Jack Windrush Collection - Books 9-12

Chapter 4-2

Jack watched the thin, slum-bitter faces and clumsy countrymen, the undernourished, ill-educated youths who had no option in life but to take the Queen"s fatal shilling. These young men were putting their lives at risk to defend a system that treated them with nothing but contempt. Good luck, lads, he said to himself. I"ll try to train you so you have a better chance to survive, although you"ll hate me for it.

Good luck, ladsI"ll try to train you so you have a better chance to survive, although you"ll hate me for it.“Is there anything I should do, sir?” Lieutenant Trent asked.

“Yes,” Jack said. “Stay with your platoon, ensure they all get settled in, reassure the nervous, slap down any bully-ragging, make sure they lads are fed and watered.”

“Yes, sir.” Trent nearly ran away.

“How about me, sir?” Second lieutenant Gifford was the youngest officer in the 113th, only two years older than David.

Jack sighed, not sure if he was a Queen"s officer or a nursemaid. “You do the same, Gifford. Look after your men.”

“Yes, sir, I will. Thank you, sir!”

SS Seringapatam eased out of Bristol without ceremony, ignored by the lounging groups of Sunday-dressed people that wandered around the docks. Standing on deck, Jack heard church bells summoning the Godly to divine service.

Seringapatam“Is Mary not coming?” Elliot puffed at a cheroot, watching Seringapatam"s intricate movements as she escapes the confines of the harbour.

Seringapatam"s“Mary"s following later,” Jack said.

“She could have come with us.”

“I know.” Jack leaned on the rail as Seringapatam ejected great sooty smuts over the docks. “Mary will stay until David"s secure at Sandhurst.”

Seringapatam“He"ll hate that,” Elliot said.

“He does.”

“There"s the Royal Navy.” Elliot pointed to an old sailing warship moored nearby. As soon as the naval officers saw the scarlet uniforms on Seringapatam, they ordered the hands piped to their stations, and a rush of bluejackets poured onto the warship"s deck and up the rigging.

Seringapatam“Get the lads on deck!” Elliot said as the seamen manned the yards. “The navy is going to give us a send-off even if nobody else cares.”

Jack roared orders that saw the 113th pour up from below, grumbling at being disturbed before they had properly arrived. Some were in full uniform, others in shirts and braces.

“Form up on deck!” Jack called. “Facing outboard!” He watched the men form up, noting the sergeants encouraging and shouting even the simplest of orders. He wished his old veterans were here, the men he had led through the Crimea and the Mutiny, but they were time expired now, with only a handful remaining in the ranks. Instead, he had a regiment of teenagers and men in their early twenties. He hoped they would have time to acclimatise in India before they had any action, for the tribes of the North-West Frontier were amongst the most demanding teachers in the world.

The seamen lifted their hats and gave three times three cheers, to which the 113th responded as Seringapatam passed them. And then they were into the Severn Estuary, with the church bells the last sound of England and the spires and buildings of Bristol fading into the distance.

Seringapatam“Stand down, men,” Jack ordered, and the 113th clattered down below. Only a few men remained on deck to watch the shores of Wales to the north and England to the south ease past as Seringapatam increased her speed. The ship"s screw churned the water as she settled to a steady pace, with her wake arrow-straight astern.

SeringapatamJack remembered the other troopships he had been on, some under steam, others under sail.

“We"re travelling in comfort this time,” he said.

“I doubt the men realise that,” Elliot replied. “Most of them have never been overseas before. India will come as a shock to them.” He looked sideways at Jack. “You"ll feel like you"re going home, though.”

“I do,” Jack said. Elliot knew that Jack"s mother had been half-Indian, one of his father"s casual encounters during his overseas service. “I"m as much Indian as British, as is Mary.”

By midday, the British shores had receded to a narrow strip, a long blue undulating line that gradually sank below the horizon. Jack stared astern for a long time, with one of the young recruits openly sobbing as he stood at the rail.

“Morriston, isn"t it?” Jack asked. He remembered Sergeant Peebles shouting at the boy a few weeks earlier.

“Yes, sir,” the recruit stiffened to attention.

“Stand easy, Morriston. How old are you?”

“Seventeen, sir.”

“Seventeen,” Jack repeated. “This will be your first time away from home.”

“Yes, sir,” Morriston said.

“Are you from a military family, Morriston? Was your father in the army, or a brother, perhaps?”

“No, sir,” Morriston said. “My da was a quarryman when he died. My brother works in a mill.”

“Well, Morriston,” Jack suddenly felt very old. He had been born in 1833; it was now 1878, so he was forty-five years old. He was a middle-aged man, and Private Morriston was at the beginning of his career, a child playing a man"s role. “You"ll see wonderful things where we"re going, Morriston, sights you will remember all your life. Do your duty and do what your NCOs tell you, and you should be all right. When you get home, you"ll have a hundred stories to tell the girls.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir!” Morriston was sweating, Jack saw, probably with the nervous tension of talking to an officer. Jack sighed. He had no desire to add to the troubles of this young man.

“Remember what I said, Morriston,” Jack withdrew, to pace the deck amidships, leaving Morriston to stare at the sea.

After a couple of days, the 113th settled down to shipboard life, with the majority of men preferring to remain on deck as long as they could. Jack made them parade three times a day, inspected their cramped quarters and kept bullying to a minimum. Despite his attentions, he knew that every recruit would have a rough time, that was the way of the world.

Seringapatam sailed through the Mediterranean with awnings spread on deck to deflect the heat and the band playing in the evenings.

Seringapatam“It"s like a holiday trip down the blasted Thames,” Jack complained.

“The lads are happy,” Elliot said.

“I"d prefer to prepare them for India,” Jack fretted. “They"ll come off the ship lazy, fat and unfit. God help us if the Army sends us straight to the North-West Frontier. The Afridis will destroy us.”

“We"re not going to the Frontier,” Elliot said, tapping his feet to the music that wrapped itself around the ship.

“Where are we stationed, sir?”

“Gondabad,” Elliot said, watching Jack closely to see his reaction.

“That"s hundreds of miles from the Frontier,” Jack said, although his mind was busy with other images.

Gondabad, the cantonment in India where I was born, and where I met Mary in the horrendous years of the Indian Mutiny. Gondabad, the scene of my worst nightmares.

Gondabad, the cantonment in India where I was born, and where I met Mary in the horrendous years of the Indian Mutiny. Gondabad, the scene of my worst nightmares.The vision returned unbidden, the sea of faces, the upraised tulwars, and Mary screaming for help he could not give.

“I thought we were going to India in case the Russians invaded Afghanistan,” Jack said.

“So did I,” Elliot said, “but the military mind works in mysterious ways.”

Jack drew on his cheroot until the end glowed red and exhaled a long ribbon of blue smoke. “One thing"s certain,” he said. “If the army sends us to Gondabad, we won"t be there for long. It"s too peaceful a station for us. Within a few months, we"ll either be chasing dacoits through the Burmese jungle or freezing on the plains of Afghanistan.”

“That"s what I figured.” Elliot studied his regiment. “There are far too many young boys here for my liking. Once we land in India, Jack, we"ll have to get them fit to fight.”

Jack tossed his cheroot away, watching the red glow arc until it landed in the sea, floated for a moment, and disappeared. “Aye,” he said. “That"s what we"ll have to do.”

* * *

Calcutta greeted them with a wave of heat and noise, mingled with spices, colour and the frantic activity of what was one of Jack"s favourite cities. He smiled with memories.

“Right, 113th!” He addressed the assembled men, who were already sweating from the heat. “Some of you have been out East before and know how to behave. The rest of you listen. India is not like anywhere you have been before. It is a different world from Great Britain, much larger and much more complex. Don"t insult anybody"s religion. Don"t sleep with the local women and don"t think you are better than them – you are not. Oh, keep your water bottles full, keep your hat on your head and, at least until you know the place, don"t wander on your own.”

Jack knew that most of the men would ignore his words. Within a few weeks, the battalion hospital would overflow with young soldiers suffering from malaria and venereal disease. Disease killed many more men than enemy bullets in India.

Jack paced forward, amidst the men.

“You"ve lost what?” Sergeant Peebles stared at Private Lawrence. “You"ve lost your b****y bayonet? How the hell do you expect to fight the Russkies without a bayonet? Now here are two pieces of advice for you. Number one: never shut your eyes in the army. If you do, your mates will swipe your kit. If you shut them in India, the bleeding Paythan will come and slit your throat.”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

“And number two, if you"ve lost something, requisition it from somebody else. If some bugger"s nicked your toothpick, then you nick somebody else"s, but not from your section, mind. You"re in Number One section, so you pinch from Number Three!”

Jack had heard it all before. He moved on, where Private Hancock was talking to Morriston.

“You"re not a soldier, Morry, you"re a Johnny Raw. You can"t be a pukka soldier until you"ve had a nap hand.”

Jack shivered. To a serving soldier, a nap hand meant catching s******s and gonorrhoea, twice. It was not the best advice for a young recruit.

“Ready, lads! We have a long march ahead of us!”

The journey from Calcutta was long and tedious. Elliot and Jack chose to march the regiment from Calcutta to Gondabad to harden them and get them used to Indian conditions. They used the Grand Trunk Road, which stretched from the Burmese border to Kabul. As one of Asia"s major highways, it predated the arrival of the British by some two thousand years.

“The lads will think they are veterans by the time they arrive,” Elliot said as Jack gave the men extra musketry drill every afternoon, with company competing with company and bottles of beer for the victors.

“They might live longer if they"re acclimatised,” Jack said, “and able to shoot in local conditions.”

Footsore, grumbling and with the men burning under the sun, the 113th crawled across India. The young soldiers marvelled at each new sight, with the veterans showing off their prowess in slinging the bat, as they called speaking a few words of pigeon-Urdu. Fully aware that the 113th was new to India, the villagers exploited them to the full, overcharged them for chapattis, a few sordid moments with diseased women and rotgut local liquor.

“Welcome to India, boys,” Jack said as the surgeon saw his sick parade increase daily. “You"ll hate it for a month and then love it forever.”

Gondabad was as Jack remembered, a cantonment redolent with memories. Even as he stood at the site of his old bungalow, his nightmares of the Mutiny returned when the settled world he had known had ended in bitter warfare. He remembered when he had saved Mary from the Mutineers and the savage battles that followed, the collapse of trust and John Company and the forging of a new India. Jack walked to the flagpole that thrust toward the sky and stood beside the granite slab at the base. On the slab, skilled hands had inscribed the names of all the British regiments that had garrisoned Gondabad during the previous fifty years.

The name of the 113th was there, carved into the stone.

“Damn!” Jack said, fighting the ghosts of memories. “Damn it all to hell and buggery.”

Turning on his heel, he marched away. Music came from the sepoy lines, invoking a thousand memories of friendship and fear. Jack walked past the British cantonment, listening to the young voices that floated through the open barrack windows. Some men were boasting of their prowess, others talking of the enemies they would shoot or the women they would have.

“Dear God,” Jack said. “If we arrive at the Frontier with these children, the Pashtuns will laugh themselves stupid.” He stopped to light another cheroot, shaking his head. “As from tomorrow, my boys, I"m going to get you ready to fight. Do you think that marching along a peaceful road makes you soldiers? God help you.” He breathed deeply of the warm air as mixed emotions filled him. “I"m back home again. I hope you"re all right, David. It"s time you sent me a letter.”