Dust and Steel

‘Right Wing, Ninety-Fifth Regiment, halt!’ The non-commissioned officers were waiting for Morgan’s word of command; once it came it was passed down the sweating ranks, bringing the scarlet and white-belted lines to a dusty stop.

‘The wing will advance…’ Morgan paused whilst the ranks tensed, ‘…left face.’ The British troops pivoted, backs now to the crowd, and stared at the native regiments, no more than thirty yards away from them across the road.

Under Bolton’s words of command the guns wheeled into position between the slabs of infantry, the sparkling brass barrels being unhooked and thrown about to stare at the sepoys, bombardiers’ yells sending gunners scurrying to the ammunition limbers, ramrods whirling and thrusting as the charges were pushed home, the black, menacing muzzles silently challenging the native troops. The whole, slick process ended when by each gun a lance-bombardier stood hefting a linen bag of canister shot.

‘Wait a moment, sir, let the fuckers see what’s in store for ’em,’ McGucken growled quietly. ‘D’you want to untie ten now, sir?’

‘Yes, do that, please, Colour-Sar’nt.’ Morgan knew that the sepoys were studying their every move, and as the men fiddled to take the string and greased paper from one little parcel of ten paper cartridges that sat in their pouches, he looked across at his targets.

The sepoys swayed slightly in the heat, the odd tongue quickly licking dry lips, fingers flexing nervously on the stocks of the rifles that they all held by their sides, expressions fixed but difficult to read under the sweeping, exaggerated moustaches that all the jawans wore. Morgan saw the native officers, swords drawn, standing just behind the trembling ranks. They were all older men, most grey-haired, some wearing campaign medals. The subadar-majors waited at the centre of each battalion’s line, where the colour-parties would normally have been with long strings of ‘joys’, the religious beads that looked, to the British at least, so odd around the neck of a uniform coatee. To their rear were a handful of white faces, the European officers.

‘Right y’are, sir, let ’em see we mean business.’ Quietly, McGucken guided Morgan.

‘Right Wing, Ninety-Fifth Regiment…’ Morgan’s mind flew back to the first time that he had spoken the order that he was about to give, ‘…with ball cartridge…load’, it had been at the Alma. Despite the heat, Morgan shivered.

Rifles were canted forward before each man reached to the black, leather pouch on the front of his belt and pulled out a single, paper tube. After a regulation pause, the tops were bitten off the cartridges before the powder was poured down the muzzle of every Enfield, then the steel ramrods were pulled from below the barrel of each weapon before the charge and lead bullet were rammed home. Another pause, then the rifles were lifted obliquely across the men’s bodies, left hands catching the stocks at the point of balance before each right hand thumbed back the steel hammers to half cock.

Right down the line the sergeants craned their heads, making sure that all the troops were ready for the fiddly operation of fitting their percussion caps. The sergeants nodded to McGucken, now standing at the centre of the four companies beside Morgan.

He quietly prompted, ‘Right, sir.’

‘Caps!’ Morgan’s word of command was repeated and four hundred right hands groped in the little leather pouches that sat just beside the brass buckles on their waist belts for the pea-sized, hollow copper percussion caps to fit over the nipples at each rifle’s breech. One or two men fluffed it, dropping the caps, the tense silence being broken with the customary sergeants’ cries of: ‘You wouldn’t drop it if it was wet and slippery, would you? Pick the fucker up!’ And the offenders, embarrassed at their own clumsiness, scrabbled in the dust.

Then again came sergeants’ nods and McGucken’s, ‘Right, sir,’ before Morgan’s command, ‘Front rank…kneel.’ Half the men pushed their right feet back and then sank to their knees, the rank behind bringing their rifles level with their waists, pointing over the heads of those in front.

‘Ready.’ At Morgan’s order, each hammer was clicked to full cock, making every weapon ready to fire.

‘Right Wing…targets front, preee…sent!’ Morgan’s final word of command from the centre of the line brought all the rifles into the aim. As damp white faces squinted down the Enfields’ sights at the bellies of the sepoys no more than a handful of paces away, a gasp and an involuntary flinch swept down the Indian ranks. The native troops blinked, hardly believing their eyes. They were only too aware of the devastation that a rifle volley would cause at that range; they’d been shown when the Enfields were issued to them that the bullet would scythe down not just one man, but any who stood packed closely behind him as well.

The crowd at the rear of the 95th had gone still and quiet, and Morgan believed that he could read the thoughts of the men in front of him. Their great brown eyes stared at his own men’s muzzles and it was if an unspoken belief in their innocence loomed over them. Morgan hoped he was right, for the time of reckoning was almost upon them.

‘Left, right, left, right…get ’ere, can’t you?’ A flat, Sheffield twang was clear on the hot air.

‘’Ere’s Sar’nt Ormond and the commanding officer, sir,’ said McGucken. ‘’Bout time, too.’

The detachment of the Grenadier Company had formed a hollow, marching square around the prisoners – Morgan couldn’t yet see how many – as they tramped down the slope towards the rest of the troops. Sergeant Ormond’s face was as expressionless now as it had been when he slashed Russians down at Sebastapol, thought Morgan, all stumpy, five-foot six of him, as dependable at issuing the bread ration as he would certainly prove to be at eviscerating Hindus.

The detachment had their bayonets fixed and just beyond the bobbing points came a gaggle of horsemen, the commanding officers of the native battalions, a cloud of adjutants, and Colonel Hume, who’d been lent a cob of dubious age and wind that hardly did him justice. It was difficult to see exactly what was going on in the centre of the square, but Morgan could hear shouts in what he guessed was Hindi and, quite distinctly, in best Wirksworth, ‘Coom on, yer barnshoot, keep up with the sergeant.’ Predictably, Corporal Pegg had landed the job of escorting the prisoners. As they came closer, Morgan could see Pegg’s stubby arm thrusting first one and then the other of the two leading prisoners hard in the small of the back. Each time the yellow cuff shot forward, so the sepoys staggered and shouted; each time they shouted, so the piston-like wrist administered another shove.

‘Stow all that bollocks, you two; you can try to persuade Joe Gunner not to jerk ’is lanyard, if you like, but you’re wastin’ yer breath.’ Pegg was as sympathetic as Morgan had come to expect. ‘Stop draggin’ them chains in the dust, won’t you?’

Morgan and McGucken marched forward to meet Hume and the party. They could see that the two prisoners who stumbled side by side were shackled ankle and wrist, they were barefoot and had exchanged their uniform trousers for shabby dhotis. Their swallow-tailed coatees hung open where the buttons had been cut away – on sentencing by the court martial, Morgan supposed. Despite Pegg’s attentions, both continued to yell, whilst the third man, who was bound only by rope at the wrists, was utterly silent.

There were a few hisses and hoots from within the crowd and Morgan thought he could make out the words ‘Mungal Pandy’ being chanted by a handful, but for the most part the advancing party was surrounded by an awed silence.

‘Sir, the right wing and Captain Bolton’s troop deployed as you ordered.’ Morgan braced to attention and saluted with a graceful sweep of his drawn sword as Hume clattered up on his borrowed mount.

‘Stop, you damn screw, can’t you?’ Hume hauled on the reins of the scruffy cob, whilst the other mounted officers came to a more elegant halt. ‘Mouth like bloody iron,’ he muttered as the horse jerked its head round bad-temperedly. ‘Good, thank you, Morgan. I see you’ve got the men ready to fire. Any sign of trouble?’

‘No, sir, the poor lambs look quite wretched, but the crowd might give us a problem.’ Morgan looked round at the rabble, who were beginning to get a little bolder, advancing step by step closer to the backs of the 95th and Bolton’s men.

Hume quickly walked his horse to the centre of the 95th’s line, McGucken and Morgan scrambling to keep up. With hardly a pause, Hume pulled a sheet of paper from the breast of his jacket, cleared his throat and, in a high, clear voice, started to read, ‘Verdicts and sentences of a court martial convened at Fort George, Bombay on the second of June Eighteen Fifty-Seven under the presidency of Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Hume, Companion of the Bath, Her Majesty’s Ninety-Fifth Regiment.’ Hume paused; every man, even those who didn’t understand a single syllable of what he was saying, were straining to hear him. ‘The three prisoners are charged with: having at a meeting made use of highly mutinous and seditious language, evincing a traitorous disposition towards the Government, tending to promote a rebellion against the State and to subvert the authority of the British Government. Private Shahgunge Singh, Bombay Sappers and Miners: guilty. Sentence: transportation for life.’

Morgan looked at the third prisoner, who was only lightly bound; he hung his head and trembled slightly, but he made no other outward sign of relief.

‘Drill-Havildar Din Syed Hussain, Bombay Marine Battalion: guilty. Private Mungal Guddrea, Tenth Bombay Native Infantry: guilty.’ Hume looked at the native troops who faced him. ‘Sentence: death by gunfire, to be carried out forthwith.’

The 95th, who could hear the details of what their commanding officer had said, shifted a little as they continued to point their weapons at the sepoys; there was a murmur of quiet satisfaction as they cuddled the butts of their rifles even closer.

No sooner had Hume pronounced sentence than Commandant Brewill spurred his horse slightly forward of the 95th and in slow, distinct Hindi repeated what Hume had said. A sigh swept up and down the waiting ranks of the sepoys, and a ripple of movement, almost as if the understanding of the news had slapped the Indian troops across the face. The drill-havildar tried to yell a desultory slogan or two, whilst his companion stood silent, his face lifted up towards the sun, his adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. The crowd had been listening intently too, one or two voices protested but most stood in awed silence.

‘I’ll have Bolton’s outer guns loaded, with your leave, sir?’ Morgan knew that two of the four guns would have to be used to execute the prisoners, but the pair pointing at either end of the sepoys’ ranks could do great damage, sweeping the lines of troops with an iron storm of canister, if things got out of hand.

‘Aye, do that, please, Morgan. Cant ’em in a bit so that they catch the rascals in enfilade, if needs be…’ Hume’s words sent Morgan off to speak to Bolton. Then, in a parade bellow the colonel added, ‘Sar’nt Ormond, carry on, please.’

‘Sir!’ Ormond, as calmly as if he were checking the men’s oil bottles, gave a few, quiet instructions that saw a pair of brawny, red-coated lads grab each prisoner by the elbows and hustle them towards the waiting guns.

‘Numbers One and Four guns, with case shot…load,’ Bolton, on Morgan’s instructions, gave the word of command to his outer guns, and the lance-bombardiers, who had been toying with the linen bags for the best part of an hour, slid the deadly projectiles into the barrels of the guns, followed by a well-practised push with a rammer from each waiting gun-numbers. Again, Morgan saw how the Indian line flinched as the yawning black muzzles were turned ready to rake them.

‘Don’t bloody struggle, Havildar; it won’t make a blind bit of difference.’ Lance-Corporal Pegg showed scant sympathy for his sweating prisoner. The non-commissioned officer seemed to have shrunk in his clothes – now his manacled wrists and ankles were as thin and bony as a famished child’s – as Pegg and Private Beeston dragged and pushed the prisoner towards the gun.

Any cockiness had quite gone from the native NCO. Morgan had thought how confident he’d looked as the party had approached down the hill, the havildar keeping up a stream of defiant yells, hoping, he supposed, that his friends would come to his rescue. But now the moment of reckoning was here and there was no sign of any action from the sepoys. Even the crowd had fallen quiet.

‘Excuse me, sir.’ McGucken stood to attention beside his commanding officer’s stirrup leather. ‘It’s no’ right to let this mutinous filth die in British red, is it, sir?’

Hume looked down from his saddle at the colour-sergeant, taken aback by the intensity of his words. McGucken, like most of the other long-serving NCOs who had seen more blood and killing than they cared to remember, was usually taciturn, passionless in circumstances that would have more callow men at fever pitch.

‘Aye, Colour-Sar’nt, you have a point. I don’t see why this scum should dishonour our uniforms.’ Hume paused for a second before adding, ‘Get those coatees off their backs if you’d be so kind, Sar’nt Ormond.’

Sepoy Guddrea already had both feet and one hand tied to the struts of the wheels of Number Two gun by stout, leather thongs. Lance-Corporal Abbott and Private Scriven were pulling his right arm back for the waiting gunner to complete the last set of bonds when they heard the order. So the coatee was dragged off Guddrea, the lining of one sleeve showing a greyish white as it was turned inside out. Rather than loosen the tethers on the prisoner’s other wrist, though, Scriven produced a clasp knife fron his haversack and the sleeve was briskly cut away.

‘Right, Havildar,’ sneered Pegg, ‘you won’t be needing this where you’re a-going,’ and he pulled the coatee roughly off the second, condemned man.

At the Indian’s feet two gunners kneeled, tying his ankles hard back against the gun’s wheels. As Pegg and Private Grimes held his arms for the gunners to complete the job, Morgan noticed his toes digging into the dust and the gun’s brass muzzle pushing the flesh at the base of the prisoner’s spine into a bulging, coffee-coloured collar.

‘Prime!’ At Bolton’s word of command, the bombardiers at both guns slid copper initiators the size of a pencil into the touchholes, before attaching lanyards to the twists of wire that emerged from their tops. Once the strings were jerked, the rough wire would rasp against the detonating compound in the tubes, producing a spark that would fire the charge.

The pair of sepoys were stretched like bows over the ends of the barrels, their limbs strained tight against the wheels of the guns by the leather straps, their chests – with the skin pulled tightly over their ribs – directly facing their comrades. They would have seen guns being loaded many times and now they must know exactly what was about to happen, thought Morgan, as he watched the havildar arch his head slowly back, eyes closed, the knot of hair on the top of his skull hanging loose, his mouth open below the drooping moustache, waiting for the last word that he would hear.

Both lanyards were drawn tight, the bombardiers looking towards Bolton, whose horse skittered and pawed the dust. The crowd remained quiet; even the crows in the trees seemed to be keeping a respectful silence, thought Morgan.

‘Ready, sir,’ Bolton reported.

‘Fire by single guns, if you please, Captain Bolton,’ said Hume, with exaggerated courtesy.

‘Sir.’ Bolton looked towards the crew to his left, making sure that they were quite ready before shouting, ‘Number Two gun…fire!’

The concussion thumped Morgan’s ears. The crows and scavengers rose from the trees in a black bruise, tattered wings beating in alarm, cawing and squawking, whilst the crowd gasped and the horses gibbed and pecked. Morgan expected the gun to recoil until he realised that, with only a blank charge, there was nothing to hurl it back on its wheels. Then, as the smoke hung around the muzzle in the still air, he saw the crew clawing at their faces.

Naked arms and legs were still attached to the nine-pounder’s wheels by their leather straps, raw chopped meat at the end of each buckled limb. But when the piece had fired, the vacuum created by the explosion had sucked a fine stew of blood and tissue back over the gunners. Their white, leather breeches were now pink with matter, their helmet covers a bloody smear, whilst their faces were flecked with the same gore. Each man wiped frantically at his eyes and cheeks in disgust.

But there was worse to come. As Morgan and all the others gawped, so a tousled football fell from the heavens and bounced towards the 10th Bengal Native Infantry, their ranks swerving and breaking to avoid Sepoy Gudderea’s bounding, blistered head. Ripped from its shoulders, the man’s skull had shot straight up into the sky before falling like a bloody stone to deliver the starkest, possible message to his living comrades.

‘Number Three gun…fire!’ Then Bolton’s command turned Drill-Havildar Din Hussain into carrion. Each face on the maidan turned upwards like a crowd at a firework party as, rising from the smoke, the black disc turned over and over, its mane of hair flailing around its scorched flesh, unseeing eyes staring wide in death. It rose to its zenith, every eye watching its plunge to earth then, with a thump and a couple of dusty bounces, Din Hussain’s head rolled towards his last tormentor.

‘Now that’ll teach you not to be a naughty little mutineer, won’t it?’ grinned Pegg at the lump of bone and blackened skin.

Morgan gagged as the hideous ball came to a halt in the dust.

TWO Bombay Brothers

‘Christ, I never want to see anything like that again.’ Morgan and Bazalgette were sitting in the shady anteroom of the officers’ mess in the fort, chota-pegs in hand, icecubes clinking, still dusty from the maidan.

‘Aye, I thought I’d seen some sights at Sevastopol, but nothing like that.’ Bazalgette’s forehead was cut across by sunburn, stark white above his peeling nose where the peak of his cap had kept the rays at bay. He pulled hard at his brandy. ‘It hardly made the right impression on the sepoys when Mabutt from my lot and that other lad from Carmichael’s company fainted dead away. We’re supposed to be the hand of a vengeful God, not a bunch of swooning tarts. I didn’t see a single sepoy drop out, did you, Morgan?’

‘No, I didn’t, and I agree that our men droopin’ around the place ain’t good, but the jawans did have Bolton’s guns to help ’em on their way, didn’t they?’

As the Bengal officers had bellowed the orders to the three native battalions that sent them marching back to their own cantonments, the Horse Gunners had hand-wheeled the two loaded guns behind them just to make sure that there were no second thoughts. It was as well they did, Morgan had thought, because the sepoys had missed the sight of the sweepers, the lowest of the professions, picking up the remnants of their comrades and untying their limbs from the wheels of the guns, so defiling their caste and punishing the victims after death.

Then, with a muted curse, brushing dust from the knees of his overalls, Captain Richard Carmichael came stamping into the mess.

‘Hey, chota-peg, jildi, boy.’

It hadn’t taken the big Harrovian long to pick up the arrogances of the worst type of white officers, thought Morgan. In their own mess in England or Ireland, the soldier servants would have been called by the discreet ringing of a bell, but here in India, the mess staff hovered just out of sight, instantly gliding to obey their officers’ wishes.

‘Can’t you keep the noise down, Carmichael? Haven’t you had enough din for one day?’ Morgan asked peevishly, tired of Carmichael’s boorishness.

‘Enough Din…I’ve just seen more than enough of Din, spread all over the maidan, poor bugger…ha!’ chortled Carmichael. Morgan immediately regretted feeding him the line. ‘And I don’t know who you think you are to be telling me what to do…you’ve let that brevet quite go to your head, ain’t you?’

The mess waiter had slid into the room, proffering a tiny silver tray to Carmichael on which sat a beaker of brandy and soda: it was snatched without a word or gesture of thanks.

Morgan said nothing, fearing that Carmichael had recognised his indecision as the wing had marched down to the execution site. Bazalgette, sensing the tension, leapt into the breach. ‘The lad of yours who measured his length, is he all right?’ Typically, Bazalgette asked an innocent question, not seeking to tease or mock; equally typically, Carmichael saw a barb where none existed.

‘What, that bloody fool Jervis? Aye, about as all right as that greenhorn o’ yours. Nothing that a dozen strokes with the cat wouldn’t put right. Not that Colonel-go-lightly bloody Hume would let us touch the men’s lilywhite skins, would he?’

Morgan wondered at this outburst. Carmichael was normally much more subtle in his disloyalty.

‘Aye, those two made us look right fools in front of that Bombay rubbish – and the bloody natives, come to that. No, you have to wonder what dross the Depot’s sending us these days and – mark my words – today was just a flea bite compared with what we’ll come up against later, see if it ain’t,’ Carmichael continued at full volume.

‘Please, Carmichael, I’d thank you to remember that we’re guests in the “Bombay rubbish’s” mess at the moment,’ Morgan tried to hush him, ‘and we’re going to have to learn to trust them, and them us, if we’re going into action shoulder to shoulder in Bengal. So it makes no sense to upset our hosts, does it?’

‘Aye, Carmichael, the white officers are going to have quite enough on their plates making sure that their own men stay loyal, without us sticking a burr under their saddle as well,’ Bazalgette added.

Morgan watched Carmichael’s reaction. Full of bluster with just one opponent, when the pendulum swung against him, he instantly backed down – and what a damn nerve he had to talk about the quality of the soldiers: Carmichael, the officer who was always in an indecent rush to find himself a safe job on the staff, leaving the men and his regiment without a second thought.

‘Aye, well, we’ll soon see if we can trust the rascals or not, won’t we?’ Carmichael continued more quietly. ‘Now that you’re in the colonel’s pocket, Morgan, did he give you any idea where they might be sending us?’

‘No. There’s some talk amongst the Bombay officers that we’ll be sent up towards Delhi, but I think that’s just speculation.’

‘Oh, so nowhere near your old countryman Ensign James Keenan, and his peachy little wife, then?’ said Carmichael with a curl of his lip.

‘No…no, why should we?’ Morgan was instantly uncomfortable when Keenan’s name was mentioned. ‘The Keenans are up at Jhansi near Agra with the Twelfth BNI. Safe as houses, no hint of trouble – and there won’t be, if I know anything about the commandant, Colonel Kemp. He’ll keep ’em well and truly in line, so he will,’ he continued, keen to steer the talk away from his former sergeant and his wife.

‘Aye, just as well now that the Keenans have got a son and heir to look after.’ There was a troublesome note in Carmichael’s voice. ‘You remember Keenan, don’t you, Bazalgette?’

‘Of course I do; wounded at the Alma, wasn’t he, did a wonderful job at The Quarries and got commissioned in the field, sold out and then went off to an Indian regiment? Didn’t know you were still in touch with him, Morgan,’ Bazalgette answered.

‘Oh, I doubt if he is,’ Carmichael cut in before Morgan could answer, ‘but I guess he still corresponds with Mrs Keenan – much to discuss about life back in Cork, eh, Morgan?’

‘Haven’t had anything to do with either of ’em since they left Dublin last year,’ answered Morgan, a little too quickly,

‘No? Well, who knows when we’ll knock into them again.’ Carmichael drained his glass noisily and stood up. ‘That would be an interesting meeting for you, wouldn’t it? Right, must go – there’s any number of delightful loyal sepoys to re-train whom “we must learn to trust” – wasn’t that your phrase, Morgan?’ And he strode from the cool of the mess out into the heat of the early afternoon.