Bugles at Dawn
Charles Whiting
© Charles Whiting 1990
Charles Whiting has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 1990 by Century Hutchinson Ltd.
This edition published in 2015 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
Table of Contents
PART ONE: FLIGHT TO INDIA
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
PART TWO: AMBUSH
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
PART THREE: BOLD’S HORSE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
PART FOUR: DEATH AT BURRAPORE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
And men in desert places, men... Abandoned, broken, sick with fears.
John Masefield
PART ONE: FLIGHT TO INDIA
ONE
Now it was almost evening.
Still the cannon on the ridge thundered. Over and over again the matches flared and the breeches of the cannon belched scarlet flame. But as the choking gunsmoke drifted across the front of the men waiting tensely on the ridge, it seemed that the battle for the centre was beginning to abate at last. Would it be their turn now?
All this long June Sunday, the line of Allied troops defending the ridge which barred the roads to Brussels had been holding off the French as they had come storming up the ridge, crying ‘Vive l’Empereur!’
First it had been the massed French cavalry, then their blue-coated infantry, and then infantry once again. Here and there the Allied line had broken. Once the Germans had begun pulling back in panic but had been beaten back to their positions by British dragoons wielding the flat of their sabres. Then the Belgians had collapsed altogether and had fled back to their capital ten kilometres away, bearing with them their tales of woe and defeat. Somehow Wellington had restored the line.
Now the weary troops, who had been marching and fighting for three long days on a few crusts of bread and a pannikin of soup, if they were lucky, kept looking at the darkening sky to the east. The French had to come soon; for they never attacked at night!
All along the ridge above Hougemont they sat in their squares, muskets at the ready. In the centre were their wounded, with the sweating surgeons, their shirts and breeches red with blood, working all-out while the orderlies plied the wounded with looted spirits, or laudanum. Wellington’s veterans from the Peninsula did not seem to hear the cries of the wounded. They puffed phlegmatically at their little clay pipes or counted the silver francs they had already looted from the dead French to their front, sprawled out in the muddy grass like bundles of abandoned rags. But the veterans were few.
The men who made up Colonel Colborne’s Fifty-second Regiment of Foot and their neighbours, General Maitland’s Brigade of Guards, were mostly eighteen-year-olds bribed with the King’s shilling and a few pints of ale by the recruiting sergeants to join the thinning ranks of Wellington’s army. After twenty years of war against the French, fit men were in short supply. Most of the ‘men’ who would fight the last battle of this long bloody Sunday had been civilians only weeks before.
Ensign O’Hara frowned at the thought and looked at the heavily armed cavalrymen slumped in their saddles, sabres at the ready, just behind the Fifty-second’s square. He knew why they were positioned there, staring warily at the infantry with red-rimmed eyes. Their principal task at the moment was not to fight the French. It was to beat back the infantrymen if they broke the square and fled. The Duke of Wellington knew just how thin his front was here at Hougemont and Napoleon still had his principal reserve — the Imperial Guard — uncommitted to the battle. When the Guard marched, it was muttered by the ashen-faced recruits, Old Boney always won. Nothing could withstand the charge of the Imperial Guard. NOTHING!
O’Hara’s frown deepened at the thought. He had only been with the old Fifty-second three months, but he was immensely proud of the regiment in which his own father had served. It would be a terrible disgrace if it broke its square. He straightened his shoulders, trying to look manful and determined, his handsome face set. It was something he had learned from his dying father: ‘Jean-Paul,’ he had said in his soft Connemara accent, ‘the men must fear ye more than the enemy ... Make ‘em fear ye and they’ll follow ye to hell and back.’ And he added cynically, ‘especially if there’s any prospect of loot, me boyo!’
Thrusting his sword across his shoulder, O’Hara started to pace his section of the square, an eighteen-year-old boy trying to bolster up the courage of other eighteen-year-old boys facing their first real action. Of course, he knew as an officer and gentleman he should feel no pity, no emotion, for these pale-faced youths. Soldiers had no rights; they were worse off than convicts. They had to obey, even when frightened out of their wits; because if they didn’t, they would be lashed to a cannon wheel and flogged mercilessly. The Duke of Wellington was a remorseless advocate of the lash and the cat-o’-nine-tails.
But O’Hara knew that it was only starvation that had forced most of them into the army in the first place, especially the Irish recruits who made up most of the ranks of the Fifty-second. These Irish peasants turned soldier had lived off potatoes all year round, rarely seeing a piece of meat from one month to the other. Existing in their earth-floored hovels, eyes stung by the persistent peat-smoke, not even possessing a candle to lighten the fetid darkness, these Irish jackeens had been gulled into accepting King George’s shilling so that the family would have one less mouth to feed.
The young ensign frowned again. When he did so, his dark handsome face, set against the curly jet hair he had inherited from his French mother, looked much older. Already there was that droop of the lips which indicated a man who had been disappointed by life. But then, he told himself, he was little better off than those poor scared boys from the bogs. Was he not an orphan with not a penny to his name save his ensign’s pay, with no prospects save those he might earn by military merit? He was in no position to buy another commission. Why, if Fate had it so, he could remain an ensign till he was sixty, not like those lordly Guards officers of Maitland’s Brigade. All of them, with their splendid uniforms, gold-pommelled swords and affected airs, could afford to buy them a whole regiment if they so desired. Whereas he was just one jump ahead of the most lowly private in the whole of the Fifty-second Foot.
‘I say, you there — fellah!’ The voice was supercilious and instinctively O’Hara’s skin crawled.
He turned round slowly, knuckles whitening on his sword hilt.
A pompous Guards officer, perhaps a couple of years older than himself, was staring at him, hands on hips, looking more like an angry housewife than a soldier.
‘Yes?’
The Guards captain wet his lips. ‘Pray have the goodness to say “Captain” when you address me, fellah,’ he drawled, while behind him his fellow officers grinned at what they saw as the discomfiture of this young ensign from a lowly regiment of the line.
‘Captain,’ O’Hara said reluctantly, knowing the type: one of those puffed-up dandies who toadied to the Prince Regent and employed bullies to carry out their dirty work. The pudgy Guards captain with his gold epau
lettes and ornate fur busby was one of that kind all right. ‘What is it?’
The Guards officer was in no hurry. He took out a golden snuffbox, ran a line of the contents along his hand, then delicately breathed it in before sneezing in an affected manner and saying, ‘Pray, sir, what are you doing walking in front of my part of the square, eh? You’re a demned Fifty-Second fellah, aren’t you? Just an ordinary infantry regiment. Can’t you see that we are the Guards, what?’
His fellow officers laughed and one of them hooted, ‘I say, Rodney, you are giving it him hot, eh?’
O’Hara coloured, although he felt nothing for the other officer but contempt. The gold braid and rich regimentals could not disguise a rich poseur whose father had probably bought him a captaincy for the summer campaign so that he could retire to Brighton for the winter season with the Prince Regent. He looked boldly at the Guards officers. ‘I did not know, sir,’ he snapped coldly, blue eyes sparkling dangerously, ‘that it was not allowed to walk the front of a Guards square. After all, we are all British officers, even if we are only members of a line regiment.’
Now it was the turn of the Guards officer to flush. ‘What demned insolence!’ he snorted, stamping his foot like a petulant child. ‘Why, sir, if we were back in town I’d have my bullies deal with the — ’
‘HURRAH ... HURRAH ... HURRAH!’ The burst of cheering, rippling along the lines cut into the Guardsman’s outburst and the two of them turned to see the cause, as the Guards and then the infantry of the Fifty-second took off their bearskin and shakos and placed them on their bayonets.
A figure that O’Hara had only known from lampoons and caricatures was slowly trotting along the ridge line, followed by a handful of staff officers in cocked hats, some of them with bandages around their limbs and foreheads. There was no mistaking the lean figure of the Duke of Wellington, riding his chestnut Copenhagen. Although he wore civilian clothes — buckskin breeches, frock coat and blue cloak — the hook-nosed Allied commander was every bit a soldier: a man obviously used to giving orders — and having them obeyed.
He came level with the Guards officers. Hurriedly they raised their swords and saluted him. Casually he acknowledged them with his doffed hat and reined in his horse. He nodded to the Guards Captain and said with just a trace of the Irish brogue of his youth, ‘Good evening to you, young Hartmann. Your father will be proud that you are with us this day, I do not doubt.’
‘Thank you, Your Grace,’ the other man fawned. ‘Let us hope that we may meet them this evening before it is too late, and show them what the Guards are made of, sir.’
The Duke of Wellington looked down at the officer with hard, knowing eyes, as if not particularly impressed by what he had just heard. ‘Never fear, Hartmann, you shall give them a taste of the steel before this day is out.’
Out of the corner of his eye, as he stood rigidly at the salute, O’Hara sensed that Captain Hartmann of the Second Foot Guards didn’t quite like that reference to ‘a taste of the steel’. For all his bluster, the fellow might well be a coward.
Next moment he dismissed the idle thought as the Duke raised himself in his stirrups and cried, ‘Now listen you to me, all you brave fellows! Boney is almost defeated. All this day he has tried and tried again and in each case, other brave fellows like you have defeated him.’ He searched their ranks with a gimlet eye, as if seeking weakness, while over at the French side the cannon started to thunder once more, muting the sudden rattle of the kettle drums sounding the rappel. O’Hara felt his blood thrill at the sound: the French were coming!
‘Now it is in your hands, fellows. Boney will try again. There is no doubt of it.’
As if to confirm his words, from the other side of the ridge there came a great hurrah, followed by ‘Vive l’Empereur Vive Napoleon!’ and then ‘En avant ... en avant!’
Wellington noted the cry, knowing that it was the Emperor of the French giving the final salute to his Imperial Guard before they advanced into battle. These were the magnificent veterans of the battles of Jena, Wagram and Austerlitz, who hitherto had never been conquered in combat. Now they were to meet his untried levees — youths from the industrial slums of the north and the bogs of Ireland.
His eye fell on the tall young ensign of the Fifty-second Regiment of Foot and liked well what it saw. Boys of that calibre never turned their heel upon an enemy. They would hold, he was sure of that. He raised his voice as the first balls from the French guns started to beat down once more on his ridge line and cried, ‘Make ready, boys. Here they come!’
‘Never fear, yer honour!’ Private O’Holloran, the wit of the Fifty-second, called out as the ridge line started to disappear in a cloud of gunsmoke. ‘Them frog-eaters’ll nivver run the good old fifty-second off’n this hill.’ Then his voice sank to a mournful Church-of-England dirge: ‘And may the Lord above make us thankful for what we are to receive ... Amen!’
There was a burst of laughter and the Duke raised his plumed hat once more, as the sergeants started to bellow out their orders and the roll and tap of the kettle drums grew closer: ‘Load ball ... Fix bayonets ... Load and ram ... cock yer locks ... ’
In an instant all was controlled confusion, as the Guards and the men of the Fifty-second rose from the grass, broke their squares and under the orders of their officers, with the sergeants laying about them wherever they perceived tardiness, formed a triple line, the front rank kneeling, their muskets already raised, while the French cannon thundered. As they tensed, frozen into their positions on the ridge, with the fog of war weaving in and out of their ranks, they might have seemed to some casual observer like ghosts glimpsed through a drifting mist. Now even the cannonballs whizzing across the fields were forgotten, as the massive French force grew ever closer, their approach heralded by flaring trumpets, rattle of side drums and a steady tread.
A cannonball came hurtling, black and deadly, out of the smoke. It headed straight for the line of the Fifty-second. Instinctively a man here and there ducked as it whizzed overhead. ‘For shame! For shame!’ the others cried angrily at such conduct. They had been drilled never to duck and vented their anger on the momentary cowards. Despite his tension, O’Hara grinned softly. Trust the old Fifty-second, he told himself. It was a good regiment. There’d be no cowards in it by this evening. Then he concentrated his attention on his front. Old Boney never risked his last reserve, the Imperial Guard, unless he was absolutely sure of victory. What was to come would be a fight to the death.
The blare of the French trumpets and the urgent rattle of the kettle drums grew in volume as they sounded the pas-de-charge. Thousands of feet were just beyond the ridge now. They’d breast it at any moment. He tightened his grip on his sword and found that his palm was wet.
A salvo of grape struck the line of the Guards. Men went down screaming in a confused mass. ‘Surgeon!’ someone yelled angrily and a moment later another voice, equally angry, bellowed, ‘Damn you, you idle fellows, will you not dress your ranks — this very instant!’
O’Hara risked a quick look out of the corner of his eye. Already the young Guardsmen were shuffling their feet as if back in London on parade, dressing their ranks, filling the gaps left by the dead and wounded. He noted, too, that Hartmann had gone white under his busby. Suddenly he realized the man’s fear, and looked away. The sight of a craven coward at this moment was not fitting.
Suddenly they were there! Thousands of them in tightly packed columns, their immaculate blue uniforms topped by massive fur bonnets. Each column was one hundred and twenty men broad, followed by rank after rank of gigantic guardsmen, urged on by officers who waved silver-bladed swords in Gallic excitement.
‘Holy Mother o’ God,’ O’Holloran cried, ‘did ye ever see the bleeding like? They’re all bloody giants!’
‘Silence in the ranks there!’ Colonel Colborne called severely, his eyes fixed front, as the Imperial Guards stamped in their thousands up to the ridge, with the very ground seeming to tremble beneath them.
O’H
ara swallowed hard, sudden doubt flashing. Would they be able to stop these victors of every battlefield in Europe?
Now the trumpets had ceased and the rattle of the kettle drums, too. The only sound was the heavy rhythmic tread of the Imperial Guard, each man in perfect alignment and step. O’Hara hardly dared breathe; the tension was too great. Something — anything — had to happen soon to break it.
Abruptly the Duke’s voice was heard. ‘They’ll soon attempt to form a line for the charge, lads!’ he called, standing up in his stirrups, tugging at the bit to keep Copenhagen from bolting. ‘Maitland, it’s your time.’
‘Your Grace,’ General Maitland called back, raising his sword in salute, whether to the French or the Duke no one ever knew.
The French halted some ninety yards away from the British line. In the front column their officers brought up their swords in salute to their enemies and gallantly kissed the blades. O’Hara watched fascinated.
‘Stand to, you Guards,’ the Duke yelled. ‘Make ready!’
The young Guardsmen raised their muskets.
‘Level!’ Maitland cried.
Each man squinted along the length of his musket, finger crooked around the trigger.
‘Vive l’Empereur’ The massive cheer rose from ten thousand French throats.
Standing bolt upright in his stirrups in full view of the French sharpshooters, the Duke of Wellington waved his hat in a wide circle once and cried. ‘FIRE!’
TWO
The impact of that first volley was frightening. For one moment the whole battlefront disappeared in a cloud of gunsmoke — to clear an instant later. O’Hara gasped at the terrible havoc wrought by the Guards’ salvo.
French soldiers had fallen everywhere, hundreds of them. At that range, even the worst shot among the Guards had been unable to miss. The dead lay in heaps or lined up in neat ranks just as they had in life, their powder-blue uniforms already turning scarlet, while the wounded and dying screamed for help and their mothers.
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