Until the Colours Fade (46 page)

‘There’s a general stand to arms,’ he shouted, as Towers squinted up at him from between red-rimmed lids. Just then their orderly ran into the tent and told them in a panting whisper that the Russian field army was less than a mile from the camp.

‘They might have waited till after breakfast,’ muttered Towers, stumbling to his feet and tripping over one of his boots. George did not smile at Towers’s remark nor at his shouts of anger as he stepped into a large puddle near the tent pole. The nervous shock of being woken abruptly after only three hours’ sleep, followed by the horrifying information about the scale of the attack, had set his heart hammering like a fist in his chest. He also felt a tight choking feeling in his throat. Many times since his arrival in the Crimea he had learned that to ‘have one’s heart in one’s mouth’ was not an entirely fanciful expression.

As the first sharp wave of panic receded, George felt his exhaustion return. He sank down on his bed and listened to Towers swearing mindlessly as he struggled with his boots. George’s feet had swollen so much that for the past four days he had not dared to take his boots off in case he should be unable to get them on again. The thought of a gruelling and dangerous day without food and rest brought him close to tears. He
wondered
whether his absence would be noticed if he slipped away on the pretence of going to headquarters, but the thought of facing accusations of cowardice instantly banished this idea. The orderly brought him his combat sword and his bearskin, which he had not worn since the Alma. The sight of the black fur and red hackle calmed him a little. Was he not an officer in a regiment which had won battle honours in every major British war since the reign of Charles II? A company commander in the 2nd Regiment of Foot: the Coldstream Guards, whose motto ‘Nulli Secundus’ had been chosen as a protest against the Grenadiers gaining the distinction of being the 1st Regiment in the Brigade. For a moment, as he felt the weight of the bearskin on his head and the chain chinstrap cold against his jaw, pride in past glory outweighed present fear.

He was adjusting his sword-belt and revolver strap, when the first shell fell on the camp. George had not heard the preceding whistle through the wet canvas, so the sudden explosion shocked him far more than it would have done had he been forewarned. He had prepared himself for fighting to come but not for
immediate
danger. Towers was calmly scooping potted meat from a jar and eating it off the end of a knife; as he saw George leaving, he dropped the knife and shouted to him to wait, but George left without looking back: eager to be out in the open where there was a certain security in being able to hear the approaching
projectiles
– a round-shot fired straight at a man could even be seen in the air and evaded; but today thick banks of mist lay across the
lines of tents, and the shot and shells hurtled out of them without warning.

George saw that everybody was running towards the ridge above the lower plateau. The fact that the Russians were able to shell the camp with such ease and accuracy made it certain that they had driven back the pickets and had established a battery of heavy guns on one of the low hills half-a-mile beyond the Sandbag Battery. As George ran, he saw the body of an officer covered by a cape; he looked away quickly and hurried on. Tents were being ripped to shreds by shell fragments or being bowled over like ninepins by round-shot. He saw three horses which had been tethered together: all killed by the same ball. Two had been disembowelled.

A few resourceful officers had managed to get together whole companies and were marching them down to the ridge in an
orderly
fashion; but most of the men were walking or running in small groups: regiments jumbled together, shouting to each other to find out where they were supposed to go. George joined a major leading two complete companies of Scots Fusiliers and twenty or thirty men from the Coldstream. Since their camp was some distance south of the main 2nd Division encampment, the Guards reached the ridge later than many Light Infantry
Regiments
, some of which had already been ordered into action to support the survivors from the pickets.

The mist was still lying in dense pockets on the lower plateau, but steadily dispersing with a light breeze blowing from right to left. From what he could see, George guessed that the Russians now had about six thousand men on the plateau and
outnumbered
the five or six British battalions, resisting them there, by at least three to one. As the mist and the smoke from the musketry rolled across, alternately concealing and revealing, George gradually came to the conclusion that the Russians had an army of thirty or forty thousand men on the slopes beyond the lower plateau. The British he reckoned were opposing them with
perhaps
four thousand men and would probably be able to muster twice that number when the 3rd, 2nd and Light Divisions had joined them. The 1st Division would have to remain above
Balaclava
in case of a break through, and the rest of the army would be tied down defending the batteries facing the town. From the dull rumble of heavy firing from the left, it seemed that the enemy was launching diversionary attacks on the French
positions
to stop them moving troops across to bolster the threatened British right flank. The best odds that could be hoped for in the
next couple of hours would be five to one against the British.

But as George looked down at the chaotic fighting taking place below him, he did not abandon all hope. The thick
brushwood
and small ravines and hollows, which split the plateau, made it hard for the Russians to use their numerical superiority effectively, since the broken nature of the ground split their
formations
, and the shifting mist served to conceal the defenders’ positions and helped them to outflank the enemy columns. Nor, when British lines were broken, could the Russians pursue them easily through the brushwood. Already the battle was being fought not in disciplined formations but in small widely scattered groups of broken troops; and this also had the advantage of
preventing
the Russians using the full capability of their field guns without risk to their own soldiers. But the longer George watched, the clearer the final outcome became. For every one British battalion being sent down into the fighting, the Russians were committing two or three, and whether troops fought in rigid formation or in fragmented groups, sheer weight of
numbers
would finally tell. The point had almost been reached when it would be impossible to reduce the forces on the ridge any further; it would be on this key position that the Russians would mount their principal assault, and if they were to break through in numbers, the British and French camps and batteries would be taken, and the allies forced down to their supply ports and
destroyed
there.

For the five minutes since his arrival on the ridge, George had been watching the battle with such intense absorption that he had to some extent forgotten his own danger. Then the Russians began firing their heavy guns at the formations on the ridge. For reasons which George could not understand, it seemed that
General
Pennefather, in command of the 2nd Division, only had 9-pounders at his disposal: guns quite useless against the Russian 24-pounders firing from the hills beyond the lower plateau. The first round-shot fell behind the Guards’ position, bouncing and skidding away across the turf like gigantic cricket balls, tearing up large divots. It was a sight that made George’s stomach turn over. Then the enemy started firing shells as well as shot.

As a company commander, George was standing slightly apart from his men and a few paces in front. Although he was no more exposed than they, his solitary position made him feel that he was. Ahead of his battalion some field-officers were conferring in a group; to his relief, one of them came across and told him to get his company to spread out and lie down. George was annoyed
that many officers remained standing to give their men
confidence
that nothing very terrible was about to happen; he
therefore
felt obliged to go on standing too, finding it hard not to flinch or lower his head as he heard the shells hissing and
whistling
overhead. One burst twenty yards behind him and he felt the earth tremble. There were screams and the repeated call for stretchers. Another exploded in the rear rank of the company in front of him, killing three men and showering George with earth and stones, one of which hit his shoulder and bruised him. After this he lay down. Four bandsmen were running with a badly wounded man on a stretcher; a round-shot felled the back two, cutting one in half, and pitching the bleeding man from the stretcher onto the ground where he lay twitching and screaming in agony. Over and over again George heard the awful soft thud as a round-shot hit a man: a noise like a hammer smashing into damp rotten wood.

When he had come under heavy artillery fire in the trenches, George had felt comparatively safe; even the shallowest
depression
or hole quadrupled a man’s chances of survival. But the top of the ridge was flat and bare, with none of the thick scrub
covering
the lower ground. Even a few screening bushes would have helped to stop the round-shot bounding on and killing men at the second or third bounce. George found himself staring fixedly at the ground, noting the texture of the soil and the whitish celery colour of the coarse grass near its roots. He wanted to cover his head with his hands to cut out the noise of the shells and the frightened yelling of the wounded, but he did not dare in case new orders were given and he could not hear them. At the Alma, the desperate dash down to the river and the breathless agony of the charge up the hill on the other side had saved him from his fear. A charge rarely lasted longer than a few minutes, and one side usually gave ground before bitter hand-to-hand fighting
developed;
but this bombardment could go on for hours, and all that time there would be nothing that any man under it could do to affect the issue.

Sweat was dripping down George’s forehead from under his bearskin and running into his eyes. Every pore in his body seemed to have opened, making his mouth and throat feel parched and swollen. He thought of the churchyard at Rigton Bridge and his overpowering panic after the first few shots, and how he had been almost too weak to get to his feet and order the men to run for the porch. And am I still the same? Still a coward? He imagined hearing the order to advance and saw himself unable
to rise, and this brought him closer to hysteria. He recalled Lord Goodchild riding across the churchyard with a calmness bordering on contempt, and felt a furious resentment that he had been constituted so differently. At this moment, he thought, I would do anything, accept any conditions, to escape from this ridge if my departure were to be unknown; even, if need be, live the rest of my life in poverty provided I were safe. No comforts were essential; life was all that mattered. Oh God let me live. If I live I will make amends for past pleasure-seeking; I will build model dwellings, open soup kitchens, set aside capital for a
charity
to assist army widows. I will do anything, God, if I live. But the shells still came down and at each approaching whistle he felt an iron collar tighten round his throat and his heart leapt in his chest. After every miss he experienced relief so intense that the greatest pleasures he had ever known seemed trivial by
comparison
; but this emotion lasted no longer than a second, and
vanished
with every new danger.

Then after twenty minutes of bombardment there was a lull. With the ebbing of his fear George felt disgusted with himself for his collapse; and once, he thought, I believed that proximity to death could change and elevate a man. In hours or minutes I may be dead, yet nothing in me has changed. I am no wiser, no less shallow and indecisive than I was before. My thoughts were not about what may lie beyond death or the meaning of life. I always avoided such subjects and I still avoid them now. Looking back on my life what memories have I, except blurred images of
prostitutes
, horses, and cards? No woman will shed tears at my death. Catherine will receive the news of my passing with mild regret but without pain. Helen would probably smile ironically. Poor George killed by his father’s wealth and snobbery. Nothing but the Guards for George; no matter that many of the officers wouldn’t talk to him. What did his father care about that,
provided
he could boast about his son in the Brigade? He vividly recalled his stumbling utterances among the statues at Hanley Park. So that had really been his last chance with her. A fine way to have used it. A fine way. And now he would never see
Catherine
again.

When the shells started to fall once more, George’s anger did not desert him. He was still scared, but the near conviction that he was about to die unloved, without, as it seemed to him, ever having performed a single useful or memorable action, no longer filled him with self-pity but with rage. His experience of war had brought him no religious or philosophical revelations but it had
at least forced him to recognise the emptiness of his past. And now, when he believed himself capable of leading a better life, he was not to have the chance.

Shortly after half-past seven George saw the Duke of
Cambridge
, his divisional general, and General Bentinck, his brigade commander, ride across the face of the regiment and spend
several
minutes talking to a group of officers, which included the colonels of the Scots Fusiliers, the Grenadiers and Colonels Wilson and Townshend of the two Coldstream battalions.
Knowing
that this meeting probably meant that the Guards were soon to go into action, George got up and walked to the front of the ridge.

During the shelling the Russians appeared to have occupied most of the lower plateau and to have driven the British back to the Sandbag Battery, which was now the focus of most of the fighting. The emplacement itself, containing no guns, and with walls too high for riflemen to fire over, was of little or no value; but the elevated spur of land immediately behind it was clearly of crucial importance, since it commanded the lower ground which the Russians would have to cross before launching their final attack on the ridge. George was now certain that the Guards would be ordered to re-take the position as soon as the
outnumbered
defending troops retired. The vicious nature of the
hand-to-
hand fighting and the hundreds of bodies already lying on the slopes horrified him. Yet suddenly George knew that he
did
have a final opportunity. He could die well; as stoically as aristocrats like Townshend, or any other officer or man in the Brigade. When a shell burst a few yards behind him, its concussion
knocking
him over as if he had been felled by a violent punch, his panic did not return. The surface of his body felt numb and strangely alien, giving him a light-headed feeling of inviolability. Only a minute or so later did he see that a splinter had cut his left hand. A private in his company ran forward to help him to his feet, but George ordered the man back and then shouted to the men to dress ranks, taking a perverse pleasure in seeing that the lines were as straight as on a parade ground. He heard the advance sounded, and as the battalion began to march, felt a warm glow of contentment like a man in the first pleasurable stage of
intoxication
. At the head of the columns the colours were flapping slightly against their corded staves. Around him he could hear words of command after each shell fell into the moving columns: ‘Close up, close up by the centre.’