Flashman at the Charge. George Fraser MacDonald
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they know where it is?’ says Brown.
I wasn’t too sure myself where it was, but I said I supposed they did. Raglan tapped his lip, looking at the despatch as though he hoped it would go away.
‘Did you see anyone when the despatch was delivered to you – Newcastle, or Argyll, perhaps?’
‘I saw Lord Palmerston, sir. He remarked that the government were confident that the occupation of Sevastopol would be an excellent thing, but that it would be a damned serious business. Those were his words, sir.’
Brown gave a bark of disgust, and Raglan laughed. ‘We may agree with him, I think. Well, we must see what our Gallic allies think, I suppose, before we can reach a fruitful conclusion.’
So they did – all the chattering Frogs of the day, with St Arnaud, the little mountebank from the Foreign Legion, who had once earned his living on the stage and looked like an ice-cream vendor, with his perky moustache, at their head. He had the feverish look of a dying man – which he was – and Canrobert, with his long hair and ridiculous curling moustaches, wasn’t one to inspire confidence either. Not that they were worse than our own crew – the ass Cambridge, and Evans snorting and growling, and old England burbling, and Raglan sitting at the table head, like a vicar at a prize-giving, being polite and expressing gratified pleasure at every opinion, no matter what it was.
And there was no lack of opinions. Raglan thought an invasion might well come off – given luck – Brown was dead against it, but at first the Frogs were all for it, and St Arnaud said we should be in Sevastopol by Christmas, death of his life and sacred blue. Our navy people opposed the thing, and Raglan got peevish, and then the Frogs began to have their doubts, and everything fell into confusion. They had another meeting, at which I wasn’t present, and then the word came out: the Frogs and Raglan were in agreement again, Brown was over-ruled and the navy with him, we were to go to the Crimea.
‘I daresay the sea air will do us good and raise everyone’s spirits,’ says Raglan, and by God, he didn’t raise mine. I’ve wondered since, if I could have done anything about it, and decided I could. But what? If Otto Bismarck had been in my boots and uniform, I daresay he could have steered them away, as even a junior man can, if he goes about it right. But I’ve never meddled if I could avoid it, where great affairs are concerned; it’s too chancy. Mind you, if I could have seen ahead I’d have sneaked into Raglan’s tent one night and brained the old fool, but I didn’t know, you see.
So there was tremendous sound and fury for the next month, with everyone preparing for the great invasion. Willy and I had established ourselves snugly in a cottage outside the town, and with all our provisions and gear we did comfortably enough, but being staff men we couldn’t shirk too much, although Raglan worked Willy lightly, and was forever encouraging him to go riding and shooting and taking it easy. For the rest, it was touch and go, so far as I could see, whether the army, which was still full of fever and confusion, would ever be well enough to crawl on the transports, but as you know, the thing was done in the end. I’ve written about it at length elsewhere – the fearful havoc of embarking, with ships full of spewing soldiers rocking at anchor for days on end, the weeping women who were ordered to stay behind (although my little pal, Fan Duberly,13 sneaked aboard disguised as a washerwoman), the horses fighting and smashing in their cramped stalls, the hideous stink, the cholera corpses floating in the bay, Billy Russell standing on the quay with his note-book damning Lord Lucan’s eyes – ‘I have my duty, too, my lord, which is to inform my readers, and if you don’t like what you’re doing being reported, why then, don’t do it! And that’s my advice to you!’ Of course he was daft and Irish, was Billy, but so was Lucan, and they stood and cussed each other like Mississippi pilots.
I had my work cut out latterly in bagging a berth on the Caradoc, which was Raglan’s flagship, and managed to get not a bad billet for Willy and myself and Lew Nolan, who was galloper to Airey, the new chief of staff. He was another Irish, with a touch of dago or something, this Nolan, a cavalry maniac who held everybody in contempt, and let ’em feel it, too, although he was a long way junior. Mind you, he came no snuff with me, because I was a better horseman, and he knew it. We three bunked in together, while major-generals and the like had to make do with hammocks – I played Willy’s royalty for all it was worth, you may be sure. And then, heigh-ho, we were off on our balmy cruise across the Black Sea, a huge fleet of sixty thousand soldiers, only half of ’em rotten with sickness, British, Frogs, Turks, a few Bashi-bazooks, not enough heavy guns to fire more than a salute or two, and old General Scarlett sitting on top of a crate of hens learning the words of command for manoeuvring a cavalry brigade, closing his book on his finger, shutting his boozy old eyes, and shouting, ‘Walk, march, trot. Damme, what comes next?’
The only thing was – no one knew where we were going. We ploughed about the Black Sea, while Raglan and the Frogs wondered where we should land, and sailed up and down the Russian coast looking for a likely spot. We found one, and Raglan stood there smiling and saying what a capital beach it was. ‘Do you smell the lavender?’ says he. ‘Ah, Prince William, you may think you are back in Kew Gardens.’
Well, it may have smelled like it at first, but by the time we had spent five days crawling ashore, with everyone spewing and soiling themselves in the pouring rain, and great piles of stores and guns and rubbish growing on the beach, and the sea getting fouler and fouler with the dirt of sixty thousand men – well, you may imagine what it was like. The army’s health was perhaps a little better than it had been on the voyage, but not much, and when we finally set off down the coast, and I watched the heavy, plodding tread of the infantry, and saw the stretched look of the cavalry mounts – I thought, how far will this crowd go, on a few handfuls of pork and biscuit, no tents, devil a bottle of jallop, and the cholera, the invisible dragon, humming in the air as they marched?
Mind you, from a distance it looked well. When that whole army was formed up, it stretched four miles by four, a great glittering host from the Zouaves on the beach, in their red caps and blue coats, to the shakos of the 44th on the far horizon of the plain – and they were a sight of omen to me, for the last time I’d seen them they’d been standing back to back in the bloodied snow of Gandamack, with the Ghazi knives whittling ’em down, and Souter with the flag wrapped round his belly. I never see those 44th facings but I think of the army of Afghanistan dying in the ice-hills, and shudder.
I was privileged, if that is the word, to give the word that started the whole march, for Raglan sent me and Willy to gallop first to the rear guard and then to the advance guard with the order to march. In fact, I let Willy deliver the second message, for the advance guard was led by none other than Cardigan, and it was more than I could bear to look at the swine. We cantered through the army, and the fleeting pictures are in my mind still – the little French canteen tarts sitting laughing on the gun limbers, the scarlet stillness of the Guards, rank on rank, the bearded French faces with their kepis, and Bosquet balancing his belly above a horse too small for him, the sing-song chatter of the Highlanders in their dark green tartans, the sombre jackets of the Light Division, the red yokel faces burning in the heat, the smell of sweat and oil and hot serge, the creak of leather and the jingle of bits, the glittering points of the lances where the 17th sat waiting – and Willy burst out in excitement: ‘Our regiment, Harry! See how grand they look! What noble fellows they are!’ – Billy Russell sitting athwart his mule and shouting ‘What is it, Flash? Are we off at last?’, and I turned away to talk to him while Willy galloped ahead to where the long pink and blue line of the 11th marked the van of the army.
‘I haven’t seen our friends so close before,’ says Billy. ‘Look yonder.’ And following his pointing finger, far out to the left flank, with the sun behind them, I saw the long silent line of horsemen on the crest, the lances like twigs in the hands of pygmies.
‘Cossacks,’ says Billy. We’d seen ’em before, of course, the first night, scouting our landing, and I’d thought then, it’s well seen you ain’t Ghazis, my lads, or you’d pitch our whole force back into the sea before we’re right ashore. And as the advance was sounded, and the whole great army lumbered forward into the heat haze, with a band lilting ‘Garryowen’, and the chargers of the 17th snorting and fidgeting at the sound, I saw to my horror that