by Chris Durbin
As the red-and-yellow figures reached the crest the first of the French guns fired. Down they came like toy soldiers. More came pouring over the top and the horse artillery blasted a gap in their ranks too. It was pitiful to watch. Three times Overton’s grenadiers tried to come to grips with the artillery, and three times they were repulsed. Surely Overton would withdraw, if he still lived.
The toy soldiers gathered for one more try. Holbrooke watched in horror. The depleted band was going to burst over the rim into the face of four six-pounders loaded with canister. Kestrel’s balls were still landing on the point, but an artillery battery was a difficult target and they had little effect after their first broadside.
A trumpet call sounded. Holbrooke realised that he’d been guilty of not keeping abreast of the embarkation. Those were guardsmen now scrambling down the defile – they could only be the rearguard – and that meant the main body of the army was all on the beach. The French infantry was pressing hard on the retreating column. And there was Overton, at the head of his company, running and sliding back down to the beach from the point. What had looked like a failed attack on the battery had in fact been a successful diversion to allow the army to retire in good order. A dozen grenadiers sacrificed for the greater good.
Now the only thing for Holbrooke to do was to get the men into the boats as fast as possible. The rearguard still held the earthworks along the whole length of the beach, and the frigates, sloops and bomb vessels still pounded the top of the escarpment. Nevertheless, the French were on the heights in force now, and their artillery commanded the beach. It was a stalemate, if a bloody one, where the French weren’t yet ready to make an assault on the beach, and the British still had about three thousand men waiting to be evacuated.
The bay was a mass of shipping and boats. It appeared that everything that could float was on the water, down to the captain’s gig of the cutter Grace. Every boat was loading soldiers and stores to the limit of its freeboard. With a sweeping glance Holbrooke could see that the boats weren’t all escaping damage. Up to the north where the artillery fire was hottest, a flatboat and a ship’s yawl were sinking. So far in his sector they were all safe, but for how long?
And the gale still howled, and the waves crashed, and the blown sand whipped across the beach, blinding the grenadiers when they turned to look to seaward.
◆◆◆
‘Here they come,’ said Overton, pointing to a white-uniformed column mustering on the escarpment right opposite the Thirty-Fourth’s position.
Not just here, but all along the heights above the bay there were columns of infantry gathering for a final push down onto the beach. They were being punished mercilessly by the guns of the squadron. The bomb vessels had found the range of the top of the rise and every minute or so the puff of an explosion in the air indicated where a few more Frenchmen lost their lives. It couldn’t be long now before the French commander gave the order to attack. It would soon be more dangerous for his army to hold its position than it would be to charge down onto the thin line of the British rearguard.
Holbrooke looked around. The boats were still hurrying to and fro, the oarsmen hauling on their oars for all they were worth. There appeared to be about a thousand men left on the beach now. The entire rearguard and a few odd units that hadn’t yet made it to the boats.
General Drury still had his horse, the only one left on the beach, and he was galloping towards Holbrooke.
‘Captain!’ He shouted over the sound of the wind, the guns and the drums. ‘I’m going to send half the rearguard back now. I can’t hold the French for long with the numbers I’ll have left. You see they press me on every side.’
‘You’ll need to hold for twenty minutes, General,’ Holbrooke replied, that was the time they had pared it down to for the fleet of boats to make a round trip.
He looked at the boats arriving, many of them just holding now on the beach waiting for their cargoes. One of his own flatboats – he’d come to regard the boats in his sector with proprietorial affection – was struggling, it looked like a part of the bows was missing. As he watched, the stern lifted and the boat capsized, scattering soldiers and sailors into the waves. There was nothing he could do; he tore his eyes away from the pitiful scene.
‘Send your men back as soon as you like, sir,’ he said, and the general galloped away again.
He noticed Edney beside him, a bloodied bandage around his hand. The lad was wild-eyed and filthy; he’d seen horrors today that would stay with him for the rest of his life.
‘Mister Edney. You’re to go back in Mister Treganoc’s next boat.’
He saw the start of a protest.
‘That’s a definite order, Mister Edney, and I don’t have time to discuss it,’ he said harshly.
Then he softened his voice.
‘You’ve done well, Mister Edney, very well, and I’ll be sure to mention you to the commodore. There’s nothing more for you to do here, you can be of more use with Mister Treganoc. Now go!’
He didn’t know how prophetic his words were. Edney turned to run back to the shore then paused. He swung around, removed his hat and said solemnly, ‘aye-aye sir. God go with you, sir.’
◆◆◆
Here they came. Every second man was leaving the earthworks and running back to the boats. The bugles sounded, harsh and imperative, and the enemy infantry columns came scrambling down the defiles towards the beach. It was lucky that they were constrained to four narrow approaches, because they had enough men to roll right over the thinly defended line on the beach. On they came, the drummers in front of the columns dropping back as they came closer, leaving the wickedly gleaming bayonets at the front.
Holbrooke eased his sword in its scabbard and checked the priming of his pistol then replaced it on his right side. There was that sound again, the sound of ripping stitches in old canvas. The sand a few feet away from him erupted in a fountain. That was the work of the battery on the point that Overton’s men had expended so much blood upon. He ran down to the water’s edge. Everything now depended upon the rapid embarkation of the rearguard.
The right column of the French army smashed into Overton’s grenadiers on a narrow front, only four soldiers wide. No thin line could stand against that shock and the grenadiers gave way, falling back towards the beach.
Holbrooke could see Overton. He turned to the trumpeter at his side who blew a few distinct notes. That was the signal for the company reserve, a platoon-and-a- half of fresh grenadiers just fifty yards from the head of the French column. The lieutenant in command waved his sword from side to side and they formed a line. It was line against column now. Each tactic had its advocates for the attack. The French generally preferred the column, it gave more of a shock effect on a small front. The British, on the other hand, preferred the line as it offered the possibility of enveloping the enemy, and that is what happened. The small group of grenadiers ran headlong at the French column just as its momentum was fading. They stopped the French in their tracks, and their wide right wing swung inwards taking the head of the column in its left flanks. Thirty Frenchmen died by the bayonet, not knowing whether to face right or left when they had anticipated charging straight ahead. The right column of the French army was thrown back in gory ruin and the grenadiers summarily bayonetted the few who remained behind the earthworks.
But it was only on the British left that the columns were stopped. All over the beach to the north the earthworks were penetrated, and the French columns were spreading out and encircling the defenders. Bitter little battles were breaking out all over the space between the escarpment and the sea.
Holbrooke saw General Drury, sitting tall in his saddle and slashing down at French soldier. He saw the horse rear up, then fall back and the general disappeared from sight. A mass of white uniforms converged on the spot where he fell, and even from here Holbrooke could see the musket butts rising and falling as the commander of the British rearguard was slain.
Holbrooke was out of the b
attle for the moment, although he knew it couldn’t last. The last wave of boats was just leaving the ships where they had disgorged their cargoes and they were heading back for the beach. In Holbrooke’s sector it was still possible to embark the last of the grenadiers, but he could see that it would be suicide to try over the rest of the beach. He could see his fellow captains wildly waving the boats away. That was their own salvation they were dismissing, theirs and the hundreds of grenadiers and guards still fighting on the beach.
Holbrooke’s boats were in the surf now, just a few yards from him.
‘Now!’ he shouted to Overton. ‘Now or never!’
Overton’s bugler sounded the retreat. The grenadiers of the Thirty-Fourth and the Sixty-Eighth came surging down the beach. There was no drum-beat for their embarkation in the boats, they just threw themselves over the gunwales and into their seats. Most of the flatboats left their gang-boards behind in their haste to get away.
The last of the grenadiers were barely in the boats before the French, realising that they were missing their chance, came rushing down the beach, bayonets levelled.
‘Get in the boat, Overton,’ shouted Holbrooke.
He leaned hard onto the bows of the boat and pushed it off the sand. That was it, all he could do now was try to join his fellows further up the beach.
Then he saw a boat turning back. It was Treganoc’s flatboat with Edney sat beside him with a musket at the ready. The fool was coming back for him, Holbrooke realised. It could be done; the French were still a hundred yards away and coming on cautiously now in the face of half a dozen swivel guns from the boats that were backing off from the shore.
Holbrooke waded out until the water was at his waist. The boat was so close, and then a fountain of water thrown up by a French ball hid it. When it cleared, he saw the boat had slewed to starboard and was pointing away from the beach. Then he saw why. Treganoc was slumped over the tiller, holding it hard over to the larboard side of the boat. Edney was frantically trying to move him, but there was no room in the boat to get any leverage. Holbrooke looked back at the beach. It was all too late. The nearest Frenchmen were just twenty yards away. He waved emphatically to Edney. ‘Go back!’ he shouted.
Holbrooke didn’t even know whether the midshipman had heard him because the next thing that happened was a blow to his side. A musket ball he thought, and then he fell into the waves. The gale roared and the waves tumbled, and Holbrooke swallowed saltwater as his face hit the sand three feet down.
He surfaced and drew a great mouthful of air and water, then the surf took him under again. He felt the bubbles around his face and neck, the sand in his eyes and an overwhelming numbness in his right side. His lungs were on fire. Then he saw the light again and took another breath, agony this time. The grey sky offered no promise and his last image before the waves rolled over him again was of white-clad figures thrusting their glinting bayonets towards him. He was wounded and helpless in the grip of the sea with a relentless enemy closing in on him.
◆◆◆
25: Disaster at Saint-Cast
Monday, Eleventh of September 1758.
Saint-Cast Bay.
Holbrooke was vaguely aware of a blue uniform and a moustachioed face that hung over him; a French voice.
‘Il se réveille. J'ai d'autres devoirs alors. Je vais le laisser avec vous, monsieur.’
The blue uniform was leaving, he had other duties to attend to, that much he could understand.
Holbrooke’s vision was restricted to a narrow tunnel with an opaque ring around it, the colour and texture of the inside of an oyster shell. The blue uniform drifted through the opaque ring and disappeared. Another figure moved into sight, wearing darker clothing; a uniform perhaps, and there was something undefinably familiar about it… But he was so tired, and he couldn’t keep his eyes open. Was this death? If so, it was a peaceful end to existence, and Holbrooke found he didn’t mind it at all, if only he could rest, if only he could remember. He drifted off with a nagging feeling that he’d missed something important, an unfinished thought before the opaque ring closed and light faded.
◆◆◆
When Holbrooke next awoke his eyes opened involuntarily and he had enough recollection of his situation to close them again quickly. He lay still, taking in his surroundings before committing himself to consciousness in this unknown company. For perhaps five minutes he lay still, listening to the sounds around him and not daring to move. He ached all over and he desperately wanted to cough as each shallow breath brought the air into contact with his salt-ravaged lungs. But the pain was nothing to the numbness on the right side of his chest. Pain, as his father often said, was just God’s way of reminding you that you’re still alive, but this lack of feeling, this coldness, was truly terrifying.
The voices were French, a great number of them. He could hear the cries and moans of wounded men, but they weren’t close, and they were muffled. Either the gale had ended, or he was in a shelter because there was no wind over his face. He was alone, he thought, probably in a tent. That would account for the lack of wind and the muted cries. If he was alone, then he could risk opening an eye. He allowed his left eyelid to just flicker slightly, enough to confirm that he was under canvas and that the day was far advanced from when he’d been struggling in the surf. Then he closed it again. Several hours must have passed since he’d been left on the beach, he thought.
He jumped involuntarily when a voice spoke, close at hand now, just inches away perhaps, and it spoke in a guttural, accented French.
‘My dear Captain Holbrooke. You’ve been playing dead for the last five minutes, but even I can see the increased rate of breathing and the movement of your eyes under your lids. Don’t concern yourself, you have a laceration and bruising of the ribs, nothing broken and nothing internal. You’ll live to see old age!’
Holbrooke kept his eyes closed for a few more seconds, composing himself.
‘Major Albach. It’s good to see you, sir.’ He croaked in the French that was their only common language.
Albach thrust Holbrooke’s rolled-up waistcoat further under his head to raise it from the horizontal.
‘The good doctor has washed his hands of you. It seems he has more pressing duties among the truly injured. May I ask how you do?’
‘Well, now that I know this lack of feeling is just bruising,’ he felt cautiously with his hand. ‘Or possibly it’s these bandages, they are a little tight perhaps? In any case, now that I know that I’m not injured, I feel almost well.’
‘I saved your life, you know, and I hope you appreciate it. You’d have been skewered by half a dozen bayonets if I hadn’t been there. I had to give your sword away, I regret to say, to compensate your attackers. I hope it had no sentimental value. I saved your watch but it’s rather wet.’
Holbrooke shook his head. The sword was a workmanlike article that he’d kept when they’d taken Kestrel from the Dutch pirates. His best sword was still in the sloop.
‘But I’m amazed that you showed no surprise when you saw me, Captain. Surely you can’t have been expecting me. After all, when we last met on the Ems, I was returning to the Austrian army.’
‘Would it be possible to have some water, then I’ll be able to talk,’ said Holbrooke, his voice sounding like an old rook in the autumn, cawing at the falling leaves.
Albach reached behind him for a canteen and a metal cup.
After Holbrooke had drained the cup, he leaned to his side and vomited into the sand. He took another cup and felt far more refreshed.
‘My apologies, Major,’ he said as without flinching Albach scooped up the sand and the meagre contents of Holbrooke’s stomach and threw the wet stinking mass out of the tent door.
‘I saw you at Cancale Bay,’ said Holbrooke simply, when Albach returned ‘In the first few days of June, you were setting up a battery outside that little village, La Houle.’
Albach didn’t immediately catch the significance of the first few days and setting up a bat
tery.
‘You must have eyes like a hawk to have distinguished me from so far away. I knew Kestrel as soon as I saw her of course, but that’s a very different thing to recognising a man at nearly a mile, even with a telescope.’
Holbrooke wondered how much he should say. It was entirely possible that the French army would consider his exploits ashore in Cancale Bay as an act of espionage and treat him accordingly. He looked either side to assure himself that he and Albach were alone. It was curious how he trusted the Austrian.
‘For your ears only, Major Albach,’ and he gave the Austrian a most particular look. ‘I was but fifteen yards away from you on the night of the…’ Holbrooke thought quickly, ‘…the second of June.’
Albach’s face took on a comical aspect as he counted backwards from the day that he was sure of, the fifth of June, the date of the British landing at Cancale Bay.
‘Yes,’ he said cautiously. ‘I stayed the night there to advance the work before the guns arrived the next morning.’ He looked at Holbrooke in wonderment.
‘Well, you’ll be distressed to know, my dear Albach, that if I had crawled away a bare minute later than I did, you would have relieved yourself on this very head,’ he declared, laughing.
