a beat or two away from panic as she waited and helped. Her breathing was held at bay only by the need to do something for these men who’d survived, but were in agony.
“Madam!” A doctor shouted across the drawing room they’d taken over. There were two dozen men lying on the floor. At the same moment the man who had gripped her hand, released his hold, his fingers slipping away. She looked down. His eyes had turned white.
Her heart missing a beat, sickness threatened, and she pressed a hand over his bloody coat. She did not even know if that blood was his, another’s, or the blood of a Frenchman, but there was no sense of his heart beating, and no feeling of movement in his lungs.
“Madam!”
She stood not knowing what to do, and moved to the doctor’s side. “I think the man I was with may be dying.”
He looked over but when he looked back at her there was no hope in his eyes. “There is nothing I can do. I must deal with those who have more chance of survival. This man needs his arm taken off, and I need someone to hold his shoulder while I cut. Will you do it?”
A soldier who had a bloodied bandage over one eye but in all other ways seemed well, was already kneeling holding the man’s legs down, their patient looked up at them with wild terrified eyes. But the bone in his forearm was protruding from an open wound, shattered and in splinters.
Ellen’s stomach turned again, but she bit her lip and nodded. She would do anything to help these men – in the hope that someone would do the same for Paul if he was wounded, somewhere, needing help.
~
At seven the last sunlight painted the clouds above Paul orange. The battle could go either way. For hours he’d fought amongst others, by attack and counter attack; neither side had gained an advantage.
Napoleon’s force made another push to break through the centre of the Allied lines, trying to cut Paul and his regiment off on the left. The fight continued as daylight turned to dusk, and then edged towards night, and once again Paul was on the defensive, in a square, watching as a British troop charged past to push the French back down the hill.
A call rang from the left. Paul’s Lieutenant Colonel raised his sword, calling Paul’s square to break and move about.
Something was afoot.
Paul lifted his own sword high, calling his men to break from the square and move. Then he saw the risk. The French Imperial Guard made a last charge up the hill, seeking to break the Allied forces once and for all.
Paul ran ahead of his men, calling them on, his sword raised. The pole bearer ran beside, holding up their colours, and the flag flew out on the breeze. “Halt and kneel!” Paul bid his front row when they were in close range. “Present All!” Three layers of men at varying heights all raised their rifles a moment before the French fell into the same position. There was a sudden vicious volley of bullets.
A force ripped through Paul’s stomach; a solid mass, tearing through his flesh and pushing him backward off his feet, slamming him down onto the muddy ground as the air about him filled with the bitter smell of powder and blood. There was no pain, only shock. Cold, disbelieving, shock.
My God!
“Captain! Captain!”
One of his men was beside him, and Paul saw him for a moment before the world went black. “Captain!”
There was a foul smell in the air. Death. His death. The smell of a gut wound.
Ellen…
He had no feeling in his arms or legs, though his heart beat even in the darkness, but his blood and energy drained away. I am going to die.
“Tell my wife…” He forced the words from his dry lips into the emptiness beyond him, and felt a man’s hand touch his face. Then… the last image in his head was Ellen, her face, as around him shots still screamed above his ahead, and swords and bayonets clashed.
Life ebbed, creeping away into nothing.
Nothing.
“Captain! Captain!”
~
Ellen moved from man to man, and each time she knelt down beside another she prayed it would not be Paul. They were all so bloody and mud stained she could not tell until she was close. Oh! This was hell on earth. So many men. So many wounded, and for every man here, they were saying there was a dozen left on the field.
Inside her, two phantom hands clasped hard, not allowing her to breathe, tying her stomach in a knot, and the hands would not release until she saw Paul.
Please God, you are safe and well. Please, God!
“May I fetch you water?” She knelt beside another man. He’d lost a leg; the lower half had been torn off by cannon fire and the rags he lay on and his clothes were covered in blood. The doctor had stopped the bleeding already. He’d tied a tight tourniquet around the man’s thigh.
This man must have the rest of that limb severed too, yet he might die from infection in a day or two.
Nausea twisted through the knots in Ellen’s stomach.
She would hold Paul so tightly when he came back, and love him even more.
Inside the invisible hands gripped harder about her stomach and her lungs.
The man’s skin was starkly pale beneath the stains of gunpowder, mud and blood, and his eyes white from blood loss. A look of panic hovered in his gaze, but he nodded. She smiled, trying to ease his fear, though she was terrified herself. She rose to fetch a cup of water. When she returned she held it to his lips for a moment and let it trickle into his mouth. He sighed and lay back, closing his eyes.
She stood. A surgeon waved her over. “I need bandages. Have we more bandages?”
The women had been ripping up sheets for hours and she rushed now to fetch some of the strips that were left; there were not many.
Paul’s image constantly held in her head. Her heart prayed for his safety. It was a continuous cry to God. Keep him safe. Keep him safe, and bring him back to me.
She handed the bandages to the surgeon and watched him wrap them about a wound he’d just removed a bullet from. Then behind her, another man was brought into the room, shouting out in agony. The doctor looked at her. “Carry on, here.”
“Tie a tourniquet,” Paul had said months ago, when she had mourned a single highwayman. She had not imagined this when he’d said it.
Paul.
Chapter Seventeen
Finally when it was dark, the sound of cannons in the distance ceased but the wounded still flooded into the city.
Everyone helping in the house in which she worked stopped and looked at one another as the world fell silent apart from the groans of the men in the room. Her heart skipped a beat. Was it over? Had the Allied forces won? Was Paul alive?
But she had no time for such thoughts – there were men here who needed help.
Three hours later, word reached the city that the Allied forces had won, and a cry rang out in the streets, even from the wounded.
Ellen’s heart filled with warmth and hope.
Four hours later troops began marching back into the city, bringing still more wounded.
Numerous times she rushed to the window to see if it was the 52nd as men were cheered and applauded.
But by midday, when she had gone for a day and half without sleep, there had been no sign of Paul’s regiment.
She’d asked some of the returning soldiers, but the numbers of men fighting were so many and no one she’d asked had seen or knew the fate of the 52nd Oxfordshire Regiment of Foot.
“Mrs Harding, go and rest.” Ellen turned to face Mrs Beard. She was the wife of a colonel from another regiment. It was her house that had become a makeshift hospital in the last four and twenty hours, like a dozen more along the street.
Now Ellen wished she had socialised more during their time in Brussels. Not at the parties but among the officers’ wives.
She had judged all the women by those who’d fled, but now she’d di
scovered another society. These women were also resolutely waiting for their men, while fighting to save those who had served beside them.
“You have done enough now, and you will only be able to do more if you sleep.”
Ellen looked at the woman. There were no beds left in the house and there was no space to rest. If she was to sleep she would have to go back to the room she shared with Paul – perhaps he would be there, waiting for her. She’d not even thought of that. “Yes. I will return when I can.” Without another word she turned away to fetch her pelisse, leaving Mrs Beard to help the wounded man she’d brought a chamber pot to.
Ellen’s heart pounded hard as she hurried through the streets full of men in filthy, bloody uniforms, and prayed with all her strength. But as she entered the room she shared with Paul, she faced an empty space. Desolation hit her. He was not here.
Too tired to stand now she’d thought of sleep, Ellen washed her hands and face. She did not lie on the bed, instead she took up her vigil at the window once more, her feet on the chair as she clutched her knees and rested her head against the back, watching the entrance to the street.
She woke to the sound of someone knocking on the door below the window, her body jolting awake. She stood hurriedly. But it could not be Paul. Paul would not have knocked.
She heard the maid’s voice below, and a man’s deeper pitch. Outside she saw a horse and two men in the uniform of the 52nd. In an instant she was running from the room, but from the top of the stairs she could only see Paul’s Lieutenant Colonel below. The man looked weary, and even though she’d never liked him, compassion burned in her chest as she walked downstairs. “What is it?” He looked up at her. “Where is my husband? Where is Paul?”
She saw the answer in his eyes, but even so he stepped forward and his lips moved. “Captain Harding died on the field.”
No! The word was pain in her chest and a roar in head. No! She would not believe. She could not…
