Flashman in the Peninsula (35 page)

‘Fix bayonets,’ called the colonel of the Connaughts. The call was repeated down the line as the long blades were drawn and carefully fixed to hot musket barrels. Campbell and I drew our swords and showed ourselves eager to be unleashed, but only one of us was genuine in that emotion. I knew Campbell would be at the forefront of any charge. He was as fast as quicksilver over rough country and we had joked that there was mountain goat in his parentage. He would not expect me to keep up and with eight hundred screaming Irishmen there would be quite a crowd for me to get lost in. I looked down at the blood still covering me and decided that I would let them hurtle down the hill without me, and then I would feign a limp as I went slowly after them. A blood soaked and wounded Flashy, hobbling into battle despite his wounds; it would fit my reputation like port and cigars.

‘Charge,’ shouted the colonel.

‘Charge, come on men,’ called Campbell, already pushing through to the front and waving his sword in the air as eight hundred Irishmen, screaming more like clansmen warriors than British soldiers, launched off after him.

‘Huzzah, forward you brave fellows,’ cries the gallant Flashy, flourishing his blade in the air too, but only staggering forwards a few paces and watching the backs of the others recede before him.

Chapter 25

Before I had gone more than a yard I was aware of the Light Company men coming up from behind. The first few soldiers jostled past, but then I felt an arm lift me at my right elbow followed immediately another at my left. My feet were lifted off the ground and a voice called in my ear, ‘Don’t you worry sor, we’ll help you down all right, so we shall.’ With that I was carried off down the slope at an alarming speed, my arms in vice-like grips, my feet in the air and my sword waving futilely in my hand.

‘Put me down you stupid bastards,’ I roared, but they took no notice. The more I shouted and raged the more they laughed in delight. They swore afterwards that they thought they were helping the gallant officer meet the enemy, but it is my belief that they knew exactly what they were doing. Some had seen that the blood I was covered in was not mine and when I started to hobble away the evil minded villains saw straight through my charade. Laughing with glee they picked up one of their English masters and cruelly deprived him of his honest right to shirk his duty.

I realised this in the first twenty yards when they ignored my raging and a voice called in my ear, ‘Come now sor, you don’t want to miss the fun.’ It was the blighter holding my right arm, but I didn’t dare look round at him as I needed to see where I was going. My feet were touching the ground now but we were already going at such a speed there was no chance of stopping, especially in the middle of a crowd of men. The ground ahead was littered with wounded French soldiers and their dead, lying between rocks and boulders. One slip at this speed and I would be breaking bones all the way down the hillside. You could not help stepping on some bodies, and I remember one Frenchie screaming in agony as my boot punched down into his chest. Then we were into the mist, which now seemed thinner and lower than before. I could see that we were starting to catch up the slower Rangers lumbering down the hillside. On we went. Twice I nearly slipped and went down but was hauled up by the men at my elbows. At least two men in our group did fall, and as far as one was concerned, I suspect they do not call the speed we were going ‘break neck’ for nothing. The other screamed, yelled and bounced off into the mist.

God knows how far we had come when the ground began to level off and we heard increased shouting in front. The French were using some more even ground half way down the hill to try to stem their headlong retreat and organise a more orderly withdrawal. But through the mist we could see that the Connaughts were in amidst them and fighting amongst the rocks. As we ran up I saw a solid line of red coated backs in front of us fighting the French in front. Their line was broken only by a huge slab of rock, shaped like a wedge of cheese, which must have fallen from higher up the hillside and come to rest on this flatter stretch. They would have to stop now, I thought, but then one of the fellows with me shouted something in Gaelic and gestured to the cheese shaped rock that jutted out like a pier into the French lines. Instead of slowing down we were suddenly picking up speed again, the last of our momentum carrying us towards that huge piece of stone.

It took me a full second to realise what they had planned and then my guts were churning in terror. As their own comrades were between them and the enemy, the more homicidal lunatics of the Light Company had decided to use the slab of rock as a ramp from which to drop down on the enemy from above.

‘Let me go you mad Murphy’s, you will get us all killed,’ I roared at them, and tried to wrench myself out of their grip. But my voice was lost in their renewed battle cries as they half ran and half hauled me up the ramp of stone. As we reached the top of the slope I had one glimpse of a sea of blue coated soldiers, before a hand in the small of my back pushed me into the air.

I was the first off the rock and any scream I emitted was lost in the yells of those that followed me. Campbell and others who had seen us charge up the rock assumed that I was leading this aerial assault rather than being its unwilling pioneer. It was a twelve foot drop to the ground below, but the area was tightly packed with French soldiers to break our fall. I had just enough time to look down at the startled face of a young French infantry man looking up, before I landed squarely on top of him with my stomach on his shako. He crumpled to the ground like the town drunk hit with a cudgel. A crowd of bodies started to follow me off the rock and onto the men around me. As I tried to disentangle myself from the flailing limbs my sword cut into the calf of a French infantry man who whirled round, bayonet raised. I can still remember those angry eyes glaring down at me above grey whiskers.

I was hemmed in by a wall of legs with nowhere to go. I desperately tried to get my sword up to parry the blow, but there was no need. My assailant was looking down at me when the poor devil should have been looking up. Another leaping Connaught Ranger landed bayonet first on his chest. The Frenchman and Irishman fell together, but only one got up with the Ranger tugging furiously on his musket to get the bayonet out of the French corpse. I tried to climb to my feet but was knocked down twice more, once from a glancing blow from yet another falling Ranger and the second time I was flattened by a stampede of French soldiers pulling back from the red coated troops.

There was pandemonium amongst the French now. Those behind the rock must have thought they were safe but they now pushed at those behind them to get away. The French front line started to dissolve as they realised that there were enemy soldiers to their rear as well as to their front.

Eventually I managed to stand and a strange hellish scene met my eyes. I was surrounded by a ring of Connaught men pushing their way out with bayonets into the French. They were all privates apart from the sergeant who had spoken to me back on the crest. The fog here was wispy and cold but it amplified the shouting of those around us. French voices screamed at those around them to move while other shrieks and yells indicated where the Rangers were now trying to push through as the French line collapsed.

‘You bloody fool,’ I shouted at the sergeant. ‘You will get us all killed.’ He just looked over his shoulder and grinned like some Barbary ape, for they were all mad on killing. The Light Company had come with loaded weapons, and now muskets banged and men fell around them. Firing into the blue throng you could not miss. Many of the French from the middle of the column were loaded too but found it impossible to level their muskets in the crowd, so initially the Irish gained the advantage. One of the Irishmen, swinging his musket like a club and yelling a challenge in Gaelic, charged alone into the blue throng. At first it opened before him, people falling over to get out of his way, but then he went too far. Bayonets stabbed into his exposed back and sides and he screamed his dying agony as the blue coats surged back to cut him off from the rest of us.

I looked up, I could just make out some of the Irish shakos of the approaching line in the mist but they were still some way off. ‘Connaughts, for Christ’s sake over here,’ I yelled at the distant formation of men in red, but the French were still fighting that line and now that the Light Company men had fired their sporadic volley into those around them the French were closing back in around us too. There was not time for our men to reload so they just jabbed forward with their bayonets to keep the French at bay. As I watched, another redcoat went too far into those around him, and went down screaming from a bayonet stab in the belly.

‘Keep in a circle,’ I yelled at them, as I could see that we would only last a few moments as a group without some discipline. I grabbed the sergeant’s shoulder and shouted in his ear, ‘Keep them in a circle or we are all dead men.’

He glared round at me, but at that moment a musket banged and we were both spattered in more blood as the man next to him fell against us, shot through the chest. He looked down at the falling body and then reason seemed to get through to him. ‘Steady lads,’ called the sergeant. ‘Get shoulder to shoulder, our boys will be through in a minute.’

It was desperate work. The Irish had to keep the French squeezed in or they would find room to fire their muskets, but if they spread out too far they left gaps in their line. So they pushed and shoved and danced back from stabbing blades if they could not parry them. The reach of a man with a musket far exceeded that of a man with a sword, so I pushed my sword tip into the hard ground at my feet and pulled out my pistols. I planned to save the shots for my personal protection and I did not have long to wait. A man to my left shrieked as a blade raked his arm. Dropping his musket he stepped back, and a Frenchman lunged into the gap. He was almost on me in a moment and I just managed to cock and raise the pistol in time. The point of his bayonet was just a foot away when I fired the pistol into his belly. In my haste I was not gripping the weapon tight enough, they are notoriously inaccurate, but at that range even I could not miss. The barrel swung up as it discharged and deposited a lead ball right between the soldier’s eyes.

‘Good shooting, sor,’ called the sergeant, who had also swung round to cover the man.

‘Shooting bedammed,’ I snarled at him, ‘watch your front, man.’ There was no time to reload even a pistol and I dropped the weapon back in my coat pocket and cocked the second ready to fire. The men closed up to fill the gap left by the wounded Ranger and our circle slowly contracted. Glancing around there were more wounded on the ground at my feet and now there were just a dozen men standing.

One wiry little Irishman was in a desperate action on the other side of the circle. His bayonet moved with lightning speed as he fended off two attackers. In the second I noticed him a third managed to find the room to raise his musket and fire. How the devil he missed from that range I do not know. But not only did the little Murphy not even flinch, he darted forward in the musket smoke and managed to stab one of the attackers in the thigh. With a roar of rage, the Frenchman who had fired replaced the wounded man, and the Irish blade was darting about as fast as ever. The Rangers on either side were fully occupied fighting off Frenchmen of their own, and it was only a matter of moments before the little fellow would be beaten and then they would be through in earnest. It only took me two steps to cross our circle and then I was at the little bantam’s shoulder. I fired my second pistol low into the body of one of his attackers. The distraction enabled the Ranger to catch the remaining one in the throat, he was faster that a Billingsgate fishwife with a blade, that one. He turned to look at me and I had thought he would show some sign of gratitude that I had saved his life, but instead it was a glare of irritation. He looked as though I had stolen food from his plate.

‘I had them your honour,’ he complained in a high sing song voice. Then he turned to the nearest Frenchman standing in the gap in front of him who was now trying to work out how to attack without standing on his fallen comrades. ‘Will you come along now,’ complained the little Ranger, ‘we have not got all day.’

As I stood in the circle half paralysed with fear it seemed that my Irish comrades, despite being shot at and stabbed, were still enjoying themselves. Several were fighting with broad grins and taunting their opponents like the bantam. One great Paddy I now realised was even singing above the din of battle. They were fighting like terriers too and had managed to drive out the French between us and the rock so that we now only had to defend ourselves on three sides of a rough square. This freed up some men who were helping to hold the rest of the line, but it was still desperate. There was cutting, shouting, jostling and even the occasional shot all around me. With no time to reload and I dropped the second pistol in my pocket and darted across our little space to grab my sword, still sticking up in the dirt.

I felt impotent standing idle in the middle of so much activity. But I would not have been able to reach the enemy with my sword and would probably have just got in the way. Anyway, as another Irishman stepped back cursing with blood streaming down his arm, I was all too aware that despite the Irish love of a good fight, the line was a damn dangerous place to be. The wounded man stepped back into his place, holding his musket one handed. From the look on his face, even with one arm, I pitied the next Frenchman he faced. I decided I would stand at the back and look to stab at any Frenchman that broke through, while hoping our dwindling group survived long enough to be relieved. I glanced up again at the main Connaught formation coming towards us, it seemed a little closer but there were at least half a dozen French shakos between me and the nearest Connaught one.

For a brief moment I thought we would survive, as several of the French fighting the centre of our line suddenly stepped back and I wondered if perhaps they would follow their comrades further down the hill. But then I saw that I was wrong and we were doomed. Both armies put their tallest men in the grenadier companies, and into the gap created stepped the biggest French grenadier I ever saw. He was a giant of a man, holding his musket by the muzzle in one hand as though it were a child’s toy. His mere presence was enough to encourage the other French soldiers, who threw themselves at our meagre line with renewed enthusiasm, confident that our end was nigh.

I was frozen in shock and horror for it was as though one of my nightmares had come to life; I had come close to being killed by a giant man in India. A huge Rajput warrior had nearly strangled me. That man had been shot and bayoneted twice and still he came onto to me. I vividly remembered him crushing my throat and feeling certain I was about to die. Luckily he took a bayonet to the groin and his grip finally relaxed as I lost consciousness. Ever since I had occasionally dreamt of the encounter and woken up sweating at the memory of his face. Now the grenadier seemed to smile directly at me standing in the centre of our group, and I could not shake off the absurd notion that the Rajput had sent this man to avenge him. Then the Grenadier looked down at the two Irishmen closest, the sergeant and another soldier who were watching and waiting for him. He grinned at them too and gestured for them to come at him. Damn me if the soldier did not step forward to take the giant on single handed until the sergeant pulled him back.