Flashman's Escape (10 page)

By the time my turn came I was gibbering with terror and trying to drag myself back out of the door I had schemed so hard to enter.

“That one next,” intoned a tired young man, pointing in my direction.

“I am feeling a little better,” I called back hopefully. “Why don’t you look at someone else?”

The assistants took no notice and in a moment I was deposited none too gently on the gore-stained planks. Close to I saw that the surgeon, despite the tired eyes and blood-spattered cheek, looked no older than me. He was by far the youngest of the surgeons present and I cursed my luck to get the least experienced man.

“George Guthrie,” he introduced himself and held out his reddened fingers. As I reached out a hand to shake it, one of his assistants passed a rope across my chest to start securing me to the table.

“Thomas Flashman.” I had started to return the greeting automatically but then as the rope tightened across my chest and my mind flashed to what could follow I began to panic. “No, please,” I begged as I struggled to get up.

Guthrie was already surveying my wounds with a practised eye. I found out later that despite his youth Guthrie was the chief medical officer there, having been apprenticed to a surgeon when he was just fourteen. “Belay the rope, John,” he said calmly to his assistant. “I might need to turn the captain over.” Already his hand was passing over my head and feeling the wound to my scalp. “A nasty cut, but no damage to the skull.”

“What is he doing with that blade?” I asked, my voice rising in fear as John, the assistant, moved towards my leg holding a knife he had pulled from his belt.

The answer was accompanied by a ripping fabric sound as Guthrie explained: “Don’t worry, he is just cutting the trouser away from your leg so that I can see the wound.”

I winced as the blood-soaked cloth was torn away, taking with it some scabs around the hole in my leg. I could not see the actual wound as it was on the back of my thigh but it felt wet, as though it was bleeding again.

“Would you like to sit up so that John can remove your coat and shirt without need of the knife?”

“Thank you.” I sensed Guthrie watching me carefully as I struggled to sit up. He did not help but looked closely at how easily I could move different parts of my body. “It is a silk shirt,” I explained. “Bloody expensive but I save it for battles. I have heard that silk stays in one piece in a wound, reducing infection – is that right?” The assistant was now reaching for the coat I had shrugged off and was helping me lift the blood-stained shirt over my head.

“That is indeed correct, Captain,” agreed Guthrie with a half amused smile. “Unfortunately it is not as good as linen for bandages.” As he spoke I heard more ripping of fabric and turned to see the grinning John running his knife straight down the back of my shirt.

“What the devil?”

“I am sorry, Captain,” replied Guthrie, “we have long since run out of bandages. But don’t worry, you will get your shirt back. And it is not for everyone to leave here bandaged in silk. Now let’s have a look at what we have.” He bent down to examine closely the star-shaped exit wound on my chest and went through the smelling ritual again. Quite how either surgeon could smell anything with the surrounding stink of blood, guts and shit was beyond me. “You have quite good movement, Captain, the wound smells clean and you are not coughing up blood. You will need some stiches to hold this wound together but let’s turn you over.”

Between them Guthrie and his assistant helped me to turn over on the broken door table. I felt even more vulnerable face down as I was not able to see what they were doing. I felt Guthrie feeling my leg wound first.

“Just muscle damage,” he intoned. “You will need more stitches. You are lucky he missed the bone and the major blood vessels.”

I did not feel lucky a moment later when I felt an agonising stabbing pain in my back. I reared up but the assistant pushed me back down firmly on the board.

“What are you doing? That bloody hurt!” I cried out as my cheek was pressed into the blood-stained wood.

“I was just using a probe to pull out some of your jacket that had been carried into the hole by the musket ball. It had scabbed into the wound. I cannot find any of your silk shirt so we must hope that it was carried out with the ball. I just need to cauterise a couple of blood vessels and then we can stitch and bandage you up. Can you lie still for that or do we need to tie you down?”

I lay still, holding my breath when told and sweating as I felt the heat of the cauterising iron move across my back. There was a sharp pain and a sizzling sound as it was used but I did not dare move a fraction of an inch with red-hot metal so close to my insides. Guthrie then put some stitches in my leg and chest and with his assistant started to bandage me in strips of my expensive silk.

“You have been remarkably lucky, Captain Flashman. The ball missed your spine and ribs and seems to have passed between your lungs and your guts, doing little damage to either. Even your liver seems to have escaped its path.” I felt a huge surge of relief until he added, “If you can avoid infection, you might just live, but with such deep wounds that won’t be easy.” While such a diagnosis might seem grim, compared to the imminent death I had been expecting just hours before, it was a big improvement.

“Thank you, Doctor,” I said, shaking his hand again.

But already his eye was moving to the crowd of men waiting on the floor. “That one next,” he called as I stood up from the table.

I still had one good leg and with my improved prognosis felt a lot better than I did before. I thought I could hobble out of the chapel on my own, but quickly discovered that I was as weak as a kitten, probably due to loss of blood. Another orderly helped me put my coat back over my now bandaged chest and guided me out and into a different yard. This one was full of other patients with dressed wounds who had been judged worth saving. Most, like me, were still plastered with caked blood and filthy, but we were alive and we had hope of recovery. I did not want to lie down in the mud and so sat myself on a low section of wall with my bandaged leg stretched out in front of me. A weak sun was shining down and I closed my eyes and turned my face towards it. I felt its warmth on my face and stared at its gold glow through my eyelids, spending a moment relishing the simple joy of just being alive.

Chapter 10

“Captain Flashman, are you all right?” I opened my eyes and there gazing down at me was Lieutenant Hervey. “Well, I can see you are not all right, but er… well, at least you are on this side of the church.” He paused, looking embarrassed, and then added in almost a whisper, “They told me you had been taken to the other yard and I have been searching for you there.”

“I have been better,” I told him, “but at least I am alive. How are you, Richard?” I don’t think I had ever used Hervey’s first name before, but this did not seem the time to be formal. He was still in the clothes he had fought in, but one sleeve of his coat was empty with the missing arm across his chest in a sling.

“I broke my arm.” He took a deep breath and struggled to keep his emotions in check as he sat down heavily on the wall beside me. “It is bloody awful, sir. Apart from us there are only two unwounded survivors of our company: Sergeant Evans and Private Harrison. Most of the rest are dead or taken prisoner. I should have stayed with the rest of you. Others fought with broken arms and worse. They found most of the regimental colour on Latham’s body and he had defended it with just one arm.”

I had seen this before of course; survivor guilt they call it. I did not feel the slightest guilt for surviving and if Hervey had come seeking sympathy, well, he was knocking at the wrong door. “If you had stayed then the chances are you would now be dead and it would not have changed a damn thing. You would have been just one more naked corpse up on the hill. Anyway the general ordered you back; you had no choice.”

“Did my uncle really refuse to form a defensive line against the horsemen, because he did not have orders?” asked Hervey quietly.

“Yes, but it was probably too late then anyway. Was he killed or captured?” I asked, thinking that there was a man I would not miss.

“He survived. He is back in the camp now, organising supplies and burials. General Stewart made it back too.”

Mention of camp reminded me that whatever comforts I had were there, including clean clothes and, more importantly, food. My rumbling stomach pointed out that I had not eaten since breakfast the previous day, and that had been interrupted by the start of the battle. Field hospitals then had no notion of what they call nursing now. They cut you, bandaged you and then left you to be looked after by your comrades. At most you might get an orderly doing a round with a bucket of water and a cup. There were three carts roaming the battlefield collecting the wounded for treatment and taking those that had been treated back to their camps. I managed to get a lift on one to where the remnants of the Buffs were gathered.

Instead of a mood of devastation there was a mixture of grief and hope in the camp, and to my surprise six members of my company welcomed me back.

“Welcome back, sir.” Sergeant Evans greeted me with a broad smile. “We are ‘resurrectionists’. Our numbers keep increasing from those thought dead or missing.” Evans led me to a camp chair that had been set by the fire. “Would you like some food, sir?” Cooking on ramrod spits over the fire was the traditional post-battle
plat du jour
: horse, of which there was a plentiful supply. I noticed that the fire underneath had at some point had been fed with musket stocks as I could see barrels and locks amongst the cinders.

“I thought that only two had made it back,” I queried, gazing at the extra men sitting with their women and children around the fire.

“They were taken prisoner but escaped, sir,” replied Evans. He was about to say more but a woman’s voice interrupted him.

“Our boys saw more of our men taken as prisoner, sir, so more might escape and come back.” I looked around. It was Nelly Morris, whose man was still missing. She sat with her young daughter on her lap and a gleam of hope in her eyes. Other women missing their men murmured agreement but for others there was just a look of sadness.

“We heard about Mr Price-Thomas, sir,” continued Evans. “We will start digging a grave tomorrow.” He looked at Nelly. “We might have more men to help then.”

The same scene must have played out countless times after my previous battles in the peninsula, I reflected as I chewed on the meat. But being a staff officer, I was insulated. There were no wives and children in the ‘family’ of staff officers. While we had casualties, they were only a handful at a time and often due to the reckless bravery of some young blood trying to make a name for himself. But this battle had been a mismanaged disaster from the outset. The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. There was Beresford who dithered rather than make decisions; Stewart who was brave but reckless; and King who even when danger was staring him in the face would not react without orders. They had all bloody well survived while thousands of poor sods under their command had died due to their incompetence. It was only when I fought with someone else in command that I really appreciated the cautious but decisive nature of Wellington as a general.

“I hope they are not our muskets you are burning, Sergeant?” I asked.

“No, sir, these are French ones. We have a stack of them. They were easier to gather than firewood when the men were tired.”

“Have you checked they were unloaded?”

“Not yet, sir. We thought we did last night but two went off, firing into the mud.”

I looked around; Lieutenant Hervey was some yards away talking to one of the newly returned men. “Well, pile on some more and point them in that direction,” I murmured. I gestured towards Major King’s tent just twenty yards away in the much-reduced Buffs’ camp.

“What if one goes off, sir?” whispered Evans.

“Then it will be a tragic accident,” I said grimly.

As it turned out three were loaded and one shot went through the major’s tent and smashed his commode. My only regret was that he was not sitting on it at the time.

I must have eaten a good amount of horse that day and red wine appeared from somewhere. When I retired that evening to my tent I was feeling a lot better. My wounds still ached but nothing more than that. Lucy came to me that night; with everything that had happened it did not seem to matter now if she was seen. She gently bathed my wounds with hot water and cleaned me up so that I looked a lot more respectable in fresh clothes the next morning. Evans was right: by ten o’clock the company had increased to a dozen men with more escaped prisoners. But Private Morris was not among them.

I left them to dig the grave near where the company had been destroyed. With the aid of a stick I hobbled back over the battleground late in the afternoon for the burial ceremony. There were still mounds of bodies lying around, probably unclaimed French ones, but as they were all naked it was hard to say. Even two days after the battle, survivors were still being found.

I found the men gathered about a shallow grave, just three feet deep. It was a long, wide trench for a dozen men to dig, especially as several of them were carrying wounds and they only had three shovels. We had heard wolves during the night and I did not doubt that many of the graves would be opened by animals once the army had moved on. The dead men lay in a long row, two still dressed and the rest now naked. Price-Thomas’s little white body lay at the end, a red gaping hole in his chest and what looked like a sabre cut across his shoulder and neck. At least he would not have suffered long with wounds like that, I thought. Then I saw what lay beside the boy. Boney’s body had also been lifted down into the trench and lay with his head on the boy’s shoulder as he had died with his head on mine.

“We thought that the dog would keep the lad company, sir,” pronounced Evans. “The padre doesn’t like it but he stopped complaining when we told him it was your dog and what it had done to try to save the life of the boy.”

The padre went quickly through the formal service; it must have been one of many he had done that day. I cannot remember any of it beyond staring at the two bodies at the end of the row. A young boy and a dog lying dead together, when they should both have been running happily through some field. I kept remembering the two of them leaning against each other for warmth just a few moments before they were killed. It just seemed a bloody waste and affected me far more than all the other deserving men in the row. There was plenty of weeping over the others, though, with women and children taking a last look at husbands and fathers before they were covered with earth. Among them was the young Spanish widow of Private Carter with her three young children clutched about her, while Nelly Morris still stared hopefully at the southern horizon.

Once the brief service was over, the men moved forward to fill in their trench. I turned away and caught a glimpse of Sally and smiled at her. I had to try to cheer myself up; I still had a lot to be grateful for. As if on cue Hervey appeared and grabbed my arm.

“I have good news, sir.”

“Has your uncle sat on his broken commode?”

Hervey grinned. “No and he is still annoyed over the men’s carelessness. It is about Lieutenant Latham, sir. He has been found alive.”

“But I thought he was dead? Did they not find the colour on his corpse?”

“It seems that they did not notice he was still alive. He came around last night and managed to drag himself down to a stream for a drink. He had been stripped while unconscious, but he was recognised and taken to the hospital. They say he is in a bad way but that he might live.”

“You have checked properly that these are all dead, haven’t you?” I asked, pointing at the bodies that were now being covered over. Hervey nodded. “Thank God or Evan’s claim that we are resurrectionists will really come home to roost.”

I had felt fine all that day, and while the chest wound had bled a little I had taken it for granted that I was on the mend. But that evening I came down with a fever. Lucy looked after me for the first two days, but as I got worse Hervey had me taken back to the field hospital. My chest wound was infected and I was sent by wagon with other wounded the seven miles to the nearest hospital in the town of Valverde.

I came as close to dying then as I think I ever did. I drifted in and out of consciousness and my memories of the next few weeks are hazy at best. Some things that I think I can recall definitely did not happen. For example I hallucinated Wellington, naked but for a flowery dressing gown, writing down detailed instructions for Beresford on how to put on his trousers. Other incidents might have occurred. I recall Lucy sitting beside me and weeping at one point, although if she did visit I never saw her again. One thing, though, definitely did take place, and of all the horrors I had seen in Spain, and you must admit I have witnessed my share, this above all the others is seared in my consciousness. Even now I cannot think of it without clamping my legs together with sufficient force to crack a walnut between my knees.

Two orderlies at Valverde hospital had been carrying me on a stretcher when they were called to help a surgeon with a patient. They put me down on the floor and moved into an adjacent room, leaving the door open so that I could see everything. Initially there was just a forest of moving legs, but eventually my fever-addled braid realised that there were four men trying to get a fifth, who was naked from the waist down, up onto a table. The patient seemed fit and able and was shouting that he had changed his mind, given what followed, who could blame him. As his pleas and begging had no effect, the man started fighting like fury, but eventually the four men overcame him and got him up on the table. They started to strap him down and I saw that there were vertical planks at the end of the short table that they strapped his thighs to. The poor devil was crying and pleading now, offering his tormentors money if they would only let him go, but they took no notice. I wondered in horror if they were going to geld him, and realised that with the business end pointed at me I was going to reluctantly get a ringside view of whatever happened next. I turned away so as not to watch, but found myself drawn back in fascination a moment later. The whimpering had stopped but only because they had jammed a leather pad in his mouth. Then the surgeon leaned forward and made a two-inch cut between his balls and his arsehole. The patient screamed in pain, spitting out the pad, but that was nothing to the primal shriek he gave when the surgeon plunged a couple of his fingers into the wound.

“Hold him still, Ferrers, for God’s sake,” shouted the surgeon as his patient writhed about despite the tight strapping that bound him. “I think I felt it,” he added, withdrawing his fingers as two of the orderlies lay their bodies on top of the patient to restrain him. As his victim continued to shriek, the surgeon plunged his fingers in again, seeming to rummage around with them like a miser chasing the last coin in his purse. I think I passed out after that as I don’t remember any more until I woke up in a cot and found the poor sod I had seen operated on lying in the next bed. He was sweating and whimpering in his sleep.

The next morning Guthrie was doing a tour of the hospital. When he reached my bed I asked him about the man still lying unconscious beside me.