Dust and Steel

‘Aye, sir, as ready as we’ll ever be, but I have me doots about yon cows.’ McGucken looked at the great, lazy-eyed oxen. One scratched its chin with a rear hoof, narrowly missing Private Swann as its horns flailed about, whilst its partner, shackled to it by a clumsy wooden yoke, flapped its ears incessantly at a cloud of flies.

‘Yes, not to mention the rest of God’s creatures that we seem to have inherited.’ Morgan looked with dismay as two camels wandered past, swamped by bundles of fodder almost as large as themselves. ‘Still, with such a lack of draught horses, I’d prefer to have this lot than try to pull the hardware ourselves.’

As the march started after sundown that night, Morgan regretted his words. The guns and their limbers behaved well enough – the Indian drivers keeping the horses well in hand – and the camels were aloof but quiescent, whilst their vast loads meant that no traffic could pass in the other direction. Then, after a great deal of trumpeting and general skittishness, the elephants that were pulling the extra ammunition caissons settled to their duty, plodding stolidly in the dark under the direction of their mahouts. But the bullocks: how right McGucken had been not to trust ‘yon cows’.

‘Get up, won’t you, you lazy son of a drab,’ one of the Bombay gunners, a grizzled Englishman wearing the Sutlej medal, kicked and slapped one such creature that had lain down directly in the centre of the narrow, muddy track, anchoring its yoked partner securely and blocking all the traffic that came behind it. ‘Get your fuckin’ arse movin’ before I take the steel to ye.’

To the 95th’s Grenadiers, who marched beside the column of nine-pounders, howitzers and their attendant traffic, ready to protect them from any interference by the enemy, such sights were a wonder.

‘Come on, you useless sod,’ the gunner continued, pulling his hanger from its scabbard and giving the animal such a poke that it leapt to its feet, bellowing forlornly and pulling its partner violently forward.

‘You’ll need to tend the wound you’ve given that beast,’ Morgan said, concerned not with any pain that the gunner had inflicted, but merely the continued efficiency of the ox, ‘or it’ll mortify in this climate, won’t it?’

‘Mortify, sir – I hope it bloody dies.’ The gunner had, quite clearly, reached the end of his patience with this particular animal. ‘But I doubt it; they’ve got hides thicker than a docker’s dick-skin, these bastards ’ave, sir.’

And after a brace of night marches and sleep-short days, Morgan came to agree with the gunner, for the tiresome cattle seemed to ignore hunger, thirst, threats or reason, suiting themselves entirely whether they wished to obey orders or not, and apparently impervious to all stimuli other than those that they imposed upon themselves.

The hours of darkness were hells of delay and infuriating petty problems – slipped saddles, shed shoes, broken spokes and binding axles – whilst the days provided little sleep at all as the sun beat down.

After almost two weeks of stuttering progress, McGucken was tramping alongside Morgan one night, reliving some story of his time with the 36th in Gibraltar when vivid flashes lit up the road at the front of the column.

‘What in God’s name’s that?’ asked Morgan, though he knew well enough as the flat bangs of musket-fire and the sweeping whistle of lead shook him from his reverie.

‘Bloody ambush, sir,’ yelled McGucken, already sprinting hard towards the trouble. ‘Come on, Captain Morgan, sir, you don’t want to miss the fun.’

Morgan’s belly was tight with fear, but he scrabbled after McGucken when more flashes reflected off the bushes and trees as a couple of British rifles returned fire.

The track was narrow and greasy, blocked by animals and drivers, shrieking women and cowering grooms. Worse still, as the pair ran forward, grabbing their own men as they went, so a stream of panic-filled bearers came bowling down the verges towards them, shouting, eyes wide with fright, barging and pushing their way to the rear. As the mob skittered past Morgan in the dark, one man fell under the feet of the others, pulling at something in his shoulder whilst a nearby camel suddenly sank to its knees, its breath soughing coarsely from its lips. As he jostled his way forward, Morgan was aware of something fast and menacing whispering through the night: flights of arrows were thumping into flesh and saddles and tack, or quivering in the mud around his ankles.

‘Jaysus, this is like the bloody crusades, sir,’ McGucken puffed as they ran up to the head of the column. ‘What else will the fuckers use, boiling oil?’

But before Morgan could reply, McGucken spotted two figures stumbling hard down the track on the other side of the camels and the frightened oxen, away from the noise of battle in front.

‘Corporal Pegg…’ even though the arrows continued to fly, McGucken’s barrack-yard yell brought the fugitive and his companion to a sudden halt, ‘…where d’ye think yer going?’

Despite the darkness, Morgan could see the guilt on Pegg’s face.

‘Er…nowhere, Colour Sar’nt,’ Pegg stammered. ‘I were just mekin’ sure that—’

‘Put that bint down, Corporal, and get back to your men.’

Even in this chaos, McGucken’s strength of character could galvanise others. It was what made him so indispensable, thought Morgan.

Pegg objected no further: the native girl whom he had been sheltering shrieked off into the night, clutching her sari about her, whilst he skulked his way back to the front of the column, trying to look as though he’d never been away.

‘What’s going on, Sarn’t Ormond?’ Morgan found the non-commissioned officer kneeling in the grass surrounded by a handful of his men. They stared hard at the fringe of jungly forest that loomed darkly fifty yards away from them, weapons ready, peering down the barrels, looking for a target.

‘Got shot at from over yonder, sir.’ Ormond pointed at the trees with a nod of his forehead, never taking his eyes off the source of danger nor his finger off his rifle’s trigger. ‘Couple of the lads fired back.’

But before Ormond could finish, another volley boomed out from the trees, the rounds whipping high overhead in the darkness. Though they were wide of their mark, Morgan found himself flat on his belly, pressing his body into the grit and mud of the track whilst a camel danced about him, the creature’s decorative bells jingling madly, more frightened of the human’s strange behaviour round his feet than the noise and uproar.

Christ, that was a mile off, thought Morgan. What am I doing down here on my belt buckle? What’ll the boys make of me? They’re not scrubbing around in the dirt, are they?

The crackle of shots from his own men helped to restore Morgan’s senses as Ormond turned to him, his face damp with sweat in the moonlight, and yelled, ‘What d’you want us to do, sir?’

‘He’ll be leading us out to clear them.’ Happily, McGucken was there at Morgan’s elbow, as calm as if it were all a blankfiring exercise. ‘Won’t you, sir? Get yer spikes on, lads.’

And whilst the clutch of men around them pulled the slender, eighteen-inch-long bayonets from their scabbards and slipped the sockets firmly over the end of their barrels, Morgan collected himself, dragging his blade from his belt and pushing his hand through the sword knot whilst his arse shrivelled tight in an all-too-familiar way. He licked his lips, held the gently curved steel out in front of him and stumbled forward over the greasy verge at the edge of the road and into the long grass beyond.

‘Come on, Grenadiers, follow me!’ Morgan’s words seemed to come from a stranger as the little crowd of men surged after him, weapons levelled, half cheering as they crashed over the broken ground.

His mind raced back to the last time he’d been ambushed at night outside Sevastopol. Then it had been screaming Russians, banging rifles and popping flares. But the enemy was nowhere to be seen now, just the ominous, black tree line that got closer with each clumsy stride.

‘There’s the bastards…there. Fire, lads.’ Ormond’s breathless voice came from somewhere behind Morgan, as drab spectral figures paused, snatched at bowstrings and scrambled away into the depths of the forest before the troops could close with them.

A covey of arrows flickered harmlessly around as a handful of rifles crashed, the yellow flashes instantly lighting up the night, giving just a glimpse of lithe, running shadows, one of which was flung onto its face as if by the swipe of a giant’s hand.

‘Got ’im,’ McGucken growled with satisfaction, the cloud of powder smoke hanging heavily amongst the leaves and branches. ‘Stop here, lads. Don’t chase ’em, they’re not for catching, now.’

Morgan reached for a tree trunk for support as he sucked for breath, his sword suddenly leaden. ‘Get the men reloaded, please, Colour-Sar’nt.’ Experience had taught him that, at least.

‘Aye, sir,’ McGucken replied. ‘You heard the officer,’ even as he pushed around looking for his quarry in the undergrowth as a sportsman might search for a downed woodcock.

‘’Ere ’e is, Jock…bus.’ Sergeant Ormond had been in more bloody scrimmages with the colour-sergeant than either could count and was allowed such familiarity. Now he kneeled, parting the grass so that the moonlight might let him see just what the enemy looked like.

‘Skinny little runt,’ said Ormond as Morgan and McGucken clustered round. ‘Nice shot, though, right through the neck.’

It was difficult for Morgan to see much in the dark; all he could make out was a man not much bigger than a child wearing a dirty grey dhoti from which stuck stick-thin legs and bare muddy feet. Stained teeth were visible under a wispy moustache, lank hair covered much of his face, whilst blood, black by the light of the moon, still pumped from a long gash that ran from under his left ear across to his windpipe.

‘Yon’s no sepoy, is ’e, sir?’ McGucken held up a slender curved bow that he’d pulled from the dead man’s hand.

‘Certainly doesn’t look like it, Colour-Sar’nt. He’s no uniform or belts on him. More like a common badmash, I’d say,’ replied Morgan.

But before the professional debate began over exactly what sort of man it was that McGucken had reduced to cold meat, a gale of shouting and frightened trumpeting from the elephants that towed the heavy ammunition carts broke out from the column waiting on the road behind them.

Morgan began to run through the brush, back towards the road, the noise of the elephants being joined by a strange, feral squealing.

‘Come on, then, get after the company commander.’ McGucken chivvied the troops into a stumbling run, away from the dead man at whom they had all been gawping. ‘Watch out for any of these rogues hidin’ in the grass.’

But the danger came from quite a different source. When the column stopped, the elephants had jammed themselves tightly together at the rear of the line behind the guns and just in front of the spare oxen and some dhoolies carrying the sick. Here the track was deeply sunken, its banks reaching up five feet or more, effectively penning in the animals and their burdens.

‘Get out of the way!’ Morgan, at the head of his panting men, had been able to make out the forms of the six elephants wildly swaying about, trunks outstretched, trumpeting deafeningly in the night, stamping and stomping at something that shrieked beneath their feet. Now, one of the huge beasts came lumbering over the bank straight towards the group of soldiers, mighty ears flapping wildly, tusks thrashing left and right, its mahout clutching helplessly to its neck as its ammunition cart floundered after it. As the monstrous thing cut a swathe through the running troops so a wheel came off the caisson, which slewed round, spilling great, black, 24-pound howitzer rounds, which bounced through the grass.

‘Oh, ow…’ yelled Private James. ‘It’s broke me leg!’ as he was bowled over like a skittle by one of the iron shot, which knocked his feet from under him.

‘They’re pigs, sir.’ McGucken had dodged the blundering grey form and now stood on the edge of the bank just feet from the other plunging elephants, looking down at a dozen shrieking, darting forms, ghostly pale in the night. ‘The elephants are terrified of ’em – so’s the natives. Where the fuck have they come from?’

He was right. Morgan saw how the squeals of the pigs were tormenting the elephants, who were trying to rid themselves of their attackers with tusks and vast stamping feet, which, in turn were making the pigs even more petrified and noisy. Meanwhile, the Hindu civilians and military drivers had gathered in an appalled huddle on the opposite side of the road, aghast and helpless as the unclean creatures ran amok.

‘God knows. Kill the bloody things, lads.’ Morgan leaped down amongst the huge, stamping, grey, leathery feet, immediately regretting his decision. ‘But don’t shoot, stab the sods.’

This is no way to die, he thought as an enormous pad with nails the size of trowels thumped into the earth just inches from him, and just look at those nuts – as a scrotum the size of a bag of flour swung past his face. It’ll look just grand on the Court and Social page:…‘gallant fate at the head of his men; bashed to death by an elephant’s bollocks whilst trying to sabre a swine.’

Eventually they finished the job. Private Saint had his foot run over by the wheel of the battery’s forge wagon, Sergeant Ormond was brushed sideways by an elephantine knee, but the pigs were finally subdued by the blades of the men and order restored to the terrified leviathans.

‘What d’you suppose that was about, Colour-Sar’nt?’ Morgan sat on the bank by the track, as the first light of dawn turned the black sky to turtle-dove grey.

‘Oldest trick in the book, apparently, sir. One of the gunner naiks was tellin’ me that everyone knows that elephants and pigs are shit-scared of each other an’ if yous want to stampede the big buggers you just release a few wee porkers around their feet,’ answered McGucken.

‘Well, there we are; they didn’t teach us that back at the depot, did they, Colour-Sar’nt? Still, it shows the Pandies have got a deal of sense. If they could have knocked the guns out, or just destroyed the ammunition, we’d be in queer street,’ Morgan reasoned. ‘What damage is done?’

‘Not much, sir. A fodder camel’s down, some oxen have bolted an’ can’t be found yet, one bearer’s been wounded, Sar’nt Ormond an’ Saint are a bit knocked about, an’ the artillery lads are just getting a spare wheel back on that limber.’ McGucken checked a pencilled list on a scrap of paper. ‘Oh, aye, one of the Bombay gunners is unaccounted for; they think he might have gone off wi’ the Pandies. An’ the natives reckon that judging by the archer we got, the whole thing was probably the work o’ rebels from one of the maharajah’s armies up north, not reg’lar sepoys.’

‘So, irregular rebels, not regular rebels…Hmm, this is going to be even more confusing than I thought. Anyway, let’s get moving once that wheel’s fixed. We’ll find some water up ahead, get everything square and bed down for the day.’ Morgan tapped his pipe out on the heel of his muddy boot. ‘But we’ll have to be more alert in close country if we don’t want to get caught like that again.’

‘You all right, Pete, Jono?’ Lance-Corporal Pegg pushed through the brush into the small clearing where Privates Sharrock and Beeston were sitting behind a modest ant hill as sentries for the column that rested in the midday heat behind them.

‘Aye, we’re sound as a bell, Corp’l. Too much bloody staggin’, though,’ Beeston replied dolefully.

Since the ambush the day before, Morgan had ordered that the sentries should be doubled, so cutting by half the small amount of sleep that the men were getting during the day.

‘Well, I’ve got Jimmy here to replace you, Jono, so you’ll soon be rolled up snug; mek the most on it.’ The men were posted for two-hour shifts, a fresh sentry being brought forward by a junior NCO every hour to replace one of them, so minimising the likelihood, at least in theory, that a pair of sentries would fall asleep at the same time. The burden, though, fell heavily upon the lance-corporals and corporals, who got little rest.

‘If I’m on me chin-strap, I bet you’re half dead, ain’t you, Corp’l?’ The new sentry posted, Beeston and Pegg were walking back to the column down a narrow track.

‘Well, I’ve ’ad more restful times, but double sentries is always a pain in the ring, ain’t it?’ Pegg replied.

‘Wasn’t the sentries I were thinking about, Corp’l.’ Beeston’s darkly tanned face lit into a smile. ‘It was that dhobi bint that you’re a-poking.’

‘Less o’ that, you cheeky sod.’ Though only twenty, Pegg was more than capable of pulling rank with older, more experienced men when it suited him. ‘Anyway, she’s not just a bint, she’s—’

‘Hush, Corp’l, what’s that noise?’ Beeston cut across Pegg’s retort, freezing in his steps and pulling the hammer back on his rifle, raising the butt to the shoulder.

Pegg must have missed the low gurgling snuffle amongst the hum and click of insects as he’d walked up the track with the new sentry a few minutes before. But now, as both men listened intently, the noise came again.

‘What d’you reckon it is, Jono?’ asked Pegg, as he too brought his weapon up to the shoulder.

‘Dunno. Sounds like a man, though, Corp’l,’ answered Beeston. ‘There, it’s coming from over there.’

Slowly, hesitantly, the two soldiers crept forward off the track and into the thicket as the rasping moan came again.

‘Bloody hell, they’ve made a job on him, ain’t they?’ Jono Beeston murmured as they both looked at the torn form of a man who was tied to a tree trunk. His naked feet stuck out below his crumpled knees; the only clothes he now wore were the blood-stained overalls of the Bombay Horse Artillery, whilst from his shoulders great strips of flesh had been flayed away from the purply muscle and fatty tissue that lie below the skin. His head lolled on his slashed chest, his topknot was now undone and the hair hung down in a curtain around his face.

‘’E’s not long for this world, poor owd lad.’ Pegg gently lifted the Indian gunner’s chin and pulled one eyelid open. ‘Let’s get ’im cut down an’ carried back.’

The pair of them slung their rifles and lifted the man by armpits and knees, the way they’d carried a hundred casualties in the past, trudging back down the uneven path.

‘Bring him here, lads.’ McGucken had been about to visit the sentries himself when he saw Pegg and Beeston with their load. ‘Who is he?’

‘One of the artillery drivers, Colour-Sar’nt,’ Pegg puffed as they lay him on the ground as gently as possible. ‘Found ’im tied to a tree over yonder.’

‘Aye, he must be the boy who disappeared yesterday.’ McGucken bent down, pulled a tiny round shaving mirror from his haversack and held it against the man’s lips. ‘No, he’s bus. Well done for bringing him in though, lads. Nip over an’ tell the gunners, will you, Beeston.’ McGucken was matter-of-fact; he’d seen too many dead men to be affected by another. ‘They’ll want to get ’im burnt before we move on; poor sod.’

‘Mek’s you wonder though, Colour-Sar’nt, what this is all about, don’t it?’ Pegg and McGucken stared down at the grisly sight; the blood on the man’s shoulders where the flesh had been stripped away had started to congeal as death arrived, whilst flies crawled thickly over his eyes, lips and nostrils.

‘All that stuff about God’s mercy from Mr Canning that the officers lectured us about on the ship – ’as anyone told the fuckin’ Pandies to behave like Christians?’ Pegg asked.

‘Doesn’t seem like Christmas, does it, Colour-Sar’nt?’ Morgan tramped alongside McGucken, the whining of the bullock-cart wheels deadened only by the incessant buzz of flies.

‘No, sir, it doesna,’ replied McGucken, routinely swiping at the insects. ‘They’ll be punishin’ the grog back home, just gettin’ the measure o’ things for Hogmanay. What’ll be happenin’ back in Cork?’

What indeed? wondered Morgan. He remembered his mother’s excitement when he was a boy whilst they covered Glassdrumman – the ‘big house’, as the servants would have it – in holly and pine cones; how she’d insisted on following the latest fashion from London by bringing an eight-foot fir tree into the hall and covering it with glass balls (to be greeted by, ‘Balls, indeed’, from his scowling father) bought at vast expense from Dublin. What would Maude (how pregnant would she be now?) be doing tonight, and how would Mary be spending the season of goodwill up in Jhansi – assuming she and Sam (what did the lad look like, was he sturdy, like him, or willowy like his mother?) were as safe as Keenan had assured him they would be?

‘Will you listen to that, sir!’ McGucken interrupted his thoughts with a delighted laugh.

Just in sight, a mile away, rose the mud and brick fort of Deesa, the only European station for miles around, which it had taken them over four weeks of blistering, tedious marching to reach. Their only excitement had been the botched ambush two weeks before; now, as the heat started to make the dawn light wobble and the horizon to dip and rise, as the kites wheeled above them and the camels hawked and farted, the sound of a brass band came wafting down the breeze.

‘Ha…damn me, it’s “Good King Wenceslas”, ain’t it?’ Morgan smiled.

‘Aye, sir, “…where the snow lay round about, Deep an’ crisp an’ even,” – some bugger’s got a sense o’ humour.’

And so they had. The artillery and its escort of the 95th was the last part of the column to reach Deesa, and as they approached they could see the white-jacketed musicians of the 86th under their German bandmaster, and a neat quarter guard in scarlet presenting arms whilst the guns, carts and limbers rumbled and groaned through the gates.

‘Makes you realise just how bloody scruffy we’ve become, Colour-Sar’nt, don’t it?’ Morgan returned the guard’s salute as they passed. The young subaltern in command, just shaved and freshly pressed, stood with his sword held gracefully akimbo.

‘Aye, sir, an’ here’s the commanding officer.’ McGucken had spotted some horsemen trotting slowly towards them. ‘March to attention, Grenadiers.’

The troops brought their rifles smartly to the shoulder, trying to make up for their dust-ingrained, sun-bleached appearance.

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