Jack Windrush Collection

Chapter 32

"You"re a lucky beggar," Elliot said, "you were involved in the battle while we had to sit here and watch."

"I never drew my sword or fired a shot," Jack replied.

"But you were there!" Elliot insisted. "You were at the most famous victory since Waterloo!"

Jack looked around him. They stood on the Heights of Alma with the debris of battle all around them. To the right, the French were carefully shifting their wounded to covered ambulances that took them quickly to the shore. Less organised, the British carried their injured bodily. Although Colonel Murphy had graciously permitted his three arabas to be used for that purpose, most British casualties jolted on litters.

As night fell the 113th camped on the battlefield, through darkness punctured by the hideous sounds of the wounded groaning in pain and begging for water and the worse sounds that emanated from the men screaming under the surgeon"s saw.

"Another day survived," Coleman sounded satisfied. He moved a Russian corpse to use as a pillow.

"God bless the old 113th," Thorpe said. "The army doesn"t trust us, so we avoid the battles. We"re the safest regiment in the army."

Jack closed his eyes. That was the last accolade he wished to hear. Battles were hellish things, but he had to try and forge a career, and only the blood sacrifice of brave men would do that. Suddenly he hated this profession he"d chosen, and that his family had chosen for generations. What evil creature had ever devised this terrible game called war?

"A famous victory," Jack repeated his words of the previous day. He saw one Fusilier, minus an arm and a leg, being rolled carelessly onto a litter. "Be careful with that man, damn you!" he yelled.

"No point in shouting at them," Haverdale said. "They"re untrained in that sort of thing. Treat them like beasts, and they will act like beasts."

"You men of the 113th," the Duke of Cambridge rode up, "I want you to dig graves for the dead. Bury them."

"Yes, Your Grace," Murphy said. His face was unreadable as the Duke wheeled his horse and rode away.

"There we go now," Snodgrass said, "we have a new name. We are no longer the Baby Butchers. Now we are the Gravediggers."

The allies were two days working on their casualties before they could pay attention to the Russians. After that length of time, lying unattended in the open, many of the wounded had died.

"Best thing for them," Thorpe said. He nodded to one staring-eyed Russian. He lay in a grotesque squat with his back to a stone wall and his intestines in front of him, now furred with flies. "I mean, how could that lad have lived without his guts? What could the doctors have done for him except stuff them back inside and stitch him up?"

"Their officers don"t care a bugger for them." Logan pushed at the corpse with his foot. "He"s stiff as a board, this one."

The Allies dug mass graves for the dead; twenty-four huge pits into which they placed the smashed and mutilated bodies that had once been soldiers.

"You look after the burial detail, Windrush," Snodgrass said. "I"m sure your men can handle that."

"I"m sure they can sir," Jack agreed. "They tend to handle whatever jobs the army throws at them."

Snodgrass grunted. "Get it done Windrush."

"Strange," Riley paused to look at a long row of Russian corpses. "Just a few days ago these were men like us. They ate and slept and joked and had hopes for the future."

"Aye; hopes to kill the British and get out of the Army," Logan said. "These bastards would have slaughtered us without thinking about it."

"As we would them," Riley murmured. "We"re not that different."

"b****y right we are," Logan dropped his spade and glowered up at the taller man. "We"re b****y British, and they"re b****y Russian. Kill the lot of them and send them to hell."

"Quite." Riley withdrew a pace. "As you say; we are very different from them."

"Aye; and don"t forget it, Riley." Logan stepped closer and pushed his forehead against the bridge of Riley"s nose. "b****y Russian lover, you."

"Right men; enough of that!" Jack nodded to O"Neill, who pushed them apart. "We"ve got a job to do here and bickering amongst ourselves won"t make it easier."

"Sir?" Coleman looked up from the depths of the grave. "How are we not attacking Sebastopol yet? I mean, we beat the Russians and sent them running so how come we aren"t attacking Sebastopol? I mean, that"s why we"re here, isn"t it?"

"We"ll attack when the generals believe it"s right," Jack said. "We don"t have to worry about that sort of thing."

Jack could feel the disgust as the men lifted the broken bodies, some with arms or legs missing, some with faces smashed into unrecognisable pulp, some with their internal organs spilling out, some looking peaceful, as if asleep, but all covered in a black fur of flies. Flies that rose in an angry cloud, to alight on the lips and eyes of Jack"s men as they worked, so they swatted and cursed and spat out insects that minutes before had been burrowing inside the rotting corpses of Russian soldiers.

"I think that"s the lot," Jack waved a hand in a futile attempt to ward off the flies that clouded around him. "I can"t see any others."

"You"re covered in blood, sir," O"Neill pointed out, less than tactfully. "And other things."

Jack looked down at himself. Blood was the least of his worries.

"Sir!" The Bishop called out. "Here"s another one, sir."

"Leave the bastard to rot," Thorpe said.

"They are Christians like us and deserve a Christian burial," the Bishop said.

"I"m not a Christian," Coleman said. "What"s Christ ever done for me? I"ve never met him coming down the street."

"Maybe if you had, you would be a better person." The Bishop ignored the hoots of the others as he hauled the body of the Russian from a shell hole. "There"s not much left of this poor fellow. Just his top half; both his legs are shot away."

"Roll him in a blanket, and we"ll take him to his friends," Jack said.

"He"s an officer," Coleman said. "Should we not bury him separately, sir?"

"We"re all the same in the eyes of the Lord," the Bishop told him. "We"re all God"s children."

The Russian officer stared up at them through wide blue eyes. He was about forty, Jack estimated, but with the uniform torn by battle, he couldn"t even guess at the rank. They brought him to the last of the graves and added his body. Somehow that final man made more impression on Jack than all the others. He had looked utterly forlorn, a man who must have hoped for help as he lay after the battle with his legs smashed and his army defeated.

"He looked very lonely there," Jack said quietly.

"Death is a lonely place," Riley spoke softly. "But life can be lonely as well."

Jack glanced at him. "Especially when one does not quite fit in," he said.

"That is so," Riley said, then looked away. "Sorry, sir."

"No need for apologies, Riley." Jack stepped away. "Right men, get those shovels working and cover these poor lads up. Move it – we"ve got a war to win."

With the earth piled over the eighteen hundred Russian corpses, Jack looked over his men. "You"re filthy," he said.

"So are you, sir," O"Neill reminded.

"Bathing parade," Jack decided. "Down to the beach and we"ll get this stuff washed off us." He nodded to O"Neill. "The men are unhappy, corporal."

They stood in a hunched group, round-shouldered and tired, smeared with blood and worse than blood.

"Heads up!" O"Neill roared. "You are British soldiers."

"We"re b****y gravediggers," Coleman said.

"Somebody had to do it; the job fell to us, and that"s all there is to it," O"Neill said. "Now heads up and march!"

"Sing!" Jack shouted. "Sing out loud!"

They were silent, stubborn as they marched, until Riley began, with words unfamiliar to Jack:

As a fair one of England was musing by the rolling sea,

As a fair one of England was musing by the rolling sea,There came a wayworn traveller and landed by her side,

There came a wayworn traveller and landed by her side,That goddess of the British throne, whose robes was rich and costly,

That goddess of the British throne, whose robes was rich and costly,Which struck the stranger with amaze, and thus to her he cried—

Which struck the stranger with amaze, and thus to her he cried—One by one the others joined in, picking up the words that they knew and humming the rest.

"O lady fair, why wander here, haste your country to cheer,

"O lady fair, why wander here, haste your country to cheer,Your enemies with evil eyes their threats of war declare,

Your enemies with evil eyes their threats of war declare,So man your ships with hardy tars, they will

So man your ships with hardy tars, they willBoldly gain your cause,

Boldly gain your cause,Arouse up little England, and stop the Russian bear."

Arouse up little England, and stop the Russian bear.""Little England be buggered," Logan spat. "There"s more Paddies and Sawnies here than anything else."

The others cat-called his words and in a few moments they were happily exchanging national insults, Scots against English, Irish against Welsh, pushing and jostling together like old friends or soldiers in any regiment in the British Army.

Avoiding the acres of wounded who lay on the beach waiting for transport to Scutari; Jack led his men to a nearly secluded cove where the sea broke silver on a strip of shining shingle. There were no bodies in the surf, no sick men or discarded military equipment to mar the illusion of tranquillity. It seemed very peaceful, with a seabird screaming and the water pristine and clear.

"Right men: strip, wash the filth off your clothes and bathe. We are soldiers, not Resurrection men."

"I"m not sure about that," Coleman said, "I"ve burked a few gulls in my time."

Jack pretended not to hear. For a second, he wondered if it was bad for discipline for the men to see an officer undress, decided that they would see a lot worse on campaign and ripped off his uniform. The kiss of clean air on his bare skin was refreshing, and he stepped into the sea.

"In you come, men!"

Some of the men were shy about stripping, others blasé while most turned their backs until they got into the water. Within a few moments they were larking and splashing around, so Jack had a mental image of his school days when life was good, he believed he was rich, and he had joined his schoolfellows in the river. The accents were different, the men a few years older, but the spirit was the same.

He shook his head; those days were long gone now.

It was quite a domestic scene, a score of n***d men engaged in washing their uniforms, exchanging crude banter and raucous laughter under the sky of an enemy country. It was hard to imagine they were only three miles from a scene of s*******r and agony, and even now there were hundreds of sick and wounded only quarter of a mile along the coast.

Jack noticed Coleman and Thorpe, with Ogden and Logan in a muttering huddle just above the tide. Coleman looked up when he saw Jack and gave a greasy smile.

"What"s happening, men?" Jack waded through the surf. "You"re all very intent there."

"Nothing, sir." Coleman put both hands behind his back as the others scattered along the beach.

"Come back here!" Jack felt more like a schoolmaster than a pupil as he called his errant men together. They came reluctantly, with guilty grins or even more tell-tale, a total lack of expression.

"Hand it over, Coleman!" Jack put out his hand.

"What, sir?"

"Whatever it is you"re concealing behind your back. Come on now: hand it over."

"It"s nothing, sir." Coleman produced both hands but was unable to stop the small sound of something landing on the shingle.

"Step away, man!" Jack ordered.

O"Neill pushed Coleman aside. A rough handkerchief lay on the shingle, wrapped around something. Jack picked it up and unfastened the bow on top. There were a few copper coins inside.

"These are Russian," Jack said. "You"ve been looting."

Coleman nodded. "Everybody does it," he said, defensively. "Officers as well as the men."

Jack remembered the two golden statues he"d removed from the Burmese temple. He felt the other men crowd around him and knew they waited to see what he would do. Officially, looting was probably frowned on. He could put Coleman on a charge and Snodgrass would probably have him flogged. But that would be grossly unfair if others were equally guilty and considering that he"d done the same thing in Burma.

"Where did this come from?" He already knew the answer.

"The Russian bodies," Coleman muttered. "We never stole from the wounded," he said, "only the dead and they don"t need it. Besides, it would have only got buried with them so where"s the harm?"

Where indeed? Soldiers had always looted; it was one of the traditions of war, one of the very few perquisites they had for risking life and limb for the glory of Empire and the profit of industrialists and company shareholders who took none of the risks and pocketed all the profits. Profits, Jack told himself, which were ten thousand, no, a hundred thousand times more than this small collection of copper coins. Profits that men such as Coleman would never see in their lifetime and could probably not comprehend. And what was the difference between taking a few coins from a dead enemy and stealing carts from live Allies?

"The Duke of Wellington used to hang looters," he said.

Coleman shifted uncomfortably. Shorn of his brave uniform he looked scrawny, a battered child of the slums with a concave belly and gaunt face. The other men were in little better physical shape, thin, some with ribs showing through their skin, while Ogden was brawny, with a bare patch on his hairy chest. Jack frowned, seeing the mark of a brand there: BC – bad character. He had been in the army before he came to the 113th. That was worth knowing.

Jack realised that he"d been staring at Coleman for a full minute while the thoughts ran through his head. The poor man looked terrified. He raised his voice. "Bring me all that you have stolen!"

One by one the men shuffled forward and put their takings on the ground at his feet. They were all roughly the same; a few copper coins or a single silver coin; a leather pocket-book; a battered silver watch; a silk handkerchief that must have come from an officer and a small notepad.

"Did you divide this all fairly?" Jack asked.

"Yes, sir," Thorpe replied.

"Who was in charge?"

"I was, sir," O"Neill said.

Jack took a deep breath. He could hear the hushing of the sea above the nervous breathing of the men. "I thought as much." He lifted the notepad and ruffled through the pages. "Where did this come from?"

"That Russian officer that the Bishop found, sir," Thorpe said and added generously, "you can have it if you like."

"Thank you." Jack did not hide the sarcasm although it was probably wasted on these men. He looked around at the apprehensive faces; he was their officer, responsible for their mental and moral well-being as much as for their physical behaviour. "You all know that looting is not allowed—"

"Oh! Look at all the n***d men!"

The female voice had a startling effect on the 113th. Soldiers who had faced all the horrors of the Burmese jungle and were ready to face Russian bayonets and artillery started covering themselves and turned away from the two women who slowly rode past.

Jack had a brief glimpse of a strikingly handsome dark-haired girl and her older, frowning companion, and then he reached for his uniform trousers and began to haul them on. Still wet from the sea, they clung to his legs, so he staggered, reached out for support, realised he"d grabbed hold of the rump of the older woman"s horse, let go and fell full on his face on the shingle. He rolled over on his back, still fighting to pull up his tight trousers.

"Oh, don"t get dressed on our behalf," the dark-haired beauty ran her gaze over him.

The older woman kicked in her spurs, so the horse jerked forward. "Come along Helen. There is nothing for us here. We have no desire to witness a r****e of undressed men."

"On the contrary…" Helen"s eyes darted from man to man before returning to Jack as he struggled with his half-mast trousers.

"Come along." Taking hold of the reins of Helen"s horse, the older woman guided her away. Helen looked over her shoulder, caught Jack"s eye and smiled. He pulled up his trousers, too late to protect his modesty and unable to restrain the flush of utter embarrassment that crossed his face.

"Well, sir?"

Jack realised that the men had recovered from their panic at the sight of the women and had reassembled around him.

"Get your clothes on," he said, "in case some other women come cavorting past. We"re meant to be fighting the Russians, not providing free entertainment to every blasted female in the Crimea."

"Sir," Coleman said, "about the looting, sir."

Jack looked along the beach. The horsewomen were a good thirty yards away. Dark-haired Helen turned again and waved.

"Looting?" He dropped the notebook. "If you find anything that might be of military value let me know. Otherwise, make sure I don"t catch you again."

Somehow, he knew that had been the correct decision. It may not have been the decision that officers in other regiments would have made, and certainly, his father would not have condoned such actions in the Royal Malverns, or Colin Campbell with the Black Watch, but for these men of the 113th, it was right.

And that dark-haired girl, Helen, possessed the most charming of smiles.