To Do and Die. Patrick Mercer
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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.
‘Well, Colour-Sar'nt, that will be the first battle-honour on our Colours.’ Morgan forced his gloom and tiredness away.
McGucken pulled out his pipe and poked and prodded at the bowl before answering, ‘Aye, sir, an' let's pray it's our last.’
The young moon winked through the shutters. Glassdrumman, the warm, shabby, peeling Georgian hall that was the Morgan family's Cork home was