The Warrior's Path Collection

Chapter 9

Thirty-one-year-old Simon Fraser of Lovat, son of ‘the Old Fox’ and un-blooded veteran of the 1745 Rising, rode into Glen Cailleach with his back straight and his head held high, as befitted the chief of a clan, albeit one without a square inch of land to his name.

“Gather the men,” he said quietly to the tacksman who hurried to greet him. “I wish to speak to them.”

Fraser’s word was passed around from clachan to clachan and man to man until eventually, it reached Mary MacKim.

“Your time has come, Hugh,” Mary said.

“Yes, Mother.”

“Fraser himself has summonsed the men,” Mary said. “That can only mean one thing. He is leading the clan to war.”

Hugh nodded. There was no question of refusing the summons. He would follow the chief, as his brother had done, and his father, and his grandfather’s father’s father. He was a MacKim, a man of a sept of the Frasers; there was no more to be said. It did not matter who they were fighting; it only mattered that their chief required their broadswords.

The men of the glen hurried to the old gathering place at Clach Mor, the ancient Standing Stone that legend attributed to the druids but which had thrust toward the damp sky for aeons before any druid’s foot had trodden the land. From youths of fifteen to grey-bearded men who had faced Red John of the Battles on the field of Sheriffmuir, they gathered, fully aware that they may never return to their homes again.

“Men.” Fraser looked around at them without dismounting from his horse. “King George is engaged in a just war against the King of France. I am raising a regiment to support his cause and I expect all the young men aged between eighteen and thirty to join. You will accept the King’s Shilling at Inverness. God save the King.”

“God save the king,” a few of the men repeated. Lachlan MacPherson, a man of the same age as MacKim, pressed his mouth tightly shut.

“I’m not fighting for King George,” he whispered. “Not ever.”

“Three cheers for the king!” somebody else cried, and a handful of the men joined in.

Simon Fraser raised his hat in response. “I praise your loyalty,” he said, without a trace of irony. “Now, you have your opportunity to prove it.”

“Three cheers for the chief!” the same voice sounded, and the men cheered, louder than before.

Nodding once, Fraser wheeled his horse and rode away. He had said all that was necessary for him to say. Few of the men cared about King George or his quarrel with the King of France; they would join the regiment and follow their chief wherever he led, and whichever king he decided to support.

“Be a man, Hugh,” Mary MacKim said. “Remember you are a MacKim and remember the blood oath you have sworn.”

“Yes, Mother.” MacKim glanced at the Bible, which they had dug up as soon as the last redcoat retreated from the glen.

“You are bound by your word.” Mary MacKim had aged in the years since her older son had died. Her dark eyes, now deep-set between a network of furrows, seemed to bore into MacKim. “You have learned English, and you know how these people live, talk and think. Now you must hunt and kill the men who murdered your brother.”

“Yes, Mother.” Revenge had dominated MacKim’s life for the past eleven years and not a day had passed when his mother had not reminded him of the oath he had taken. At the age of twenty-one, MacKim was wiry rather than muscular, no taller than average height, but intense and better educated than most of his peers.

“Now go, Hugh.” Mary gave him a gentle push in the back. “Go and do your duty.”

Lifting his small bundle of belongings, MacKim stepped out of the cottage with its heather-thatched roof and the familiar scent of peat smoke. He did not know when, if ever, he would see it again. When he looked around, his mother stood at the door, with one hand lifted in farewell. She was alone now, yet MacKim knew she would never be lonely in the glen. The people would look after her, as they always looked after their own. Turning away, he began the trudge toward Inverness with his road and his destiny before him.

With his bright red sash over his left shoulder and the white lace cord on his right shoulder, it was evident that the tall sergeant was a soldier of distinction. Although he must have been approaching middle age, he walked with a youthful spring as he inspected the curious line of recruits, shaking his head as if unable to believe what he saw.

“I am Sergeant Dingwall.” He spoke in clipped Gaelic. “You will address me as Sergeant, or as Sergeant Dingwall.” He stopped directly in front of MacKim. “You may think of me as your father if you ever knew that unfortunate man, and you will treat me as God for I have the power to have you shot, to flog you to b****y ribbons or even to make your life pleasant.” Dingwall’s smile could have frightened the Brigade of Guards. “Welcome to the 63rd Foot, Fraser’s Highlanders.”

MacKim watched Sergeant Dingwall and listened to every word. He was determined to be the best soldier he could be.

As Dingwall hefted his halberd, MacKim shuddered, remembering the Grenadier corporal pinioning Ewan with a similar weapon. The sergeant stepped to the red-haired youth beside MacKim and thrust the halberd at his breast. “Stand straight, my fine fellow, or I will tie you to a tree until you learn how to stand.”

The man flushed scarlet and pulled himself erect.

“That’s better,” Dingwall said. “Now you look something like a man, if nothing like a soldier, even a first day, shambling recruit soldier. What’s your name?”

“Neil Cumming, sir.”

“Sergeant,” Dingwall said, softly.

“Sorry, Sergeant.” Cumming looked along the line of recruits for support. MacKim avoided his gaze.

Nodding slowly, Dingwall took hold of Cumming’s nose and pulled him forward. “I ordered you to call me Sergeant, Cumming, and you called me sir. You will say sir only to officers who have His Majesty’s commission. Now, as from this day, you are my eyes and ears in the company, Cumming. You will tell me what is happening and if anybody breaks the law, my law, you will inform me, or I will sit you astride the wooden horse and have you dragged over stony ground until you beg me to shoot you. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

Pushing Cumming back to his place, Sergeant Dingwall continued in a roar that MacKim thought people could hear twenty miles away in Glen Cailleach. “You are the most useless bunch of bare-arsed farmers I have ever seen in my life. My job,” he said, “is to turn you into soldiers somehow, although only the good Lord above knows how.” He shook his head again, sighing deeply at the burden that higher authority had passed down to him. “Your job,” Dingwall continued, “is to obey every order I utter, instantly and cheerfully.”

With the unfamiliar long red coat over his new waistcoat, and the kilt hugging his hips, MacKim was supremely uncomfortable, already hating the bonnet he had c****d above his left eye. The square-toed, iron-studded shoes pinched his toes, the straps of the knapsack cut into his shoulders, and the musket was long and cumbersome. Also, the broadsword was burdensome on his left hip and the bayonet awkward in front. Used to dressing lightly from spring to autumn, MacKim felt constrained by the unfamiliar layers of clothes and carrying such an array of weapons.

“This is your musket.” Sergeant Dingwall held the weapon up to ensure the recruits saw it. “We know it as Bess, or Brown Bess.”

MacKim nodded to show he was listening.

“Bess weighs fourteen pounds and fires a one-ounce leaden ball that can kill at fifty yards and wound at up to a hundred. It has a larger bore and is more reliable than the French equivalent and in the hands of a trained infantryman, can fire three times in a minute.”

MacKim remembered the sound of musketry at Drummossie Moor that men now called Culloden. He had already seen the result of three volleys a minute on a mass of advancing men. A thousand muskets in the hands of trained men would create devastation.

“Bess is a flintlock musket,” Dingwall continued, “so-called because she uses a flint to create a spark. The spark ignites gunpowder, which explodes inside your musket, propelling the lead ball in the direction of the enemy. Keep your flints sharp – the sharper the flint, the brighter the spark and so the less chance of a misfire.”

MacKim listened. He wanted to learn everything.

“To load Bess, you need this.” Dingwall held up a small, paper-wrapped packet. “This is a cartridge that contains a charge of powder and a lead ball. You will rip open the paper, either with your fingers or your teeth and pour some of the powder into the pan in the firing mechanism, here.” He indicated the position at the lock of the musket.

MacKim nodded.

“The rest of the powder goes down the barrel. Then you fold the paper and stuff it into the barrel, with the lead ball on top. Do you understand, MacKim?”

“Yes, Sergeant.” MacKim started when Dingwall shouted his name.

“Good man. Show me.” Dingwall indicated that MacKim should stand in front of the other recruits. “Here is a cartridge.” He passed over the paper package and stepped back.

Ignoring the bitter taste of the black powder, MacKim ripped the paper open with his teeth and followed the sergeant’s instructions.

“Good.” Dingwall nodded. “Now you use the ramrod, that’s the long metal rod under the barrel of your musket, to force the ball and wad down the barrel.”

Taking MacKim’s musket, Dingwall demonstrated slowly. “When that’s done, you aim at the advancing enemy and pull the trigger. You will notice the recoil as Bess ejects the ball to about a hundred yards on a good day and a lot less if it rains, which occasionally happens in Scotland.”

The recruits gave a nervous laugh at the sergeant’s attempt at humour.

“Now, you fire it, MacKim. Prove to me how clever you are.”

“Yes, Sergeant.” MacKim brought the musket to his shoulder. “What shall I fire at?”

They stood in the open countryside outside Inverness, with the grey-green hills of the Highlands in the distance and the river Ness surging blue at their backs, lapping at a group of small islands.

“You see that island?” Dingwall pointed to the nearest of the Ness Islands, from which trees grew to overhang the river.

“Yes, Sergeant.”

“Try to hit a tree.”

The musket was heavier than MacKim had expected. Lifting it to his shoulder, he closed his left eye, pointed the barrel at the nearest tree and pressed the trigger. From the corner of his eye, he saw the hammer come down. The resulting spurt of smoke in the pan took him by surprise and then musket seemed to leap back, hammering into his shoulder, so he staggered backwards.

Dingwall watched, smiling. “There. You see? It’s not quite as easy as you think. A good soldier can fire and load three times in a minute. A very good soldier can do it four times. You recruits…” Dingwall shook his head. “Well, we’ll see.” He peered closely at MacKim. “Most of you will likely fall before you fire your second shot.”

Some of the men laughed at that, as Dingwall had intended. He paced the line again, stopping at a tall man with a badly scarred face on MacKim’s immediate right. “God, but you’re ugly! I’ve never seen an uglier recruit, and I’ve seen plenty.”

The man stared ahead without responding to Dingwall’s jibe. The sergeant moved on, hectoring.

“We are Fraser’s Highlanders.” Dingwall paced the triple line, looking into every face. “We are a British infantry regiment; we fight for King George.”

The men in the ranks shifted slightly. They already knew who they were.

“In King George’s army, a battalion of infantry is divided into tactical units known as platoons. Whatever your previous allegiances, whoever your previous family might have been, in future, your platoon is your family. Each man will be closer than a brother. Depend on him, and he will depend on you. Let him down, and he may die, and so may you.”

Dingwall stopped six inches in front of MacKim. “Look around at your neighbours. Get to know their faces. You will live in their company, march in their company, fight in their company and probably die in their company.”

Red-haired Cumming on MacKim’s left glanced at him and away again. He was pale-faced and pale-eyed, with the hands and shoulders of a labourer. To MacKim’s right was the man with the disfigured face.

“Bid your neighbour good-day,” Dingwall ordered.

The scarred man favoured MacKim with a wink. “James Chisholm.”

“Hugh MacKim.”

The names seemed to hang in the air for a long time, and then Sergeant Dingwall shouted again.

“That’s enough! I told you to look around, not indulge in social tittle-tattle! Where do you think you are? The Duke of Gordon’s wedding? Good God! You’re meant to be soldiers, not women at a ball!”

MacKim faced his front immediately.

“We will drill until you hate me, we will drill until your feet bleed, we will drill until my voice fills your dreams, and we will drill until you obey the commands instinctively and without thought. You are soldiers. Soldiers do not need to think. Soldiers only need to obey orders, to march and to fight. To fight in battle depends on being able to form and manoeuvre in rigid, close-order lines and columns. You have to learn to obey orders, so you keep your place in the ranks whatever happens, even although your comrades are dead or dying.”

MacKim shifted his gaze to left and right, wondering how much trust he could put in his neighbours. Cumming on his left fidgeted, breathing hard as he strove to remain still. Chisholm on his right stood as if carved from the same granite as An Cailleach.

“At Fontenoy, each half-company and each platoon fired volley after volley at the French. The British regiments remained firm, but our allies were not as well disciplined and refused to advance into the French musketry. The French saw our army was vulnerable and sent forward their Irish brigade, six battalions of fine soldiers, who came in on our right flank with the bayonet.”

MacKim imagined the picture, transforming his memories of Culloden Moor to Europe and replacing the s*******r of the clans with two equally matched armies of professional soldiers.

“We drove them off,” Dingwall continued as if he had been there. ‘The Scottish regiments, the 43rd Highlanders, Royal Scots and Royal North British Fusiliers, marched with the rest of the British Army, equals in battle, and then we chased off the French cavalry as well. All because of disciplined firepower, good drill and guts. In a minute I’ll begin to teach you.”

Rain began, a slow, dreary drizzle that swept down from the hills to soak the recruits. Already they had been standing in ranks for hours, and MacKim guessed the day was far from over. He had not expected soldiering to be so monotonous.

“Some of you may wonder why we have bagpipers in this day of vast armies and artillery.” Dingwall took a step back. “We have pipers to let the enemy know that the Highlanders are coming… we have pipers to let them know how long they have to live.”

For the next few weeks, a procession of sergeants and officers hammered the recruits. As well as the complicated procedures for loading, presenting and firing the Brown Bess muskets, there was training with the 17-inch triangular bayonets. Remembering the b****y blades plunging into the helpless Highland wounded at Culloden, MacKim handled the weapon with some trepidation. They practised live firing until they became used to the vicious recoil that bruised shoulders and rattled teeth. As the government fixed the annual allowance of ball ammunition used in training to a meagre four balls per man per year, Colonel Fraser ordered the target butts to be placed against a grassy bank, so the regimental pioneers could dig out the lead and re-cast it into serviceable ammunition.

The recruits fired individually, with Sergeant Dingwall snarling at every fumbling mistake, then they fired by files of three, and finally by ranks and by platoons, with the recruits gradually getting used to the powder smoke that obscured their vision and stung their eyes every time they squeezed the trigger. They fired at a mark, trotted over to it to check their marksmanship, reported back to Dingwall and endured his verbal assault. Once they had mastered the most straightforward techniques, Dingwall had them firing obliquely, then uphill and downhill. MacKim found he was a moderate marksman, while the scarred Chisholm was good.

“You’ve fired a musket before, Ugly!” Dingwall said.

“Yes, Sergeant,” Chisholm agreed.

“I’ll wager you were a Jacobite rebel!” Dingwall pressed his face close to Chisholm. “Were you? Did you fire at King George’s army at Culloden? Is that where you got your scars, Ugly?”

“No, Sergeant.” Chisholm snapped to attention with his musket at his side and his ruined face expressionless.

“No?” Dingwall grunted. “I wonder, Ugly, I really wonder.” He took two steps back. “If you did, or if you did not, it does not matter now. You are a Fraser Highlander, and before I finish with you, you will all be the best marksmen in King George’s British Army!”

Always in the background, officers hovered, watching, occasionally giving comments or sharp orders. They lived in a different world from MacKim, a world of authority and privilege, of carriages and soft clothes. He watched them with interest, knowing he could never join their circle and having no aspirations to do so. Three thoughts dominated his mind; become a good soldier; learn the skills, find the men who murdered his brother. He repeated the name in his head, day after day, Hayes of Ligonier’s. He knew that Dingwall was watching him when he volunteered for every extra duty; he did not care.

Hayes of Ligonier’s“Be careful, MacKim,” Chisholm warned. “If you are too keen, they’ll make you a corporal.” His smile twisted his face into something even more hideous. “Keep your head down and become anonymous.”

MacKim grunted. “I want to learn all I can.”

“Soldiers that stand out from the rest become marked men,” Chisholm said. “Either by sergeants like Dingwall, or the enemy.” His grin only enhanced his scar. “Not that there’s much difference.”

“How do you know? You’re only a recruit like us. Or was Dingwall correct and were you in the Jacobite army?”

Chisholm hesitated a moment, touching his face with his eyes suddenly dark. “I was in the old 43rd, the Black Watch at Fontenoy.” When he relapsed into silence, MacKim left him to his memories.

The recruits learned how to march in column and deploy to fight in line. They learned how the front rank men knelt to fire and stood to load.

“This is a dangerous time,” Sergeant Dingwall told them as he marched along the length of the line. “I have seen careless rear-rank men shooting the front-rank men as they sprang up. That will not happen in Fraser’s Highlanders.” He fixed MacKim with a terrible glare. “Will it, MacKim?”

“No, Sergeant,” MacKim said.

“Why not, MacKim?”

“Because you will train us better, Sergeant.”

Dingwall grunted. “That’s correct, boy, that’s correct.” He moved on. “I have seen cartridge boxes blow up and burn careless soldiers. I’ve seen soldiers poke out their comrade’s eyes when fixing bayonets, I have seen soldiers firing off their ramrods because they forgot to remove the damned things when they loaded. None of these unfortunate events will occur in Fraser’s Highlanders.”

The recruits listened and slowly learned the manoeuvres that they would use on the battlefields of Europe, where discipline and order were everything and armies moved on the word of command, “like chessmen on a board controlled by the general in command,” as Chisholm said.

“We are not individuals,” Cumming said, as he lay exhausted in their tents at the end of another long day. “We are only things to be ordered about at the whim of the sergeant.”

“That’s right.” Chisholm blew smoke from the stubby clay pipe he had thrust between his teeth. “They will break you, rob you of your individuality and recreate you in the image they desire. Every second of our lives is regulated and controlled, every action we take, everything we eat, do and wear. All we have are our thoughts and our souls.” He glanced across to MacKim. “They will try to brutalise you to take over your soul as well, MacKim. Don’t let them do that. Always keep a little something for yourself, or you will end up like Sergeant Dingwall, with nothing except the army. Strive to keep hold of your thoughts. Don’t let the army control your mind. Learn to soldier by all means, but retain a wee bit of yourself.”

MacKim nodded. “I won’t let them have my mind or soul.”

“Easy to say, MacKim.” Chisholm lay back within his clouding blue tobacco smoke. “A lot harder to do.”

“I won’t lose sight of myself,” MacKim said. I am not here to be a soldier for the rest of my life. I have a purpose. I have an oath to fulfil, somehow. Yet he knew that the clan chief and colonel controlled his life, as the chiefs had controlled the lives of his brother and his ancestors for centuries. The chief commanded, and the men obeyed; it had always been that way, and the army was no different. Clansmen and soldiers followed orders. If they stepped outside of the system, they would be executed or outlawed to become homeless wanderers who belonged nowhere. It was essential to obey, to follow orders, to fit in with one’s peers and allow the clan chief or the officers to make the decisions. When the chiefs and the officers were the same men, things were even more natural. There was no need to consider or even to think.

I am not here to be a soldier for the rest of my life. I have a purpose. I have an oath to fulfil, somehow. MacKim lay back on his cot, folded his hands behind his head and was asleep in seconds. Sergeant Dingwall’s broad face and harsh voice filled his dreams, together with the ever-present vision of his brother slowly roasting and the mocking laughter of the redcoats. He woke with a start. I’m a redcoat now, and I’m going to find you, Hayes of Ligonier’s.

I’m a redcoat now, and I’m going to find you, Hayes of Ligonier’s.