The Scarlet Thief

by Paul Fraser Collard

  Jack was struggling to think clearly. His mind felt as if it had turned to porridge, so laboured and turgid was his thinking. Slater was licking his lips nervously and his eyes kept swivelling to the side to keep sight of the revolver pressing against his temple. Jack knew Slater would not hesitate to blow his own brains out if the roles were reversed. But to kill a man in cold blood, even one as deserving of death as Slater, was something he could not make himself do. He had seen too much death already today.

  ‘Shoot him, Jack, for God’s sake!’

  Still Jack did not pull the trigger. The danger from the Russian skirmishers increased with every second he delayed.

  ‘Oh, you stupid bastard. I’ll fucking do it!’ Smith raised his rifle, pulling the heavy lock back.

  ‘No!’ Jack bellowed as Smith’s finger curled round the trigger of his rifle.

  A rifle fired, its sharp, barking cough distinctive, but the sound was too distant have come from Smith’s weapon.

  The crack of a bullet whipping past his head ended any confusion in Jack’s mind. The first rifle to fire was swiftly followed by another and then another. He had delayed too long. The Russian skirmishers had them in their sights.

  It was the second bullet fired by the Russian sharpshooters that did all the damage. It hit Tommy Smith on the left cheek, the side of his face that was angled towards the enemy skirmishers.

  The bullet ripped through skin and bone as if it was not there, tearing away the lower portion of Smith’s face; mouth, lips, nose and chin, all were smashed in a nauseating explosion of blood and flesh.

  Smith swayed but stayed on his feet. For one haunting moment, his eyes locked with Jack’s, the gaze betraying the appalling shock of the terrible wound. Then he fell, his hands grasping for the lower half of his face, which was no longer there. He hit the ground and writhed in agony, still alive but unable to scream, his blood gushing from the grotesque wound.

  Jack ran.

  Bullets cracked and fizzed past him. He spared no thought for Slater, or for the direction he took. He ran to escape the look of horrified anguish in his orderly’s eyes.

  Time slowed. Jack felt as if he were wading through a lake of treacle. Bullets snapped through the air around him but no matter how hard he tried to run, the ground moved with stubborn slowness beneath his feet.

  A huge fountain of earth exploded in front of him. The shockwave was tremendous, it snatched Jack from his feet as if he was a mere leaf blown in a gale. Fragments of the exploding shell ripped into his body, lacerating his arms and legs and burning like red-hot pokers. Then he hit the ground with a force that jarred every bone in his body.

  With the last scraps of his strength, Jack curled into a ball, his legs pulled right into his stomach, his head buried against his knees. He wrapped himself round his pain and wept.

  ‘Mr Sloames! Mr Sloames, wake up!’

  Jack was dimly aware of somebody shaking his shoulder but he ignored it. He lay curled on the ground, his eyes open and staring yet seeing nothing. His tears were spent, the only evidence of their passing the thin tracks they had cut into the blood and grime that covered his face.

  ‘Mr Sloames! We need you! Mr Sloames, can you stand? Are you hurt?’

  The questions assaulted his fragile peace, forcing him back into the awful reality of the present.

  ‘What is it?’ Jack’s voice came out as a croak, the voice of a crotchety old man disturbed from an afternoon sleep.

  ‘Thank God. I thought you were dead. Can you stand, sir?’

  Jack’s battered mind was slowly coming to life. ‘Digby-Brown?’

  Lieutenant Digby-Brown saw the matted hair on the back of his captain’s head for the first time as Jack gingerly lifted it from the ground. ‘Yes, sir. Goodness me, are you badly hurt?’

  Jack ignored the pointless question and waved his arm for assistance. Pain cascaded through his skull as he was hauled upright and dark shadows clouded his vision. Before he could fall, Digby-Brown took a firm grip of his arms.

  ‘Crikey, sir. You look awful.’

  Jack was trying to take an inventory of his injuries. Every single part of his body was in pain and seemed to be leaking blood but, individually, none of the wounds seemed too severe. By some miracle, his body was still in one piece. The same could not be said of his soul.

  His awareness was improving with every second. The blind panic and horror triggered by Tommy Smith’s devastated face was receding into the depths of his mind. There it lurked, like some evil monster hidden in the shadows. For the moment it was contained, pushed to one side so that he could start to function again.

  ‘Mr Sloames?’

  Jack pressed his hand into the base of his spine, the comforting habit of kneading his aching back instinctive. He spat out a wad of bloody phlegm and wiped a muck-encrusted hand across his face. ‘Where’s the company?’

  ‘Well, sir.’ Digby-Brown looked closely at his captain. A hint of colour had returned to his cheeks and his eyes seemed focused. Digby-Brown withdrew his supporting arm but kept it outstretched in case Sloames began to sway. ‘It’s all a bit of a mess, sir. I’m not quite sure where the rest of the company went.’

  ‘What about Mr McCulloch and the Second Company?’

  ‘The last I saw they were heading back towards the Seventh.’

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Jack swore as the pressure of his hand on his spine sent a lance of pain down his legs.

  Digby-Brown took this as the captain’s verdict on the confusion and disorder. ‘I brought as many of the men as I could find.’

  ‘You did? Why?’ Jack’s knees were trembling with the effort of keeping him upright.

  ‘Well, to find you, sir.’

  ‘To find me?’

  ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time, sir. I remembered seeing you directing us then I turned round and you had disappeared. I was sure you couldn’t have gone far.’

  ‘And the men came with you?’

  ‘Willingly, sir. They seemed as keen to find you as I was myself.’

  ‘Dear God in heaven. What a bloody mess.’

  ‘Quite frankly, sir, it’s a fucking disaster.’

  Jack barely noticed Digby-Brown’s uncharacteristic language. They had all been changed by the day’s bitter events. ‘So what did you have in mind to do next?’

  ‘I rather hoped you could tell me, sir.’

  ‘You are right. I can. We are going over there.’ Jack painfully drew his sword.

  Digby-Brown’s eyes widened. His captain was pointing his sword directly at the great redoubt which was now swarming with Russian skirmishers.

  The men Digby-Brown had managed to lead out of the confusion gathered around Jack. He watched them closely. Dodds was there. His lean face was splattered with blood but he had the same look of keen determination he had shown when they captured the redoubt. Next to Dodds stood Welsh Davies, Dawson, Taylor and fifteen other fusiliers from the Light Company. Sergeant Baker was the only non-commissioned officer left and Jack nodded in his direction, acknowledging his presence. There was one face Jack did not recognise, a young fusilier with sunken cheeks and a trace of fluff on his upper lip that betrayed his boyish attempts to grow a moustache.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’

  ‘Flanagan, sir. From Fourth Company.’

  ‘Fourth Company? What on earth are you doing here?’

  ‘I got lost, sir.’ The young fusilier looked around him with huge eyes, nervous of being among strange soldiers even if they did come from his own regiment.

  ‘Well, as of now you’re in the Light Company. We will need all the help we can get.’ Jack scanned the faces that looked towards him. The weight of the responsibility was heavy, the look of expectation in the grimy faces unnerving. But he met their stares calmly and with determination. He would not
let his men down.

  ‘We’re going over there.’ Jack pointed his sword for a second time towards the great redoubt. The men nervously flicked their eyes at it but not one murmur of dissent was uttered.

  ‘We’re going over there because we captured that damn place and I cannot bear to see our efforts wasted. We fought bloody hard to take it and I’ll see my soul rot in hell before I give it back to the damn Russians without a proper fight.’

  Only Flanagan looked aghast, horrified that he seemed to have throw in his lot with a group of lunatics.

  Jack fixed him with a grim smile. ‘You’re a lucky man, young Flanagan. Now you get to fight with real soldiers.’ Jack saw the grins on the grimy faces of his men, just as he had intended. ‘Right, Light Company. Extended order. Flanagan, you stay with me. Let’s move.’

  What was left of the company shook itself into a skirmish line of barely twenty men.

  They were going to attack.

  The retreat of the Fusilier Brigade towards the Alma was chaotic. The redcoats careered down the slope, all cohesion lost in the race for safety. The Russian skirmishers who had moved into the great redoubt poured fire into their backs, gunning down dozens and adding fresh impetus to the rout. The redcoats had achieved so much that day. They had fought hard and won a great victory, yet left unsupported and exposed, the remnants of the three battalions had simply had enough, their willingness to stand and fight exhausted.

  As they retreated, the 1st Division finally advanced. The Guards Brigade and the Highland Brigade had endured hours under artillery fire, pinned down on the far bank of the Alma. They had chafed at their impotency, so when the order finally came to advance, they seized upon it and quickly formed up. The Highland Brigade made up the left-hand half of the 1st Division. They would march up a slope clear of debris, their route well to the east of the path taken by the Light Division’s attack on the redoubt. To the right of the Highlanders marched the Guards Brigade, made up from the most famous of all the regiments in the British army. Resplendent in their huge bearskins and with their colours flying, they looked magnificent. They were the elite of the British army, the Queen’s favourites, and they marched with an arrogant pride.

  They followed the path the Fusilier Brigade had taken earlier. The route was littered with the dead and the dying but despite this, the ranks of the guards were immaculate, the officers and sergeants ensuring the line remained perfectly in alignment.

  Jack was leading his men towards the right flank of one of the battalions of the Guards Brigade, the Scots Fusiliers, aiming to bring his company alongside in time to join in the guardsmen’s assault on the redoubt. His stomach churned yet little of his earlier debilitating fears returned at the idea of a second attack on the vital position. Nothing he could yet experience could possibly be more hellish than what he had already witnessed that day. He led his men with an icy calm, his composure and his determination cleaving his soldiers to him, his firm resolution a rock on to which they could tether their souls.

  The men of the Light Company were moving fast but their comrades in the Fusilier Brigade ahead of them were retreating faster. The frightened and exhausted rabble bowled towards the steady ranks of the Scots Fusiliers which stood like a breakwater across their path.

  ‘Open the files, you bloody fools!’ Jack snarled through gritted teeth. From his vantage point, Jack could see what was about to happen. He pumped his legs as he led his company across the slope, expending strength he did not have in a futile effort to head off the catastrophe that was about to happen.

  Even as he watched, the remains of the Fusilier Brigade clattered into the line of guardsmen, a jarring collision that made Jack wince even from a hundred yards away. The routing troops had one thought in their mind, to get to the rear and to safety. Not even a battalion of fresh guardsmen could stop them. The retreating redcoats drove into the ranks of Scots Fusiliers, their elbows and boots working to force a path through the line. The guardsmen’s cohesion was gone in seconds. They tried to advance but they could make no headway against the retreat; try as they might, they were like so much flotsam caught in a raging maelstrom.

  One of the British army’s prime battalions had been taken out of action before it could even be brought into play.

  Jack halted his men well short of the confusion. They sank to their knees, their chests heaving with exertion, and watched the chaos in silence and growing dismay. Redcoats were pushing, punching and battering each other when they should have been fighting the enemy.

  Jack was exhausted and stood doubled over, his hands on his knees, panting like a hound following a long chase after the fox. Finally, he got enough breath into his tortured lungs to allow him to stand up.

  The retreating men from the Fusilier Brigade were clawing their way clear. More and more won through, while officers, both on foot and mounted, tried to re-establish control, their bellowed orders adding to the pandemonium.

  Like a rock stuck in the middle of a river in flood, the colour party from the Scots Fusiliers stood firm. The routing redcoats were sensible enough to keep a safe distance from the fearsome halberds wielded by the sergeants who guarded the battalion’s colours, defending them even from men from their own side. The colours had become a rallying point for the guardsmen and pockets of men made their way towards the twin flags that flew with pride in the heart of the battalion.

  ‘OK, let’s go,’ Jack ordered his men. He had no option but to make for the one part of the Scots Fusiliers that still had some integrity. ‘Make for the colours.’

  The easiest route was to move up the slope before turning back to follow the last of the retreating Fusilier Brigade down the incline.

  Flanagan loped along beside Jack like an overgrown puppy. As they ran, Jack was forced to keep twisting his neck, trying to keep the colour party in sight while also keeping a sharp watch on the Russians in the redoubt lest they take it into their heads to take advantage of the confusion and push down the slope.

  Jack feared a Russian advance. If the Russians moved fast, they could hit the unformed guardsmen and sweep them back over the Alma with all the ease of a Tartar peasant woman cleaning the dirt from her doorstep. The survivors from the Light Company would be caught between the two groups, a morsel certain to be snapped up by the devouring Russian horde.

  ‘Sir! Beware right!’

  Dodds’s shout made Jack turn his head sharply. Two battalions of the Vladmirsky Regiment had jerked into motion. Jack’s fears were about to become reality.

  Don’t stop! Run, damn you, run!’ Jack bellowed at his men, urging them to increase the pace. They were still fifty yards short of the colour party. Jack saw with relief that the Scots Fusiliers were aware of the danger. The guardsmen were forming a line across the path of the Russian advance, their ranks reassuringly steady. But there were pitifully few of them to stand against two fresh Russian battalions. No more than two dozen redcoats and a handful of officers and sergeants remained of the Scots Fusiliers’ ordered ranks, far too few to stop the Russians.

  Jack’s company covered the last few hard yards with their breath coming in tortured gasps. They staggered to a halt in front of a young guards captain who was waving his sword and roaring for more men to rally to the colours. If he was grateful to see Jack and his ragtag company, he did not show it.

  ‘Who the devil are you?’

  ‘Sloames,’ Jack stammered, his breathing still tortured. ‘King’s Royal Fusiliers.’

  The captain ran a professional eye over the bedraggled men and Jack’s bloodstained and filthy uniform. Whatever he saw must have met with his approval; he reached out a hand and clasped Jack’s shoulder in a firm grip that made him wince. ‘Good fellow. Have your men join the line.’

  Jack looked anxiously towards the redoubt. The Russian column had been halted while its officers fussily dressed the ranks which had become disordered because of
the numerous bodies that littered the ground. The Russian officers’ pedantry gave the British a precious few moments to try to organise their own men and allow more redcoats to rally to the colours.

  Jack’s men took their place in the formation, adding another twenty rifles to the line. Digby-Brown and Sergeant Baker stood behind the Light Company, helping to dress the line, reaching down to grab ammunition or percussion caps from the many corpses that had been dragged unceremoniously out of the way. More men joined and the line slowly extended across the slope. Jack’s hopes rose. If the Russians delayed much longer and if more men could be rallied, then there was every chance the British could hold the advance long enough for more fresh troops to be brought forward. There was still a chance to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

  Major Peacock staggered down the slope among the last of the retreating Fusilier Brigade. His bald head was slick with blood that flowed freely from a deep wound on his crown down into the thin rim of his hair. The fall from Colonel Morris’s charger had done little to settle his terrified wits and the fusilier major shouted continuously as he tottered drunkenly down the slope.

  ‘Fusiliers, retire! Retire! Save yourselves!’

  Redcoats who had been making for the Scots Fusiliers’ colours heard the new order and stopped in their tracks. In the midst of the confusion, there was no voice to countermand Peacock’s orders. In the absence of any other instructions, the men did as they were told and moved away from their colours towards the river.

  Jack watched in horror. Men desperately needed to block the Russian advance were joining the rout and making their way to the rear.

  ‘Digby-Brown, stay here!’

  From somewhere, Jack found the strength to run back up the slope to where Peacock staggered along, his braying voice still urging the men to retreat.

  ‘Sloames!’ The single word exploded from Peacock’s lips, an astonished squeak of recognition. He must have seen the rage in Jack’s eyes, or perhaps the sight of his blood-splattered captain bursting through the retreating mob was too much for his scattered wits. Whatever the cause, Peacock let out a yelp of horror and turned to flee.