To Do and Die

Hundreds of urgent feet had churned the bank of the river, making it hard to stay upright. He slopped into the mud, forced through the water, pistol, sword and haversack as far above his waist as their various straps would allow, watching Hume and the Colour party. The fall from his horse didn't seem to have unsettled Hume, for now he stretched his arms out behind the young ensigns' backs, gently urging them on, uttering calm words of encouragement to the knot of frightened men around the Colours.

With the two Colour-Sergeants alongside, the little band ducked their chins and braced their shoulders as if to face a gale as they slithered up the bank. The advance through the vineyard had been mild compared to this, for as the line of dripping troops thickened on the bare slope directly below the Russian guns, so their enemies increased the fire. A mixture of shell and canister whined from the guns ensconced in the Redoubt behind big, basketwork gabions that were full of protective packed earth: the whole position was carefully sited to cover the point where the British would emerge from the banks of the river.

‘Look there …’ Morgan pointed at a Russian who was desperately trying to set fire to a tar and straw-tipped pole in front of them, ‘… that rogue's trying to light a range-marker.’ Even Morgan's crude grasp of tactics told him that attacking into the face of an enemy that had prepared themselves well enough to have range-markers for the guns was unwise – hadn't someone said something about always seeking a flank?

‘Quick, Nixon, knock him down.’ The Russian struggled with flint and steel as one of the soldiers beside Morgan raised his rifle, squinted and squeezed the trigger as calmly as if on the butts back in England.

‘Damn me, the fucking charge is wet,’ Nixon cursed as the Russian scuttled off into a fold in the ground, whilst the marker spat smokily behind him.

The jumbled line of regiments sputtered up towards the Great Redoubt. Sometimes pausing to fire then reload, the men pushed on despite wide furrows being opened in their lines whenever the Russian guns belched, for at their most effective range the canister rounds were deadly even when fired almost blind through the clinging, grey powder-smoke. Above the tangled, yelling lines Morgan could see the blue Colours of the 23rd and the 7th, the deep green standards of the 19th and his own jaunty, canary-yellow beside the big Union flag, but in an instant they were down, swept away by another sheet of canister.

‘Sir, Major Hume's shouting for you.’ McGucken had seen the senior major hauling at the fallen flags, pulling the Queen's Colour from beneath its stricken ensign, passing it to one of the Colour-Sergeants before taking up the Regimental Colour and bawling for the closest officer.

‘Mother of God, he can't want me.’

‘Just get over there, sir.’

Morgan ducked past the levelled rifles of some of his own men, fumbling with his wet sash to find the scabbard for his sword. As he approached the muddied Hume, a ball hummed through the major's haversack, spilling biscuits and a razor – it was coolly ignored.

‘Ah, Morgan, why the deaf ear? Grab hold of this, get onto the high ground with the colour-sar'nt and for God's sake show front whilst I try to rally them.’

On a hillock, Colour-Sergeant Baghurst had dug the butt of his Colour pike into the ground whilst brandishing his rifle at the enemy entrenchment and shouting encouragements. Then Morgan saw the shot-holes and rents in the bright silk, realizing that he was about to become a magnet for every rifleman and gunner on the field. But with no belt to carry the Colour, he raised the pole that bore the six-foot silk square with both hands, immediately struggling to control it in the breeze.

As if to confirm his fears, no sooner had he drawn close to Baghurst than the Colour-Sergeant yelped, let his flag sag to the ground and grabbed his ankle, barging into one of the men who was hurrying forward. He wasn't alone for long, though, for his servant and fellow Corkman, Keenan, left the ranks and ran to be beside his master – quickly slinging his rifle and picking up the fallen Colour.

‘So, your honour, bet you never expected to see me doing an officer's job, did you?’ Morgan agreed: there were a number of things that surprised him about Keenan, not least his wife, Mary.

Death loved these sparse, scarlet files. No more than two thousand British had climbed out of the riverbed and now the guns were whittling at them so hard that it would be madness to pause to dress the line. Like a tangled piece of string, the troops plodded up the slope, the perfect target for Russian riflemen who were now forming to one side of the Redoubt.

The stolid slabs of Russian infantry were just visible through the smoke, their bayonets glittering above them, whilst hovering about their flanks was a cloud of riflemen. Active men wearing soft green caps, they sped into cover, kneeling behind the scrub, firing, disappearing to reload and then emerging from a different spot. One was handling his ramrod with fluid movements – he paused to adjust his sights then cuddled his butt into his cheek.

Keenan's tongue flicked quickly over his stubbled lips as the pair saw the rifle barrel deliberately swing up towards them. At two hundred paces, every detail of the Russian's uniform and features were clear and both men unconsciously drew their shoulders up to shield themselves as the marksman disappeared behind a cloud of smoke. The bullet snatched at Morgan's wing, holing the bullion and opening a gash in the scarlet cloth at his shoulder through which a pennon of white lining now peeped. Next to him Keenan, without a sound, sank to the ground, the great yellow flag shrouding him for an instant before it was snatched up. Morgan fancied that he saw a smile on the Russian's face.

‘He'll cook you with his next round, sir.’ Sergeant Ormond – one of those steady, likeable men, the backbone of the company – had appeared beside him, giving words to his own thoughts as the ramrod flew down the barrel of the distant rifle.

‘Thank you Ormond – you're a great comfort, you are. Luff, pass me your rifle … is it made ready?’

‘Sir, an' it's dry an' all. Sure you know how it works?’ It wasn't much of a joke, but Luff's words made them all smile amongst the danger and noise. Morgan, like most officers, had been brought up with gun, hounds and rod and took a pride in being more skilful with the new Minié rifle than the soldiers. Despite this, officers didn't carry such weapons in action; gentlemen were expected to arm themselves only with a chivalrous sword and pistol.

Now Morgan glanced at the sights and drew the chunky rifle into the shoulder. The Russian was just starting to kneel – he aimed at his belly and as the pale disc of his face swam above the foresight, he squeezed the trigger. He was always surprised at the kick of the new weapon; a few rounds would leave your shoulder black and blue.

Even above the din, Morgan recognized the sound. He'd first heard it as a boy when shooting seals off Bantry with his father's heavy rifle – the solid, meaty thump of a soft lead ball tearing flesh. The Russian jerked forward onto his face, invisible now amongst the low scrub and the young officer marked the spot as he would for his dog and a downed pheasant.

Had Morgan been able to hear above the pounding of his heart, he would have sensed that the din was less. As they'd raced up the lethal slope splinters and balls had sliced the men around them and Morgan had been conscious of holes and rents suddenly appearing in his Colour as the artillery banged and roared its hatred at them. But at the crucial point, when cool, disciplined gunnery would have won the day, panic seemed to have struck the Russians and now the brass-barrelled howitzers were being manhandled and tugged away by teams of horses to save them from being over-run.

‘Right, come on you lot, they're all in a pother, get amongst 'em,’ Hume recognized the moment. The Russians were confused by the whining shells and bullets and the screaming British: dash and boldness now would carry the position.

Gasping, Morgan crouched with Sergeant Ormond below the bank of gabions, Colours across their laps, gathering themselves for the final rush into the heart of the enemy, whilst the troops around them scrabbled through the unaccountably empty embrasures, boots rasping on the basketwork as, rifles at the ready, they leapt into the gun positions beyond. Catching Morgan by the arm, Ormond led the way up and over the breastwork, brandishing his Colour as soon as he was steady and helping the officer over the obstacle.

Inside the Redoubt everything was in uproar. Four horses plunged and shivered, anchored at one end of their harness by a heavy howitzer and at the other by a subaltern of the 23rd who, clinging to the tack with one hand, had a pistol firmly in the ear of the Russian driver. The man was clearly terrified by the demented youngster and his revolver and he was leaning so far out of his saddle that he was in danger of falling and losing control of his horses, yet still the boy yelled and threatened.

Another gun remained. Morgan saw how Alfred Heyland, commander of Number Six Company, and a handful of his soldiers went surging towards it. There was blood all over Heyland – it dripped from his nose and whiskers and one arm hung uselessly by his side. Later, Morgan was told that Heyland had been blown over bodily by a discharge of grape just yards from the centre of the gun-line in the Great Redoubt – everyone thinking that he was dead, yet he'd risen up like a torn and bleeding Lazarus, determined to lead his men on. Now all that Morgan saw was a crazed thing, chopping at one of the gunners with his sword whilst the men dealt with the others in a mad lust for blood.

Three Russians had been surrounded beside the gun's trail. They all had short swords, but none had drawn them before their attackers pounced. None of the British had reloaded their rifles, nor were their bayonets fixed, so the Russians met death in the most brutal way as butts rose and fell whilst boots kicked and stamped, despite the cries for mercy. Eventually their victims were silent: chests heaving, the executioners looked down at the red splashes on their feet.

But the trophy was theirs. Some men cut away the hastily placed tow-ropes whilst Heyland clutched his sword by the end of its blade and scratched a crude “95” into the green paint of the carriage to confirm its capture. Faint with lack of blood, Heyland was swabbed with bandages and then led away by two of his men. Morgan remembered how well Heyland had danced at Dublin Castle last year – and how jealous they had all been of the flock of women around his elegant form. Now, how could any girl find this broken, bruised creature attractive again?

‘Good men, get those Colours up on the parapet.’ Major Hume was now commanding the Regiment. Just as collected – though even more tattered than when the pair had seen him last – he was bareheaded, quite unarmed and utterly in control. The same self-confidence that Morgan had noticed when they were in the river was asserting itself over every man to whom he spoke, regardless of regiment or company, calming, reassuring and helping frightened boys to become men.

‘We've done it, sir, we've taken the Redoubt.’ Morgan had thrust the butt of the Colour pike hard into the parapet; now he looked round up at the bushy slopes to the horizon no more than three hundred paces above him.

‘Aye, Morgan we have, but there's plenty more Muscovites: look there.’ Hume pointed up the hill.

Although a few hundred British had bloodily taken the centre of the position, they were now pinioned between the unprotected rear of the Great Redoubt and a mass of fresh, Russian infantry who lay on the smoke-laden slope above them. Meanwhile, the British commander, Lord Raglan, had moved forward with a tiny group of his Staff until he was well to the fore, almost in advance of his leading troops with the foresight to order-up a battery of British guns that could fire right into his enemy's flank.

‘Now we'll need some help to hold it.’ Major Hume was so hoarse he could barely make himself heard, despite the fact that the guns and rifles had fallen quiet for an instant right across the battlefield.

‘Yes, sir, Cambridge's Guards are in reserve right behind us, aren't they?’ Morgan knew what was supposed to be the plan, but Hume looked anxiously back towards the river.

‘Well, if they are in reserve, they're a bloody long way away; we need them up here now before the Russians counterattack,’ Hume replied.

The Duke of Cambridge's division had, indeed, been held in reserve, untouched by the fire that had so damaged the Light and Second Divisions during the advance to the river and now he was determined not to let his command fall into the same ruptured state as they crossed the Alma. But Cambridge's caution meant that his Division lay too far to the rear of the troops that were now so horribly exposed in the Great Redoubt. They should have been closely supporting the first wave of attackers, on hand to deal with whatever the Russians planned to do next.

The unnatural quiet ended as suddenly as it began. As the last few men seeped into the Redoubt and caught their breath, the danger of the position became more and more obvious. The sergeants busied themselves redistributing ammunition and clearing fouled breeches with their combination tools whilst trying to calm and steady the men. Despite their every effort, though, the troops started endless, ragged cheering that Morgan was raw enough to mistake for a sign of confidence rather than one of near panic. He and Sergeant Ormond had been relieved of the responsibility of the Colours by two uninjured sergeants, so they bawled with the best of them until a spatter of bullets sent them to ground.

‘Where's that fire coming from, Sar'nt Ormond?’ Morgan felt useless as he crouched on the ground with no Colour, no troops to command and only a sword and pistol.

‘Must be them lot, sir, there.’ Ormond paused for a moment whilst reloading his rifle and pointed through the smoke to a slab of Russian infantry about three hundred yards up the hillside beyond them. One half were firing whilst the other half plodded obliquely across the rear of the Great Redoubt, bayonets twinkling, the sun flashing off the brass spikes of their leather helmets.

That morning, Morgan had taken the Tranter revolver from its case and carefully loaded the six chambers before clipping it to his narrow sash – he thought he could remember holding it above the current but, as he drew it, he had no confidence that the thing would work.

‘You'd be better off with one of the casualties' rifles, sir, wouldn't you?’ Ormond asked.

Morgan looked around him – none of the other officers had picked-up rifles, they were sticking to the unwritten rule that gentlemen left the sordid business of killing to the rank and file – a rule that he'd already broken. So now he contented himself with his pistol, balancing it carefully on his forearm as he aimed at the coatskirts of a crossing Russian and pulled the trigger. He was rewarded with a bang, a jolt and a face full of smoke followed, much to his surprise, by five more faultless detonations, yet the Muscovites tramped on untouched, apparently oblivious to his fire. How his father would have scoffed.

Heads and hearts more hardened to war may have been able to resist the spark of panic that now fanned through the mass. Two Staff officers scrambled through the position, waving their arms, yelling, ‘Don't fire, they're the French’ then ‘Fusiliers retire’ in chaotic succession.

‘Retire be damned, stand fast and fire low.’ Hume had almost lost his voice, but other officers echoed him. ‘Morgan, put that wretched thing down; get amongst the boys, won't you?’ Stung by the words, Morgan thrust his half-reloaded pistol away.

‘Here, sir, help me with these.’ Colour-Sergeant McGucken thrust a clutch of paper cartridges into the young man's hand, gesturing him to calm the troops from the hotch-potch of regiments around him. Within the Great Redoubt were men of the 7th and 23rd Fusiliers, both as keen as anyone else to hear and obey an order that would get them out of the horror with their honour intact and once a bugler took up the “Retire” all was lost. Some men paused, firing sullenly into their enemies, but most bundled back through the embrasures that they had seized just a short time before with barely a backward glance. The troops streamed down the hill, trying hard to avoid their dead and wounded comrades who studded the slopes.

Morgan never really knew whether the Scots Fusilier Guards had broken or not. He could certainly remember their Colours standing fast amongst the smoke and shot and, later, the body of a young Guards officer in the hospital riven with bayonet wounds. He could recall Russians too close for comfort, his imperfectly loaded pistol and then the whole Guards Brigade in close and perfect order as the survivors of the first attack on the Redoubt eddied around them, but none of this left the same impression as Hume did. Somehow he'd retrieved the 95th's Colour party and reformed it; somehow he'd clubbed a score or so of his own men around him; and somehow he found the sheer gall to persuade them to face the Russian fire once again.

Morgan wondered if Hume's exaggerated courtesy was natural or whether he was simply trying to master the surrounding bedlam. It hardly mattered, for there wasn't a man in sight who could have failed to notice a senior, shot-holed and tousled major approach an ensign of the 3rd Grenadiers, brace to attention and ask the youngster's permission to fall Her Majesty's 95th Regiment in on their flank. Mere theatre, perhaps – but it worked. The boy in the bearskin stuttered his approval and now no one in the 95th could fail to get into step behind Hume and beside the sweeping line of Guardsmen.

Without the heavy guns in the Redoubt, the fire was certainly lighter this time, but the fear was worse. Just a few minutes before, Morgan had found himself all but oblivious to the hum and crack of shot knowing that all eyes were upon him and the Colour that he carried. Now, though, he was amongst the bloodied, those who chose to face the horrors of those slopes again and who no longer needed a mere subaltern's bravado. Regimental pride was a powerful thing. With the Guards file-firing as they advanced, the knot of 95th steadied and began to ply their weapons with the precision that they'd been taught.

‘Come on show-soldiers, it's this way to Mr Russ.’ The boy, Pegg, seemed to have recovered sufficiently from his earlier fright not only to be beating a creditable tattoo on his dented drum, but also to be taunting the line of bearskins to his left.

‘So when we take the position for you will you be able to hold it this time, short-arse?’ One of the Guardsmen snarled back at Pegg.

The rifles sickled the Russians. The enemy musket-fire was feeble in return and as each volley smashed home so low mounds of moaning or motionless bodies began to pile up. Morgan saw a Russian officer come running to the front of his troops, sword point down, waving his men on. A line of bayonets were lowered and a brown-grey wall of men began to trot down the hill towards them.

‘You five, kneel,’ croaked McGucken. ‘Three hundred – but aim at their knees, it's not that far. Get that bastard officer.’ One fouled rifle failed to fire, but four rounds and a pointless one from Morgan's pistol flew straight and true and when the smoke from the muzzles had cleared, the officer had disappeared and the bank of Russians had stalled, their muskets touching the ground as they goggled at the approaching British.

Some unheard message pulled the 95th to a halt. The Guards to their left had stopped, all looking expectantly to the centre of their line, whilst the other two battalions continued on their steady tramp. Then flashing metal, a sibilant rasp and six hundred long, needle-like bayonets were fixed over the muzzles of the men's rifles. Another pause, and then with a mute command, the Guards stepped out.

The Russians stood in the same dense columns that had served them well at Borodino, little expecting that at such close ranges a Minié bullet would pierce not just the front rank but find the second and sometimes the third. As the lead squashed and distorted on the first impact, so it became all the more damaging on subsequent strikes – no troops could stand against this.

As the Guards' pace increased, so the Russian columns dissolved. Harried now by French and British horse artillery, the great, grey masses started to peel away, leaving just their dead and wounded to face the bayonets.

‘Here you are, Mr Morgan, sir, I'm sending one to Mam.’

He wondered just how grateful Mrs Pegg would be for the brass eagle with its big ‘31’ from the front of a Russian helmet and whether she would approve as her boy lifted an icon from around the rapidly cooling neck of one of their foes.

The earth and sandbag walls of the Great Redoubt gave welcome protection as the British surged back into it for the second time. The Allies' guns had played on the Russians as they massed for the counter-attack there and now the red coats of the earlier casualties were all but submerged by their dead and dying enemies. There on his back, arms outstretched, head lolling back and mouth wide open was Private Peter Luff – he was as pale as milk, the river water still dripped gently from his clothes, mingling with the great brown stain that spread below his body whilst two flies crawled over his lips.

‘God help us, Pegg, it's Peter Luff, ain't it? Did you see him fall?’

‘No, sir, only just seen the poor bastard. Save him from a flogging though, won't it?’ Now, Private Luff would never receive the punishment that he'd been awarded a few days before. With scarcely a glance at his dead friend, Pegg ransacked another corpse.

Then, just feet from them a shot cracked out. Without a sound, a subaltern of the 95th toppled over, banging his face hard into the earth. His dead fingers still held the water-bottle with which he had been trying to slake the thirst of one wounded Russian, when another had shot him in the neck. Now both blood and water spilled into the ground, but before Morgan or Pegg could properly grasp what was going on, two of their soldiers were upon the Russian, thrusting at him with their bayonets. The Muscovite cried once, twice and then was silent as the men wiped his gore from their blades.

The Guards battalions were quickly brought in hand, stoically pushing past and beyond the earthwork in an attempt to turn their enemy's defeat into a rout, but Hume ordered his clutch of 95th to check and rally the rest of the troops.

The guns still thundered but at distant targets now. For the first time in what seemed weeks, Morgan was conscious that the air was not full of metal and that death, for him at least, was slightly more distant. The men sank all around him, deaf to the cries of the wounded, as they pulled out their stumpy clay pipes, some of the younger ones falling instantly asleep, lips still black with powder. Even the sergeants, moving amongst the survivors trying to find out who was and who was not answering the roll, staggered, exhausted.

Morgan sat down heavily. He rootled around his haversack until he found the silver-topped brandy flask that he had bought in Dublin on the way out and, hands shaking with the sheer relief of being alive, he unscrewed it and took a long pull at the raw spirit. Looking between his soaked and muddy legs and boots, he saw the grassy hillside below him covered with scarlet and grey cairns. It seemed like an eternity since that farewell dinner at home when he'd been asked if he could take another's life, if he could widow wives and orphan children. Well, now he had and it gave him no pleasure. The smiles of those at the table were still vivid, but now James Keenan was torn by shot, Mary was stained with her own husband's blood and had seen things that no teenage girl should have to see whilst his own courage had been tested to the full. As he sat and pondered, Colour-Sergeant McGucken lowered himself wearily to the ground beside him.