Dust and Steel. Patrick Mercer
blow some poor bastards to kingdom come, ain’t they, Clem?’ Private Peter Sharrock, twenty-one and at five-foot nine an average height in the Grenadier Company, was the product of a Peterborough slum. Bored with milling powder for the Crimea, he’d enlisted, but too late for any fighting.
Next to him marched Private Clem James, an old man at twenty-five, no stranger to hard knocks. ‘No, Peter, that’s the ’ole bleedin’ point.’ There was an almost theatrical impatience in James’s voice. ‘There’ll be no kingdom come for this lot if we blow ’em to bits. Buggers up their caste system, ’avin’ to ’ave all the little bits picked up by the sweepers – an’ they’re the lowest of the low – an’ means that they’ll never go to their ’eathen ’eaven. Punishes ’em twice, it does, first by killin’ them, then by condemnin’ ’em to eternal damnation or some such…’
‘Sharrock, James: shut yer grids!’ McGucken’s bellow silenced both men instantly. ‘Report to me for water detail once we stand down.’ Each night parties would be formed to find and collect water, a back-breaking task.
The column tramped on with the sun beating on their backs. Morgan had been aware of a steady trickle of people loping down the road beside them, mainly men young and old, but a handful of women as well. As they came round a slight bend that was screened by low trees, he heard the same, discordant hum that had greeted them when their boats first touched Bombay’s quay. This time, though, it was lower, more of a subdued growl than the pulsating shriek that he’d heard before.
About a quarter of a mile away, where the ground flattened out into a great featureless parched meadow, a multicoloured slab of humanity eddied and wobbled, hemmed in by a deep drainage ditch on one side and the road on the other. Opposite the crowd stood three long blocks of scarlet and white – the sepoy regiments waiting in the heat for whatever fate their British masters would hand down.
‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Colour-Sar’nt, how many people d’you reckon are in that crowd?’ Morgan knew that the sepoys would outnumber them, but he had not expected a crowd of this size.
‘Ye sound like a bloody papist sometimes, you do, sir.’ McGucken always mocked his officer when he used one of the Catholic men’s expressions. ‘Dunno, but let’s have a look.’ Now he sectioned the crowd off into eight imaginary blocks, just as he had been taught to do as a recruit and, as they drew nearer, tried to count the bare heads and turbans in one of them. ‘’Bout three-thousand, I’d say, what d’yous think, sir?’
‘Yes, that’s about right.’ Morgan tried not to let his concern show, but three sepoy battalions was quite enough for less than four hundred men of the 95th to deal with, let alone thousands of angry natives. What should he do? The colonel had told him that confidence was everything, but they would be swallowed up in an instant if the crowd turned. Should he halt and wait for orders? He found his pace getting involuntarily shorter and his bottom tightening with fear and indecision – but he was spared. Above the rhythmic thump of his men’s boots came the clatter of hoofs and wheels.
‘Not before time, sir…’ McGucken caught sight of the troop of horse gunners before Morgan could see them above their own, scarlet phalanx, ‘…just like when the guns came up at Balaklava, sir, d’ye ken?’
Morgan did, indeed, ken. He remembered how nine-pounders like these had hammered at the Russian cavalry in that grape-laden valley three years before. Now the covered brass helmets and ruddy faces of the Bombay Horse Artillery bobbed above their cantering animals, the 95th biting off a ragged cheer as the horses, limbers and guns enveloped them in dust as they swept by.
‘Troop, halt!’ Three horses led the way: Bolton, the captain commanding, his troop staff-sergeant, and the trumpeter, who now repeated his officer’s order with a series of brazen notes. As the guns pulled up behind him, Bolton trotted forward to the still marching Morgan and McGucken.
‘Who’s in charge here?’ Bolton was thirty-five, short, chubby and clean shaven. Unlike his men, he wore a light, cork solar-topee to protect his head from the sun, but it appeared to have done little for his temper. Before either could answer Bolton repeated, ‘I said, who’s in charge here?’
‘Major Morgan of HM Ninety-Fifth, sir,’ McGucken snapped a salute whilst invoking Morgan’s brevet, before muttering, ‘Why are these damned nabobs always in such a pother, Sir?’
‘Dunno, Colour-Sar’nt; don’t suppose they’ve seen much action before.’ Morgan’s answer belied the relief he felt at the sight of the guns.
As Bolton dismounted, both officer and colour-sergeant searched his chest for medals – but there was none.
‘Good day…sir.’ There was a slight question in Bolton’s voice for on Morgan’s collar there were only the star and crown of a captain. ‘Colonel Brewill has asked me to execute some rogue sepoys of his whilst you kindly protect my troop. Is that what you understand?’
As the column of 95th continued to swing by, the trio stood in the shade of a leafy tree inhabited by a knot of silent monkeys, which looked quizzically down at them. Seeing that a conference was taking place, Captain Carmichael detached himself from the head of his company and strolled over towards them.
‘Something wrong, sir?’ asked McGucken breezily, turning and placing himself carefully between Carmichael and the other two officers.
‘No, Colour-Sar’nt, but I assumed that Captain Morgan would need to speak to me.’ Carmichael was thoroughly out of sorts and McGucken’s reply only added to his agitation.
‘Aye, sir, I’m sure he will in his own good time. Please listen for the bugle, sir.’
Seething, Carmichael turned away quickly whilst Bolton and Morgan completed their plans.
‘So, swing one gun between each of my companies, please, then I’ll halt the whole column in front of the crowd and opposite the sepoys yonder…’ Morgan looked towards the nearer flank of the 10th BNI, now only a few hundred paces away, ‘…and load with charges only. Have a canister round very obviously to hand by each of your six barrels, please, then make ready any guns that are spare when we know how many executions are to take place. Meanwhile, my men will load and take aim; if there’s trouble, prime as fast as you can, but fire only on my orders. I’ll leave all the execution side to you; I imagine that you’ve done it before?’
‘Well, no…actually this is the first time I’ve done anything like this.’ All Bolton’s initial bluster had gone. He’d taken a good look at the two infantrymen’s decorations and now he seemed glad to have someone else in charge.
‘Aye, sir, well dinna fret, there’s a first time for all of us, but the Old Nails’ll look after ye.’ McGucken used the nickname given to the 95th in the Crimea and it was hard to imagine that there had ever been a first time for a man like this. His lean frame and combed whiskers burst with confidence, yet his words were sensitive and immediately reassuring.
With a cautious smile and a salute, Bolton turned back to give orders to his own men.
‘How does that work exactly, sir?’ McGucken asked Morgan. ‘Them gunners ain’t Queen’s troops, yet they’re mainly Europeans: how’s that?’
‘Well, John Company started to recruit some all-white regiments of its own after trouble with the sepoys years ago,’ Morgan explained. ‘All the artillery out in India is manned by European crews – and just at the moment I’m damn glad it is. I’m told they’re pretty sharp lads – not that it’s going to take any great skill to blow the lights out of some poor wretch strapped to the end of your barrel.’
The sepoys stood taut and erect as the 95th marched along the road in front of them. As the British troops approached, the crowd’s murmur had turned to heckles and catcalls, even a few sods had been thrown and some rotten fruit, but as the pacing red column had neither checked nor hesitated, so the crowd drew back. Now the mob fidgeted and swayed as the two bodies of troops scanned each other. As the sepoys stiffened and stood more rigidly, more fixedly than any line-drawing from the drill manual, so the arms and legs of the