To Do and Die

‘Keenan, I'm so pleased for you both,’ Morgan lied as he pulled off his glove and clasped the groom's hand. ‘May I kiss your future wife?’ Morgan saw how Mary bridled, but such a gesture was required.

‘Go on, Mr Morgan, sir, help yourself.’ For a split second Morgan wondered at Keenan's choice of words, but no, they were innocent enough.

One peach-like, gently powdered cheek was presented with a coolness that struck him like a slap. As his lips brushed against her he caught that same scent that haunted his bedclothes back in Glassdrumman.

‘You've made a wonderful choice of husband, Mary, but I don't know how my family will manage without you.’ None of the meaning was lost on Mary and Tony could almost feel the lash of the reply that such a comment would receive in other circumstances. She said not a thing.

The service was short and the hymns were few. Any lack of melody amongst the singers was disguised by the skill of the fiddlers and the shrieks of Lance-Corporal Healey's toddlers. The poor priest had to contend with their babble whilst the first note of every hymn set them howling.

‘Can't Mrs H tek the little sods out, sir?’ whispered Pegg to Morgan.

He made no reply, for the Irish audience would tolerate outrages from children that no English one would. Earlier, Morgan had had to suppress an oath when one of his glistening toe-caps had been scuffed by a rampaging Healey brat. His mother had paid not the slightest attention.

There could be no honeymoon. With the regiment preparing for war, the best that Private and Mrs Keenan could manage was a ceilidh in the other ranks' canteen. A handful of the wives and their husbands had set about the barn-like structure, weaving ivy and other greenery through some bunting, then setting up Union flags and an enormous, crêpe shamrock. A somewhat crumpled, slightly crookedly-painted banner read, ‘Good luck to you both’. Morgan remembered it from the last wedding party he'd attended there.

The group was pathetically small, clustered around the fire at one end of the hall. The priest came, grinned, downed two glasses of whiskey and fled, leaving Morgan as the only impediment to a wholesale onslaught on the liquor. But the group's temperance lasted about as long as it took for the priest to disappear from sight. As soon as his cassock had floated out, the fiddlers and Pegg started to play. Now tots of whiskey many times the size of that given to the divine were handed round.

It was clear to Morgan that the novelty of his presence would very soon wear off. Taking the first opportunity, he drained his whiskey and strode over to Mary, for it had to be done. ‘May I be the first man to dance with Mrs Keenan?’ He gave a little bow.

‘I'd be delighted, Lieutenant Morgan, sir.’ She stood and dropped him a much deeper curtsey than earlier, smiling and bobbing her ringlets most becomingly.

Morgan did his best at the reels and steps, never a natural dancer. The soldiers and women looked on indulgently, just pleased to see one of Themselves mixing with them. His clumsiness was at odds with Mary's easy grace, a grace that he remembered so well from an entirely different setting.

The dancing done, he pumped hands, slapped backs and left. His walk back to the Mess was the loneliest of his life.

‘Come on, Morgan, there's no point in loafing here.’

The days since the wedding had been frantic as last-minute preparations were made for departure and this was to be the regiment's last evening in Weedon, for tomorrow they were to leave for Portsmouth and embarkation for the mysterious ‘East’. So, Morgan had accepted Carmichael's invitation to join him at his rooms in Weedon to ‘raise Cain’.

Carmichael's idea of Cain-raising held little appeal to Morgan. He already spent more than enough time with the regiment's foremost scion and self-appointed rake and, besides, any quiet moment allowed his thoughts to drift back to Mary, of seeing her all the time yet knowing that she was beyond his reach. But Carmichael had chivvied and cajoled him in the Mess in front of the others. The invitation was issued only to him and whilst he knew that he would have to endure a battery of stings and innuendo, even that was better than being alone.

Meanwhile, Keenan had been in an almost indecent rush to get his master respectably into civilian clothes, out of barracks and off his hands. Normally, there would have been much smoothing of Morgan's beaver hat, the watch chain would have had to be fixed just so, and there would be a final rub of a duster over his boots before the young officer was fit to be seen in public. The married Keenan was a different, more perfunctory creature. Morgan found himself adjusting his own braces, fitting his own cuff-links and pulling his stock to just the right position whilst there was little of the barrack tittle-tattle that made such occasions so invaluable.

Now, instead of learning why Private Ghastly felt himself so aggrieved when Lance-Corporal Nasty told him off for kitchen fatigues (after all, they had been good mates when they were privates together, hadn't they?), there was little except a few scrappy questions about what Russ would look like and whether Turkish girls chewed tobacco. His soldier-servant seemed to be in a tearing hurry to get back to the barrack corner that had been screened off with an army blanket for the newly-weds. Morgan understood the urgency only too well.

Carmichael's rooms were a cliché. A bedroom, sitting room and bathroom looked from the first floor of a small hotel onto the cobbled main street of the town below. The wooden floor was awash with coloured woollen rugs whilst the furniture was old but studiedly comfortable. He'd had the walls redecorated in a fashionable lemon (as advised, Morgan recalled, by some London society piece) and on them hung a selection of hunting, boxing and naval prints. His greatest conceit, though, was a pastel nude that hung above his bed.

Morgan's already failing interest in Cain had dwindled to nothing by the time that he arrived. Carmichael's man had just been sent home and with a fire blazing and the gentle light of the oil lamps, Morgan hoped that the next few hours could be spent in an alcoholic cloud, forgetting his gloom and discussing the adventure that lay before them. He might learn Carmichael's secret of shining whenever the colonel or the adjutant were about – he might even learn to like the ambitious, arrogant bastard a little. But no, Cain was a creature of the streets. In high spirits, Carmichael stepped out, dandified in strapped trousers, a waistcoat of the darkest green, stock and pin and a coat cut fashionably long.

They sank a tot of whiskey apiece in the Rodney and the Granby. But in both there were some of their own corporals or sergeants toping steadily. The young officers passed a civil few sentences with them, trying not to make it look as though they were bolting their liquor before moving on. There would be plenty of time to rub shoulders with the men in the next few months.

They settled, unrecognized, in the snug of the the Plough. More drink came and went whilst their talk gathered pace. Carmichael, though, had been distracted from the moment that two unescorted girls came into the room. They sat down a little way from the fire and began to commune in a geyser of giggles and whispers. Sitting in another corner were four young men, farmers or their sons judging by their clothes. Their volume, too, increased as they drank until one of the braver ones rose, very slightly unsteady, and approached the girls.

Despite a lively, good-natured exchange where the farmer's boy did his best to impress both women with promises of untold largesse, he was rebuffed. With a shrug and upturned palms he walked back to his friends.

‘Missing a bed-warmer now that sweet Mary's tucked up with Keenan, Morgan?’ But before Morgan could react to this jibe, Carmichael had lost interest, sensing a different and much more interesting diversion.

The next hour or so were to remain a whiskey blur to Morgan. The girls joined them, they drank, they laughed a little too loudly at the young gentlemen's wit, showing their teeth too readily behind their too-red lips and in no time the four of them found themselves in Carmichael's rooms.

‘Just get some more coal would you, Morgan? We can't let the fire get any lower.’ Carmichael made it quite clear that Morgan had no choice. He knew where the coal hole was, but in the few minutes that it took him to refill the bucket in the dark and to clatter back upstairs, Carmichael and Jane – by far the prettier of the two girls – had disappeared. With wits dulled by drink, Morgan was just about to enquire of Molly where they had gone when a burst of laughter from behind the firmly-closed bedroom door betrayed them. Re-stoking the fire bought him a few minutes to think whilst Molly, silent except for a few rustles and sips from her glass, sat on the sofa behind him.

The lamps had been trimmed low. As he turned, their forgiving light played over Molly who lounged back on the cushions, glass in hand and breasts quite naked. She smiled and did her best to look attractive.

‘Get dressed, girl.’ Morgan was irritated with himself for being drawn into Carmichael's scheme; he reached into his pocket and put a silver crown in Molly's hand. ‘Here, there's better ways of earning money than that,’ and he rattled down the stairs and away as quickly as he could.

By halfway back to barracks Morgan's canter had slowed to a quick-step. The sentries came to the salute, and raising his top hat, he went over to speak to them. Whilst he had no desire whatsoever to talk, he remembered his first captain's advice when he joined the regiment – always be bothered with the troops: one day they'll save your life or your reputation. They weren't from his company, but he recognized them both. In their early twenties they were older soldiers – Morgan mused on why neither was a lance-corporal and how such old hands had managed to get caught for a greenhorn's duty like this.

‘I'm sorry, I can't remember your name, nor where you're from.’ The taller of the two had a round, pock-marked face that split into a surprised grin now that an officer was talking to him.

‘Francis Luff, sir, Number Five Company.’ The man's breath wisped into the cold night air as his gloved fingers played on the stock of his rifle.

‘No, I know that, where's your home town, man?’

‘Oh, sorry, sir, Hayling Island – our Pete's in your company.’ Luff seemed to have no neck at all. His head jutted straight out of the thick collar of his greatcoat, bobbing now with pleasure, the moonlight reflected off the brass ‘95’ on the front of his soft woollen cap.

‘I know him well, he's a good man, up for a tape I'm told. What about you, you must be due promotion soon?’

‘Only thing Luffy'll get, sir, is a bleedin' tape-worm.’ One of the oldest jests in the troops' lexicon was delivered in a flat Manchester accent by the other man, provoking dutiful laughs.

‘You're doing well, lads: stand easy and for pity's sake keep warm.’ Men cheered, bonhomie dispensed, easy, pleasant little job done, it was a good point to leave. Both men snapped their left foot forward, clasped their hands across their bellies and pushed their rifles into the crooks of their arms. The cosiness of the banter was stark against the long, lethal gleam of their bayonets.

‘He's a decent bloke, that Paddy Morgan. Pete says 'e'll be all right when we get to fight.’ The conversation had pleased Luff disproportionately.

‘Don't s'pose it'll come to that. We'll go down to Portsmouth tomorrer an' be stuck there for ever, knowing our luck. Mind you, Mr Morgan did well in the ring t'other night, wouldn't mind having him as our officer, not a stuck-up sod like some o' the others.’ The sentries' muttered conversation helped to pass the long hours of their watch.

The heavy metal key clunked into the back door of the Mess. Morgan's room still felt warm against the cold of the night and as he stripped off coat, hat and muffler he twitched back his curtains. The barracks slept – but not entirely. Over there, at an end of the Grenadier Company's lines he fancied that he could see just one light burning dimly.

FOUR Bulganak

‘Now look, yous …’ Colour-Sergeant McGucken held the heavy rifle across his waist and pointed at the graduated rear-sight, ‘… it's no good buggerin' about adjustin' the bloody thing if you don't know how far away the target is, so you've got to be able to estimate the range accurately, or it's all a waste of fuckin' time.’

The Grenadier Company gaggled about him as the sun beat down on the eighty-odd men, all of whom swiped to keep the flies out of their eyes, ears and noses. They had been waiting in Varna on the west coast of the Black Sea for a fortnight or more whilst the politicians decided what to do next, nobody quite knowing whether they would be sent inland to help the Turks on the Danube or embark on their ships again.

‘Luff, tell us how we estimate range.’ McGucken picked the boy out from the rear of the crowd where his attention had begun to wander. He was looking at the scorched, brown Bulgarian fields and hedges where they stretched down to the sea and thinking how different it all was from the green of Hayling Island.

‘At five hundred you can make out colours; at four hundred limbs and the head become distinct; at three hundred features become visible and at two hundred all details can be discerned.’ Luff intoned the rubric that they had all been taught.

‘Good, well done Luff; why were you being so fuckin' thick about things in Turkey?’ McGucken had almost despaired of Luff and some of the others when the fleets had paused in Scutari where the Allied forces had been gathered before the voyage into the Black Sea. It was there that the new Minié rifle had been served out to most of the regiments and the first tentative shots been tried against paper targets pinned to wooden billets. Instructors had been sent from the units who had received the weapons first, amazing everyone with the accuracy and penetration of the half-inch-wide lead bullets that were so very different from the round balls of the old, smooth-bored muskets which they carried up until then.

‘Dunno, Colour-Sar'nt… just difficult to get the hang of, ain't it?’ replied Luff, who had struggled more than most to understand that the new weapon was so very different from the one that they had been used to. He'd been quick enough to understand that the bullet spun and was more accurate due to the rifling, that it dropped in quite a steep curve the further it flew and that you had to allow for this by tinkering around with the iron sight at the rear of the barrel. But he and several others had a real problem with estimating range.

‘Aye, well just think about what you repeated to me, don't just chant it like some magic bloody Papish prayer: understand it and keep practising.’ McGucken discovered that the boys from the land and the plough had picked the idea up quite quickly, whilst townies like Luff had taken much longer to grasp things. So, he'd taught them the words of the manual by rote, but whether they understood it properly was quite a different matter.

‘S'pose that pair yonder were Russian infantry …’ McGucken pointed across the fields to two elderly peasants who were digging in a field, ‘… what would you set your sights at to hit them, Luff?’

The boy held his hand up to shade his eyes against the sun, revealing a great wet patch at his armpit. The troops had been allowed to parade for training in their grey shirtsleeves to spare them from the heat and to save their already shabby scarlet coatees from further wear. They had just received the order to cease shaving as well, apparently in an effort to save water, but as far as McGucken was concerned, it had just given the men an excuse to let their smartness and turnout drop off even further.

‘'Bout four 'undred, I'd say.’ A general mutter of agreement greeted Luff's estimate. ‘But are we ever goin' to shoot at any bastard, or will we just arse about 'ere gettin' cholera, Colour-Sar'nt?’

‘A very good question, son.’ McGucken had been having just the same discussion in the Sergeants' Mess last night. They had arrived in Bulgaria fully expecting to be in action alongside the Turks in no time at all, but they had done nothing for weeks now except train and move camp every time there was another outbreak of cholera. Some said the Russians had surrendered and the whole shooting match would be packed on its boats and sent home, but the papers insisted that the Allies would sail against the Russian ports in the north. ‘I reckon we'll be off for Sevastopol once the high-ups can get the politicos to make their minds up.’

‘See … vas … tow … pol…’ The men played with the word, liking its exotic sound.

‘Where's that then, Colour-Sar'nt?’ Luff voiced all of their thoughts.

‘Couple of hundred miles that way.’ McGucken pointed out to sea where three French men-of-war smoked past. ‘It's the Russians' great big bastard anchorage for their fleet and the papers say that there's no point in comin' this far an' then goin' home without a fight. So, you'd best learn how to estimate range then, hadn't you?’ There was a tepid hum amongst the men.

‘Now, how far away's that haystack … Shortt?’ McGucken was as bored with the lounging about as his men were, but as he looked around their downy, sunburnt faces and their earnest, furrowed brows he wondered just how many of them would live to tell their mothers and fathers what a Russian infantryman really looked like.

‘They've got to land us south of Sevastopol, it makes no sense to go to the north.’ Carmichael seemed very sure of himself as Eddington and both his subalterns pored over a chart showing the coast of the Crimea.

‘Well, you'd think so. All these rivers that flow into the Black Sea will be perfect defensive positions and the captain tells me that there's no really suitable beach much south of here.’ Eddington's manicured finger hovered on the map just south of Eupatoria, thirty miles at least from the Allies' target, Sevastopol. Like a stepladder, the rivers bisected the coastal plain, each one a major obstacle to the 60,000-strong French and British army.

‘But if we go to the south we'll be that much closer to Sevastopol and we might catch Russ off guard?’ Morgan saw how unlikely that was from the deep, coloured contours of the map. There were only a couple of points where a landing from the sea would be possible and those, according to the chart, were well-established ports.

‘Closer, certainly, but we would have to force either Balaklava or Kamiesch and the Russians will have made that very difficult indeed. No, the captain reckons we're for the north – that's where the only suitable beaches are – and then we'll have to tramp down parallel to the sea. There's so little cavalry that we won't be able to go too far inland and the colonel says that if we do land northwards then the plan is to hug the coast. That way we've got the fleets to victual us and we can march under the lee of their guns. The only question is, who gets to march closer to the ships?’ Eddington looked at the pair with a slight smile.

‘It'll be the bloody French, pound to a penny. They'll turn us inside out every chance they get, you see. My uncle, sir George Cathcart, says his people almost came to blows with them in Turkey.’ Carmichael was never slow to remind people of his connections, nor to criticize the French. Only the Turks had proved more unpopular with the troops than the French so far and all but a handful of the officers followed the fashion of berating Britain's ally whenever they could.

‘Yes, my father got a boatload of 'em in Bantry back before Waterloo. They said they were ship-wrecked but they turned out to be spies. Hanged the lot.’ Morgan could hear the relish in his father's words as his only bit of real service against Napoleon was rehearsed time and again during long dinners at home.

‘Just be glad that the French are with us this time, they've had much more recent experience of campaigning than most of us and what I've seen of them so far looks pretty businesslike. We'll see how they fight, but my father learned to respect them in Spain and at Waterloo, so hold your scorn for the Russians.’ Eddington could be infuriating, sometimes.

The fleets surged on across the Black Sea. A pall of black coal-smoke hung with them on the following breeze, the steamers deliberately slowing to stay abreast of the sailing ships. The coast of the Crimea was distantly sighted, a lookout in the masts far above assuring the captain that what they could see was Sevastopol.

‘And if we can see them …’ Eddington snapped shut his glass, ‘… then they can see us. We must be heading north, and there'll be no surprise for Russ. So, gentlemen, we land tomorrow and must be ready to fight. Inspect every weapon, every round of ammunition and take a good look at feet, socks and the men's shoes. Colour-Sar'nt, please check that Braden has enough leather and nails with him for running repairs once we're ashore.’ Eddington had gone over all these fine details a dozen times already, Braden, the company's cobbler having his scraps of leather and hobnails scrutinized more times in a week than in the last five years.

As dawn broke, there it was. The armada rode at anchor almost a mile off shore, gazing at a low line of dunes topped with grass in a crescent-shaped bay that the chart told them was known as ‘Kalamita’. The lead-grey sky loured over a scene that few would forget for the rest of their days and when the papers subsequently dubbed it ‘Calamity Bay’, most agreed.

‘Just remind me what our good captain had to say about this wretched landing?’ Major Hume had squelched up to the Grenadier Company's three officers as they lay in the grass-studded sand-dunes. ‘“Still as a mill-pond” and “dry as a bone” wasn't it?’

The captain of the Himalaya had told them all how smoothly the landing would go and how they would all be ashore in no time, simply stepping from the improvised landing rafts onto the beach.

‘Are all your men as soaked as I am, Eddington?’ Hume had been scurrying about between the companies checking the state of equipment and ammunition at the commanding officer's request.

Eddington's company was amongst the last to land and, like the others, they had first been thrown about by a boisterous surf and then floundered into three feet of chilling water, despite everything the navy had promised. Now they all sat amongst the tussocks, boots off, wringing the salt water out of their socks.

‘To the skin, sir.’ Eddington had produced a towel from his haversack with which he was rubbing vigorously at his feet. He'd undone the straps that held his trousers tight below the instep of his boots, now the bits of leather and tiny buckles flailed around his ankles. ‘But Colour-Sergeant McGucken had the presence of mind to tell the men to keep their pouches above their heads, so our ammunition should be sound; he's just checking it now.’

In the background McGucken, apparently totally unaffected by the ordeal by brine, stalked amongst the sprawling troops reminding the sergeants to inspect every man's supply of wax-paper-wrapped rounds.

‘You're lucky to have McGucken, you know, Eddington.’ Hume looked over as the Scot went quietly about his business.

‘I know, sir, we got a good deal when he came to us from the Thirty-Sixth,’ Eddington replied.

‘He was particularly good on the rafts, sir.’ Morgan interjected. ‘Most of the boys were bloody terrified of the waves but he just took the rise out of them and kept them calm.’ Morgan had been surprised how scared the men had been of the sea, until he realized how few of them could swim. Every officer had been taught the gentlemanly art of swimming just as surely as they had learnt to ride a horse, but other than for some farmers' boys, it was a skill that few of the soldiers had mastered.

‘Yes, he's a good fellow,’ Hume continued, ‘I have to say, if any of the boys had been dunked with sixty-five pounds of shot and kit on their backs, I don't suppose we'd have seen them again – not alive at least. Now, let me know when you're ready to move, Eddington, I'm amazed that we've had no interference from the Russians thus far,’ Hume added before moving off to have much the same conversation with Number Six Company close by.