“Captain Flashman, are you all right?” I opened my eyes and there gazing down at me was Lieutenant Hervey. “Well, I can see you are not all right, but er… well, at least you are on this side of the church.” He paused, looking embarrassed, and then added in almost a whisper, “They told me you had been taken to the other yard and I have been searching for you there.”
“I have been better,” I told him, “but at least I am alive. How are you, Richard?” I don’t think I had ever used Hervey’s first name before, but this did not seem the time to be formal. He was still in the clothes he had fought in, but one sleeve of his coat was empty with the missing arm across his chest in a sling.
“I broke my arm.” He took a deep breath and struggled to keep his emotions in check as he sat down heavily on the wall beside me. “It is bloody awful, sir. Apart from us there are only two unwounded survivors of our company: Sergeant Evans and Private Harrison. Most of the rest are dead or taken prisoner. I should have stayed with the rest of you. Others fought with broken arms and worse. They found most of the regimental colour on Latham’s body and he had defended it with just one arm.”
I had seen this before of course; survivor guilt they call it. I did not feel the slightest guilt for surviving and if Hervey had come seeking sympathy, well, he was knocking at the wrong door. “If you had stayed then the chances are you would now be dead and it would not have changed a damn thing. You would have been just one more naked corpse up on the hill. Anyway the general ordered you back; you had no choice.”
“Did my uncle really refuse to form a defensive line against the horsemen, because he did not have orders?” asked Hervey quietly.
“Yes, but it was probably too late then anyway. Was he killed or captured?” I asked, thinking that there was a man I would not miss.
“He survived. He is back in the camp now, organising supplies and burials. General Stewart made it back too.”
Mention of camp reminded me that whatever comforts I had were there, including clean clothes and, more importantly, food. My rumbling stomach pointed out that I had not eaten since breakfast the previous day, and that had been interrupted by the start of the battle. Field hospitals then had no notion of what they call nursing now. They cut you, bandaged you and then left you to be looked after by your comrades. At most you might get an orderly doing a round with a bucket of water and a cup. There were three carts roaming the battlefield collecting the wounded for treatment and taking those that had been treated back to their camps. I managed to get a lift on one to where the remnants of the Buffs were gathered.
Instead of a mood of devastation there was a mixture of grief and hope in the camp, and to my surprise six members of my company welcomed me back.
“Welcome back, sir.” Sergeant Evans greeted me with a broad smile. “We are ‘resurrectionists’. Our numbers keep increasing from those thought dead or missing.” Evans led me to a camp chair that had been set by the fire. “Would you like some food, sir?” Cooking on ramrod spits over the fire was the traditional post-battle plat du jour: horse, of which there was a plentiful supply. I noticed that the fire underneath had at some point had been fed with musket stocks as I could see barrels and locks amongst the cinders.
“I thought that only two had made it back,” I queried, gazing at the extra men sitting with their women and children around the fire.
“They were taken prisoner but escaped, sir,” replied Evans. He was about to say more but a woman’s voice interrupted him.
“Our boys saw more of our men taken as prisoner, sir, so more might escape and come back.” I looked around. It was Nelly Morris, whose man was still missing. She sat with her young daughter on her lap and a gleam of hope in her eyes. Other women missing their men murmured agreement but for others there was just a look of sadness.
“We heard about Mr Price-Thomas, sir,” continued Evans. “We will start digging a grave tomorrow.” He looked at Nelly. “We might have more men to help then.”
The same scene must have played out countless times after my previous battles in the peninsula, I reflected as I chewed on the meat. But being a staff officer, I was insulated. There were no wives and children in the ‘family’ of staff officers. While we had casualties, they were only a handful at a time and often due to the reckless bravery of some young blood trying to make a name for himself. But this battle had been a mismanaged disaster from the outset. The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. There was Beresford who dithered rather than make decisions; Stewart who was brave but reckless; and King who even when danger was staring him in the face would not react without orders. They had all bloody well survived while thousands of poor sods under their command had died due to their incompetence. It was only when I fought with someone else in command that I really appreciated the cautious but decisive nature of Wellington as a general.
“I hope they are not our muskets you are burning, Sergeant?” I asked.
“No, sir, these are French ones. We have a stack of them. They were easier to gather than firewood when the men were tired.”
“Have you checked they were unloaded?”
“Not yet, sir. We thought we did last night but two went off, firing into the mud.”
I looked around; Lieutenant Hervey was some yards away talking to one of the newly returned men. “Well, pile on some more and point them in that direction,” I murmured. I gestured towards Major King’s tent just twenty yards away in the much-reduced Buffs’ camp.
“What if one goes off, sir?” whispered Evans.
“Then it will be a tragic accident,” I said grimly.
As it turned out three were loaded and one shot went through the major’s tent and smashed his commode. My only regret was that he was not sitting on it at the time.
I must have eaten a good amount of horse that day and red wine appeared from somewhere. When I retired that evening to my tent I was feeling a lot better. My wounds still ached but nothing more than that. Lucy came to me that night; with everything that had happened it did not seem to matter now if she was seen. She gently bathed my wounds with hot water and cleaned me up so that I looked a lot more respectable in fresh clothes the next morning. Evans was right: by ten o’clock the company had increased to a dozen men with more escaped prisoners. But Private Morris was not among them.
I left them to dig the grave near where the company had been destroyed. With the aid of a stick I hobbled back over the battleground late in the afternoon for the burial ceremony. There were still mounds of bodies lying around, probably unclaimed French ones, but as they were all naked it was hard to say. Even two days after the battle, survivors were still being found.
I found the men gathered about a shallow grave, just three feet deep. It was a long, wide trench for a dozen men to dig, especially as several of them were carrying wounds and they only had three shovels. We had heard wolves during the night and I did not doubt that many of the graves would be opened by animals once the army had moved on. The dead men lay in a long row, two still dressed and the rest now naked. Price-Thomas’s little white body lay at the end, a red gaping hole in his chest and what looked like a sabre cut across his shoulder and neck. At least he would not have suffered long with wounds like that, I thought. Then I saw what lay beside the boy. Boney’s body had also been lifted down into the trench and lay with his head on the boy’s shoulder as he had died with his head on mine.
“We thought that the dog would keep the lad company, sir,” pronounced Evans. “The padre doesn’t like it but he stopped complaining when we told him it was your dog and what it had done to try to save the life of the boy.”
The padre went quickly through the formal service; it must have been one of many he had done that day. I cannot remember any of it beyond staring at the two bodies at the end of the row. A young boy and a dog lying dead together, when they should both have been running happily through some field. I kept remembering the two of them leaning against each other for warmth just a few moments before they were killed. I
t just seemed a bloody waste and affected me far more than all the other deserving men in the row. There was plenty of weeping over the others, though, with women and children taking a last look at husbands and fathers before they were covered with earth. Among them was the young Spanish widow of Private Carter with her three young children clutched about her, while Nelly Morris still stared hopefully at the southern horizon.
Once the brief service was over, the men moved forward to fill in their trench. I turned away and caught a glimpse of Sally and smiled at her. I had to try to cheer myself up; I still had a lot to be grateful for. As if on cue Hervey appeared and grabbed my arm.
“I have good news, sir.”
“Has your uncle sat on his broken commode?”
Hervey grinned. “No and he is still annoyed over the men’s carelessness. It is about Lieutenant Latham, sir. He has been found alive.”
“But I thought he was dead? Did they not find the colour on his corpse?”
“It seems that they did not notice he was still alive. He came around last night and managed to drag himself down to a stream for a drink. He had been stripped while unconscious, but he was recognised and taken to the hospital. They say he is in a bad way but that he might live.”
“You have checked properly that these are all dead, haven’t you?” I asked, pointing at the bodies that were now being covered over. Hervey nodded. “Thank God or Evan’s claim that we are resurrectionists will really come home to roost.”
I had felt fine all that day, and while the chest wound had bled a little I had taken it for granted that I was on the mend. But that evening I came down with a fever. Lucy looked after me for the first two days, but as I got worse Hervey had me taken back to the field hospital. My chest wound was infected and I was sent by wagon with other wounded the seven miles to the nearest hospital in the town of Valverde.
I came as close to dying then as I think I ever did. I drifted in and out of consciousness and my memories of the next few weeks are hazy at best. Some things that I think I can recall definitely did not happen. For example I hallucinated Wellington, naked but for a flowery dressing gown, writing down detailed instructions for Beresford on how to put on his trousers. Other incidents might have occurred. I recall Lucy sitting beside me and weeping at one point, although if she did visit I never saw her again. One thing, though, definitely did take place, and of all the horrors I had seen in Spain, and you must admit I have witnessed my share, this above all the others is seared in my consciousness. Even now I cannot think of it without clamping my legs together with sufficient force to crack a walnut between my knees.
Two orderlies at Valverde hospital had been carrying me on a stretcher when they were called to help a surgeon with a patient. They put me down on the floor and moved into an adjacent room, leaving the door open so that I could see everything. Initially there was just a forest of moving legs, but eventually my fever-addled braid realised that there were four men trying to get a fifth, who was naked from the waist down, up onto a table. The patient seemed fit and able and was shouting that he had changed his mind, given what followed, who could blame him. As his pleas and begging had no effect, the man started fighting like fury, but eventually the four men overcame him and got him up on the table. They started to strap him down and I saw that there were vertical planks at the end of the short table that they strapped his thighs to. The poor devil was crying and pleading now, offering his tormentors money if they would only let him go, but they took no notice. I wondered in horror if they were going to geld him, and realised that with the business end pointed at me I was going to reluctantly get a ringside view of whatever happened next. I turned away so as not to watch, but found myself drawn back in fascination a moment later. The whimpering had stopped but only because they had jammed a leather pad in his mouth. Then the surgeon leaned forward and made a two-inch cut between his balls and his arsehole. The patient screamed in pain, spitting out the pad, but that was nothing to the primal shriek he gave when the surgeon plunged a couple of his fingers into the wound.
“Hold him still, Ferrers, for God’s sake,” shouted the surgeon as his patient writhed about despite the tight strapping that bound him. “I think I felt it,” he added, withdrawing his fingers as two of the orderlies lay their bodies on top of the patient to restrain him. As his victim continued to shriek, the surgeon plunged his fingers in again, seeming to rummage around with them like a miser chasing the last coin in his purse. I think I passed out after that as I don’t remember any more until I woke up in a cot and found the poor sod I had seen operated on lying in the next bed. He was sweating and whimpering in his sleep.
The next morning Guthrie was doing a tour of the hospital. When he reached my bed I asked him about the man still lying unconscious beside me.
“Why do you ask?” enquired Guthrie as he efficiently examined my injuries.
“I saw him being operated on. The orderlies with me had to help hold him down.”
“Ahh.” Guthrie grinned. “Bit shocking when you first see that one, isn’t it?” Without waiting for an answer he continued: “That is Cartwright’s kidney stone patient.”
“Kidney stones. Are they fatal?” I asked.
“Not immediately, but they are very painful.” His keen eyes looked into mine. “If you are alert enough to be interested in such things then I think you are ready to be moved to Lisbon. You can complete your recuperation there.”
Three days later I was loaded onto a wagon train for Lisbon. By then Cartwright’s patient had died of infection and I had made a decision: if I ever suffer from kidney stones, I will wait until the pain becomes unbearable and then, rather than submit to that surgery, I will blow my brains out with a pistol.
Chapter 11
The passage to Lisbon would have been torture for a fit man, never mind one who had already been injured. I joined another one hundred and seventy wounded men in a convoy of ramshackle bullock carts. The only reason I survived that journey was because I was able to walk some of the way. It was the most miserable expedition I ever endured. The worst cases were laid in the bottom of the carts where their groans and wails as the vehicles bumped over the pitted roads, jarring wounds and fractures, were only partly drowned out by the continuous screech of badly greased wheels. Others, like me, were put on stretchers laid over the sides of the cart. This gave some protection from the jolting but left us exposed to the baking sun. Every so often the end of a stretcher would vibrate its way off the edge of the cart and drop us onto the wounded below.
I was one of the fortunate ones in that I had some mobility and tried to walk a mile or so each day to strengthen my weakened thigh muscles, which gradually started to improve. My head wound was healing nicely but the hole in my chest still seeped blood. It gave me the most pain, particularly when the cart bounced over deep ruts.
Each morning the carts would be searched and invariably there would be half a dozen bodies to bury before we got going. After enduring this for a week I began to wonder if there would be any of us left alive by the time we reached Lisbon. I still had some gold sewn into my belt and decided that I would do better recuperating in some quiet Portuguese town on my own. What clinched it was the sight of pretty young thing passing round a jug of cold well water at one town we stopped at.
“Would you like to earn some gold?” I asked her in Spanish.
“How would I do that, señor?” she asked, passing an appraising eye over me. Dirty and unshaven, I was not at my best, but I flatter myself that she saw the potential. There was certainly a flicker of interest in that knowing smile she shot back.
But then some grizzled old man was at her shoulder, asking her what she was about. He glared angrily between the girl and me. “What do you want with my daughter?” he growled. Then his eyes saw the three gold coins in my hand and his expression darkened even further. “Do you think my girl is some common whore that you can buy, you dog?” he roared at me, lunging forward and grabbing hold of my shirt.
“No,�
� I shouted back in Spanish. “Look at me, I am in no state to enjoy a woman.” The fist he had swung back hesitated as he surveyed my blood-stained shirt with the bloodier bandage underneath and the cloth tied around my leg. “I am going to die if I stay jolting on this cart,” I explained. “I want somewhere I can stay for a month to recover in peace and quiet.”
His eyes swung between my imploring face, the coins in my palm, his daughter and then back to me. He licked his lips as he weighed up the risk of letting a strange wounded man under the same roof as his precious daughter and what he could buy with the gold. “One month, señor, and then you go,” he declared finally. I nodded and he held out a hand for the coins. Once he had them, he reached into the cart and picked me up as easily as a mother taking a babe from a cot. Only then did I realise the huge strength of the man. I was thin, having lost a lot of weight while ill, but he carried me with no effort at all. Given his initial suspicions, I decided against demonstrating that I could walk a short distance without undue difficulty.
He told me that the village was called Arraiolos. It was a poor place with a broken-down castle up on a hill. He walked down a side street and put me down on a bench outside a large cottage and went to speak to a woman feeding some chickens in the yard. Looking around, I saw that the house had a forge in an open-sided shed at the end of the building. It seemed that my new host was the village blacksmith. Already I could hear the sound of the cart wheels screeching on to the next stop in their journey and as the sound receded a sense of relaxation spread over my weary bones. I lay back and shut my eyes until I felt the bench shift slightly and creak as someone sat beside me.
“Do you come from Britain?” the daughter asked. “What is it like?”
I smiled at her open curiosity and opened my mouth to reply. But before a sound passed my lips the woman’s voice yelled from the yard beyond. “Maria del Pilar, you come away from that man this instant. You are never to go near him again.”
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