Flashman Papers 3-Book Collection 2: Flashman and the Mountain of Light, Flash For Freedom!, Flashman and the Redskins. George Fraser MacDonald
parade?”
He meant our casualties. “At a guess … maybe one in ten.”
“Could be worse … but there ain’t a whole man on the staff,” says he. “Oh, I say, did you hear? – Georgie Broadfoot’s dead.”
I didn’t take it in at all. I heard the words, but they meant nothing at first, and I just stood staring at him while he went on: “I’m sorry … he was a chum o’ yours, wasn’t he? I was with him, you see … the damnedest thing! I’d been hit …” he touched his sling “… an’ thought I was gone, when old Georgie rides up, shouting: ‘Get up, Sandy! Can’t go to sleep, you know!’ So up I jumped, an’ then Georgie tumbled out of his saddle, shot in the leg, but he popped straight up again, an’ says to me: ‘There you are, you see! Come on!’ It was fairly rainin’ grape from the south entrenchment, an’ a second later, he went down again. So I yelled: ‘Come on, George! Sleepyhead yourself!’” He fumbled inside his shirt. “And … so he is now, for keeps, the dear old chap. You want these? Here, take ’em.”
They were George’s spectacles, with one lens broken. I took them, not believing it. Seeing Sale dead had been bad enough – but Broadfoot! The great red giant, always busy, always scheming – nothing could kill him, surely? No, he’d walk in presently, damning someone’s eyes – mine, like enough. For no reason I took a look through the remaining glass, and couldn’t see a thing; he must have been blind as a bat without them … and then it dawned on me that if he was dead, there’d be no one to send me to Lahore again – and no need! Whatever ploy he’d had in mind would have died with him, for even Hardinge wouldn’t know the ins and outs of it … So I was clear, and relief was flooding through me, making me tremble, and I choked between tears and laughter –
“Here, don’t take on!” cries Abbott, catching my wrist. “Never fret, Flashy – George’ll be paid for, you’ll see! Why, if he ain’t, he’ll haunt us, the old ruffian, gig-lamps an’ all! We’re bound to take Ferozeshah!”
And they did, a second time. They went in, Briton and sepoy, in ragged red lines under the lifting mist of dawn, with the horse guns thundering ahead of them and the Khalsa trenches bright with flame. The Sikh gunners fairly battered the advancing regiments and picked off our ammunition wagons, so that our ranks seemed to be moving through pillars of fiery cloud, with the white trails of our Congreves piercing the black smoke. It’s the last madness, thinks I, watching awestruck from the rear, for they’d no right to be on their feet, even, let alone marching into that tempest of metal, exhausted, half-starved, frozen stiff, and barely a swallow of water among them, with Hardinge riding ahead, his empty sleeve tucked into his belt, telling his aides he’d seen nothing like it since the Peninsula, and Gough leading the right, spreading the tails of his white coat to be the better seen. Then they had vanished into the smoke, the scarecrow lines and the tattered standards and the twinkling cavalry sabres – and I thanked God I was here and not there as I led the rocketeers in three cheers for our gallant comrades, before being borne back into the shade to a well-earned breakfast of bread and brandy.
Being new to the business, I half-expected to see ’em back shortly, in bloody rout – but beyond our view they were storming the defences again, and going through Ferozeshah like an iron fist, and by noon there wasn’t a live Punjabi in the position, and we’d taken seventy guns. Don’t ask me how – they say some of the Khalsa infantry cut stick in the night, and the rest were all at sea because Lal Singh and his cronies had fled, with the Akalis howling for his blood – but that don’t explain it, not to me. They still weren’t outnumbered, and had the defensive advantage, and fought their guns to the finish – so how did we beat ’em? I don’t know, I wasn’t there – but then, I still don’t understand the Alma and Balaclava and Cawnpore, and I was in the thick of them, God help me, and no fault of mine.
I ain’t one of your by jingoes, and I won’t swear that the British soldier is braver than any other – or even, as Charley Gordon said, that he’s brave for a little while longer. But I will swear that there’s no soldier on earth who believes so strongly in the courage of the men alongside him – and that’s worth an extra division any day. Provided you’re not standing alongside me, that is.
All morning the wounded kept coming back, but fewer by far than yesterday, and now they were jubilant. Twice they’d beaten the Khalsa against the odds, and there wouldn’t be a third Ferozeshah, not with Lal’s forces in flight for the Sutlej, and our cavalry scouting their retreat. “Tik hai, Johnnie!” roars a sergeant of the 29th, limping down with a naik of Native Infantry; they had two sound legs between them, and used their muskets as crutches. “’Oo’s got a tot o’ rum for my Johnnie, then? ’E may ’ave fired wide at Moodkee, but you earned yer chapattis today, didn’t yer, ye little black bugger!” And everyone roared and cheered and helped them along, the tow-headed, red-faced ruffian and the sleek brown Bengali, both of them grinning with the same wild light in their eyes. That’s victory – it was in all their eyes, even those of a pale young cornet of the 3rd Lights with his arm off at the elbow, raving as they carried him past at the run, and of a private with a tulwar gash in his cheek, spitting blood at every word as he told me how Gough was entrenched in the Sikhs’ position in case of counter-attack, but there was no fear of that.
“We done for ’em, sir!” cries he, and his yellow facings were as red as his coat with his own gore. “They won’t stop runnin’ till they gets to La’ore, I reckon! You should ’ear ’em cheer ole Daddy Gough – ain’t ’e the boy, though?” He peered at me, holding a grimy cloth to his wound. “’Ere, you orl right, sir? Fair done in you looks, if you’ll ’scuse my sayin’ so …”
It was true – I, who hadn’t been near the fight, and had been right as rain, was all at once ready to keel over where I sat. And it wasn’t the heat, or the excitement, or the sight of his teeth showing through his cheek (other folks’ blood don’t bother me), or the screaming from the hospital basha, or the stench of stale blood and acrid smoke from the battle, or the dull ache in my ankle – none of that. I believe it was the knowledge that at last it was all over, and I could give way to the numbing fatigue that had been growing through one of the worst weeks of my life. I’d had one night’s sleep out of eight, counting from the first which I’d spend galloping Mangla; then there’d been my Khalsa frolic, the Sutlej crossing, the ride from Lal and Tej to Ferozepore, the vigil as we listened to distant Moodkee, uneasy slumber after Broadfoot had given me his bad news, the freezing march to Misreewallah, and finally, the first night of Ferozeshah. Oh, I was luckier than many, but I was beat all to nothing – and now it was past, and I was safe, and could lurch from my stool and fall face-down on the charpoy, dead to the world.
Now, when I’m dog-tired with shock, I have nightmares worthy of cheese and lobster, but this one laid it over them all, for I fell slowly through the charpoy, into a bath of warm water, and when I rolled over I was staring up at a ceiling painting of Gough and Hardinge and Broadfoot, all figged out like Persian princes, having dinner with Mrs Madison, who tilted her glass and poured oil all over me, which made me so slippery that I couldn’t hope to transfer the whole Soochet legacy, coin by coin, from my navel to Queen Ranavalona’s as she pinned me down on a red-hot billiard-table. Then she began to pummel and shake me, and I knew she was trying to make me get up because Gough wanted me, and when I said I couldn’t, because of my ankle, the late lamented Dr Arnold, wearing a great tartan puggaree, came by on an elephant, crying that he would take me, for the Chief needed a Greek translation of Crotchet Castle instanter, and if I didn’t take it to Tej Singh, Elspeth would commit suttee. Then I was following him, floating across a great dusty plain, and the smell of burning was everywhere, and filthy ash was falling like snow, and there were terrible bearded faces of dead men, smeared with blood, and corpses all about us, with ghastly wounds from which their entrails spilled out on earth that was sodden crimson, and there were great cannon lying on their sides or tumbled into pits, and everywhere the charred wreckage of tents and carts and huts, some of them still in flames.
There was a mighty tumult, too, a great cannonading, and the shriek and crash of shot striking home, the rattle of musketry, and bugles blowing. There were voices yelling