The Soldier Brat (Man of Conflict Series, Book 1)

by Andrew Wareham

  Allington was senior colonel, outranking Chalmers of the Wiltshires by several years; he gave orders to the assembled officers in the gloom of first dawn.

  “Column of route, New Foresters leading today, Wiltshires tomorrow, artillery and baggage carts between the two. Light Companies to van and flank, their captains to place them as seems best.”

  Smiles from the two captains, both proud of their ability to read a field and respond in the way that used their men best.

  “March loaded. The word is out – the fishing boats will have got to their harbour yesterday at latest – so we may expect to be greeted, perhaps as early as this afternoon. In case of fortifications or entrenchments, the leading battalion will make an immediate frontal assault while the rear attacks from either flank or even encircles them entirely to attack from behind. Artillery will seek targets of opportunity, will in any case bombard.”

  The artillery captain nodded, again appreciating the freedom he was being given.

  “Should we come across cavalry, battalion squares en echelon, thirty paces apart, artillery in between, horses in the squares, men retiring from the guns as necessary – they won’t spike them, cavalry never have enough sense to carry spikes and mauls with them.”

  Allington fell silent – it was impossible, he felt, to offer any plan of action other than to march across the island and see what happened, and hope that it was not too great a surprise.

  “In case of ambush, sir?” Chalmers enquired.

  “The Light Companies will spring any ambush and we will attack as if it were a fort. There should be no great problem until we reach forested land.”

  They marched immediately after, the men carrying their sixty pound packs into the growing heat of a tropical morning.

  The plateau was karst country, dry limestone covered in low, spiny scrub that concealed to an extent the thirty foot deep gullies that corrugated the land. The track, such as it was, had no bridges, angled down the side of each dry valley, reversing upwards on the other side of the ten or twenty feet of flattish bottom; it was, possibly, adequate for donkeys with panniers, but mules dragging tons of gun found the going almost impossible. Before a mile had passed two companies were assigned to the guns, ropes brought up from the ships for the soldiers to pull on to relieve the strain on the animals.

  They made seven miles in the day, settled into dry camp for the night, fatigue parties going back to the village in mid-afternoon to fill water barrels from the stream that issued from the cliffs there. They had lost one man dead, collapsed at his rope, heart weakened by fever and unable to meet the sudden demand; twenty more had been carried back to the ships, strained and sprained or feverish. The Light Companies reported four more miles, half a day, of these badlands before they entered the forest.

  “Which is where the Frogs will be!” Colonel Allington announced. “Well, it’s where I would be, but, admittedly, I am not a Frog. Let us struggle all morning, then, just when it’s getting really hot and we reach the shade, volleys out of cover driving us back into the dry, open land again. What do you say, Chalmers?”

  The Wiltshires’ colonel nodded – he had never been on campaign before, rather wished he were not now, had no practical suggestion to make and enough sense to keep his mouth shut when he had nothing useful to say.

  “Major Howton?”

  “Make a late start tomorrow, sir, if they are watching we can make a show of bringing water barrels up, say. Camp at the edge of the forest tomorrow night, say a quarter mile out, just sufficient to prevent a night attack; the meanwhile, two companies, one to the north, the other well south of the track, have infiltrated the forest ready to roll them up from behind. Best they set out before dawn tomorrow, sir, to be on their way and out of sight, if they are to go.”

  “Good idea! Our B Company can go north. One of yours for the south, Chalmers?”

  “Yes, sir, one of ours should go as well. Captain Coles is best suited of my people, D Company, sir.”

  Septimus and Captain Coles were called for, given their orders in the broadest of terms: to get into the forest unseen, work their way to the track and be useful, destroying small parties of Frogs and locating large ones. They were not to cross the track, for any reason, not to slaughter each other by mistake – there would be no need to offer support because any outbreak of firing would bring the whole force to their succour.

  Coles, a fleshy, red-faced thirty year old, somewhat agricultural-looking, a true Moonraker, saw no need to discuss his plans with Septimus, stomped off to his men. Septimus, mildly irritated, did the same – it might have been useful, for example, to have agreed a time period in which they would maintain silence, not firing so as not to alert all of the French.

  “Sarn’t Mockford! Check all water bottles in the morning, flints tonight. Draw three days’ rations and an extra twenty rounds per man. If you can get hold of some machetes or axes from the baggage train, do so – Cooper can assist.” Cooper was an excellent thief and forager, a fact Septimus was unaware of, officially. “If you can lay your hands on a rum issue, do so. I’ve twenty guineas in gold, if you need them. We go out on detachment at first light.”

  The guineas were called for in the night and four ankers of rum appeared, another quartermaster sweetened, encouragement for the men provided, proof yet again that they belonged to a privileged company, the best in a good battalion.

  Septimus sat and thought about his task – not displeased to have an almost free hand but aware that he could not fall back on obedience as an excuse for any failure. It was easier when he simply had to follow orders, he found. He also realised after some thought that Allington had given no detail because he did not know what might happen, had no way of predicting what might be necessary; Septimus faced the same quandary, but he had to give orders.

  “Sarn’t Mockford. We will follow one of the dry gullies north, you to break ground with your platoon. Take us at least five miles north, out of sight of the track, before we turn into the forest.”

  They marched out quietly as the sun rose, out of step to prevent any orderly cadence rumbling across the plain. The men had made their preparations, had wrapped all loose equipment to stop it rattling, dulled badges and buttons so they should not twinkle in the sun. Many had produced second water bottles, filched from the belongings of men dead of fever and kept against a dry day; none of their officers noticed this breach of army law.

  The dry ravines snaked towards the hill country where the sudden, heavy deluges that created them occasionally fell. They were lined with thick, leafy bushes and scrub thorn trees and provided excellent cover for men and insects alike; the sixty fresh men of the company provided a banquet, gleefully fallen upon.

  They slapped and shuffled and swore and made good their five miles before nine o’clock, meeting Mockford and his platoon at a point where their gulley took a bend north east, away from the treeline.

  “Get across ‘ere, sir?” Mockford suggested,

  Septimus clambered up the side of the gulley, pulling himself from bush to bush, stifling a yelp as he grabbed hold of a handful of thorns, took his hat off and made a cautious survey.

  It was a good half-mile to the forest, the ground rising maybe fifty feet and bare of anything other than knee-high thistle and stringy grass. Ten minutes exposed because he could not risk doubling over stony ground where a man with a full pack could turn his ankle so easily. The distance was greater on either side and he did not want to spend perhaps another couple of hours finding another crossing place that might not, in the event, be any better.

  “We’ll go from here, Mockford. Scout across to the trees, send a runner back as guide to the best point to form up under cover.”

  He gave orders to the remainder of the company to rest for an hour and take a bite – no fires, no tea, no rum.

  Dowdy came back, led them to a tiny clearing just inside the rain forest, a slightly higher outcrop of limestone, its soil too thin to support tree roots; they stared south and west, began
to appreciate the new problem.

  At this higher, wetter level the folds in the ground continued in the same general direction, well to the north of the route they wanted to take. Where the gulleys on the bare plain had been full of scrub, now they were damper and choked with vines and cane and thorn-studded creepers; the soil under the trees was slippery with the accumulation of years of rotting leaf mould, a yard deep in places; the trees themselves were wide-spaced, their trunks five and ten yards apart, but most had buttress roots spread out, sunburst fashion, two or three feet high. Easier progress could be made along the outside edge of the forest, exposed in the open, or by following the banks of the gulleys and going well out of their way.

  “Cooper, any chance of climbing one of those trees?”

  He glanced casually at a vine-covered mahogany, taller than an English oak, slipped his pack off his shoulders in answer, passed his musket to Mockford.

  “Thank you. Give me the lie of the land, how far the forest extends and in what directions, what the best way will be for us.”

  Cooper gripped the vine, tugged experimentally to see its strength, swarmed up the first feet of bare trunk into the high branches; as he went out of sight he was heard to address a presumably large spider very briefly and then to congratulate it on its wisdom in running away. He reappeared at the very top of the tree, holding on tightly in the marginally cooler breeze and peering intently about him for several minutes.

  “Like t’other place, Jeannie, sir,” he reported. “Trees are about four or five miles wide, sort of joins mountains to the north with some ‘ills down south of the island, too far to see clear. Say we follows the line of the gulley ‘ere, we ought to come out no more than two or three miles north of where we are now. Could get back down the other side of the trees, more like grassland over there, going down towards the sea, gentle-like. Way in the distance it gets darker coloured, like at Jeannie, so I reckons that’s where the sugar is. Looks like cliffs round by the sea, their big town ‘idden by ‘em, sir.”

  “Well done, Cooper! Sarn’t Mockford, we shall do exactly as Cooper says.”

  They marched in single file through the forest, slipping and sliding, a mile an hour of hard work, thigh and calf muscles screaming as they fought for their balance on the rising ground, sloping gently across their path. The temperature fell imperceptibly as they climbed a couple of hundred feet, enough to suddenly change the trees and undergrowth to a drier, more open woodland. They rested at noon and then covered the remaining three miles in one much easier hour, came out onto savannah in a rain shadow below the ridgeline. They turned south, paralleled the forest edge till Mockford called the track in sight, an hour before dusk.

  They peered at the track as it cut across a grassy hillside and entered the shadow of the forest; it was dry, dusty and wholly unmarked, not a single boot- or hoof-print.

  There had been no rain and the track had not, improbably, been brushed clear; a thorough search revealed nothing – no troops had come from the west.

  “Detail a platoon to walk the track east through the forest, tell the colonel the way is clear. Watch out for the Wiltshires to the south.”

  All their effort had been for nothing, a day of hard work to draw a blank – it had had to be done, nonetheless, a sensible precaution.

  “Scouts out, Mockford, a mile or so down the track, half a mile either side of it, see what’s there. Cut firewood, get tea going and a meal of some sort. Put a picket out before dark, at least a furlong down the hill.”

  He sat with a tin mug of tea to hand, brewed campaign style, leaves and sugar thrown into a bucket of cold water and brought to the boil; it was thick, black and awful, a suitable adjunct to his thoughts. He slowly worked through the possibilities, decided that an ambush in the forest would have called for a substantial number of good infantry, regulars. So, then, either the Frogs were short of good foot-soldiers or they were holding them back at the town. If they were short of foot, then there was a good chance that their militia were mounted, or they might, possibly, have a regiment of dragoons or light cavalry – unlikely, that, regulars would have brought their horses from France, and European horses fared poorly in the tropics. Militia, though, mounted on locally bred horses, were more of a possibility, mounted infantry carrying carbines, pistols and a heavy sword, expecting to dismount to form a line to fight, but capable of a charge if occasion arose – and this open, short grass savannah was ideal for horsemen.

  He had never faced cavalry, but knew what the book said should be done.

  “Sarn’t Mockford! Make the picket two platoons strong, no more than half to sleep at any given time. Warn them to watch for horses at dawn. Cut thorn bushes and branches, put up an abattis to slow them.”

  Septimus ordered stand-to for an hour before first light, warned the men that if there should be an attack they were to hold the track at the forest edge until the picket was in, then fall back and hold inside the treeline until the battalions arrived.

  No cavalry thundered out of the dun west at dawn.

  The battalions marched through the forest and debouched into the open, tree-dotted grasslands and moved cautiously towards the coast, wondering if, just perhaps, the French had taken their garrison troops away, left the island defended solely by its artillery. The land sloped away and they slept that night in sight of the lights of St Christophe, still in the open, the cane-fields stretching away on their flank to the south and west.

  “Rain forest behind us, Septimus,” Howton commented, “cane blocking our left and cliffs and high hills on our right. Ideal, according to the book, for a battle ground, your enemy – us – to be broken up and, unable to reform in the rough ground, can be pursued to the sea and destroyed piecemeal by your horse. Of course, for that to work, they have to fight and win a battle – but the book says that’s quite easy, too!”

  The pickets reported movement all night, distant mutterings of marching feet but no movement of artillery, no rumble of wheels. The battalions were formed and ready in two ranks either side of their field battery before first light. They had eaten, drunk their tea, swigged a rum ration and now waited, muskets grounded and pipes permitted, though a majority preferred to chew their tobacco.

  Septimus stood in front of his company, Lieutenant Hoskins beside him, both nibbling at hardtack, adding to their breakfast, expecting to be otherwise engaged at lunchtime; they peered into the gloom, able to see very little downhill to their west. Cooper appeared with the belt of pistols and strapped it round Septimus’ waist, adjusted his hanger to be ready to his hand. The men nodded and nudged each other and explained to the new hands that Stroppy Seppy was going to have his ration of blood today, they were open for trade.

  The slope was quite gentle, but the Bess pulled high when fired downhill. Septimus turned to face the company.

  “Aim low, lads! Shoot their knackers off!”

  Aiming at the crotch, the majority of rounds fired would be at about chest height, the most efficient level for achieving hits and stopping their men.

  The quick tropical dawn hit the grasslands and disclosed the French, the transition to full daylight seeming to take seconds only.

  “Three battalions, the first regular and about five hundred strong. Two behind, seven or eight hundred apiece, mostly militia, Hoskins – blue coats, do you see, but trousers of different colours, their own civilian wear. A company of regulars to the rear of each militia battalion, keeping them pointed in the right direction. Look at the third battalion, a lot of those men are wearing sabres, or cutlasses more like – sailors and longshoremen – the navy said they had spotted a pair of sloops in harbour and there were some merchantmen as well – they will not have had much time to drill together. It could be interesting to see how they handle in the field…”

  The French marched onto the grassland in column of route and were deployed slowly into three blocks of men, the regulars in three lines, the militia unevenly in five or six, the shyer men trying to hide behind each other at the re
ar, and were waved forward.

  “Good Lord!” Septimus led Hoskins to their position immediately behind the double line of the company, where they would not mask their own men’s fire. “They are advancing on their full front, in line – I think they intend to trade volleys with us, the silly buggers, like in Marlborough’s day.”

  There was a picture in the mess at Christchurch, one of the massive battle pieces, showing bewigged and powdered soldiers of the previous age firing matchlocks at each other at ten paces. This, it seemed, was to be another such.

  “Barnes, Dowdy! Fire independently, if you please – officers and sergeants if you spot them.”

  Two brief acknowledgements to their front and a pair of clicks as pans were checked.

  The French advanced in three blocks, overlapping on the right, held by the Wiltshires, their regulars in the centre.

  The cannon opened fire at three hundred yards, using roundshot, the howitzer tossing a smoking shell, to unsettle the advancing men, but the ranks closed very steadily, the militia showing no immediate inclination to break. Micklewhite ran down the line.

  “Company fire, sir. Colonel will open fire with A Company, remainder to follow suit. Watch for cavalry to our rear, turning your second line about if necessary.”