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Authors: Allan Mallinson

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The colonel's luck was indeed great, thought

Hervey. What any man would do to be in a position of the first importance, though he wondered why the Burmans must attack from the north through Shwedagon. But he had not seen a good map and he supposed the general had.

The general had certainly not seen
him
until that moment. 'Ah, Hervey! What brings you here?

'Major Seagrass had no need of me. General.

'And you had a mind to see how infantry work! Well you might, sir; well you might. I imagine this campaign shall go down as the first to be made without benefit of cavalry!

Hervey checked himself. 'Indeed, sir?

The general's novelty knew no bounds. It was already a most singular campaign having no transport or supply.

'Yes indeed. Audacity and the bayonet, Hervey. That is what this campaign is about.

The general slapped his neck, but the mosquito evaded his hand. It would be the first of many to do so.

An hour later it was raining. The rain fell not in drops, or even in torrents, but as a single sheet of water, so that it was impossible to see more than a dozen yards, and only then with a great distortion. Hervey did not think he had seen anything like it. Neither was it how the monsoon was supposed to begin. But for once the poor redcoats, the infantrymen of the Line and the sepoys, on whom alternately rain fell and fierce sun beat, were dry, for the shrines that surrounded the pagoda of Schwedagon afforded cover for all. Cooking fires blazed inside - teak burned very satisfactorily - and there was skilly and tea in every belly before the hands of Hervey's watch showed nine. Sharing a canteen with the men in whose billet he had taken cover might have seemed an unlikely pleasure for him, but it was almost like being in the Peninsula again. He stood a little apart, with Corporal Wainwright, trying to make out the language of their gestures and method - as strange to him at times as the accents in which they spoke. As flesh and blood they could not, in truth, be so very different from the Sixth, but they were men who drilled as a body, whose military utility was solely as part of that body. They marched as a body, took aim as a body and they fired in volleys. They did exactly as they were told, when they were told. He could certainly admire them for it. He had seen enough red-breasted lines stand rock-like in the face of Bonaparte's columns, and he had seen those lines go forward with the same unshakeable resolve. His dragoons were different. At his best, each was his own man, who used sabre and carbine as he himself judged
fit,
yet who knew how to combine with others to multiply the effect. Was a man better suited to the one method drawn to the bringers of a particular regiment by some unknown process perhaps? Or was it only drill that made them different? Hervey wondered.

It could not be other than drill, surely, for the recruiting process was haphazard to say the least. He had only to look at Corporal Wainwright to be reminded of quite how haphazard. Wainwright would not have been in uniform at all had not he, Hervey, and Serjeant Collins gone that day to Warminster Common to search for the odd lad who had sunk to where he could sink no further - who was more likely than a husbandman or mechanical to be tempted by the King's shilling. It could only be the process of drill that made a soldier what he was; the drill and how it was imparted. And on this latter the difference was plain enough to him, for he had already noted how awkward these men seemed at being spoken to directly, addressing their remarks in return to Corporal Wainwright. No doubt it was necessary in drilling men to volley and manoeuvre as one body, but it must be deuced awkward never being able to speak directly to a man.

By the time the downpour had eased, a full hour later, Hervey had concluded that of the seven private men, five of whom were from Dublin and thereabouts, four might take to being dragoons with very little effort - supposing, of course, they showed a modicum of aptitude for the saddle -and that of the other three, two were inveterate 'machine men', happy only when their every action was preceded by a word of command from the corporal, while the other was quite probably unsuited even to his present position, so sullen was he that Hervey imagined the Serjeant's pike a regular prompter. However, much as he admired the Eighty-ninth's drill that morning, and the relish with which they had gone to the expected fight, he would admit to missing E Troop with its cheery, sometimes outspoken, dragoons. Whatever General Campbell might say now about the utility of cavalry, Hervey was certain he would feel the want of them before the month was out.

As the rain had become little more than a drizzle, he stood up and went to the door of their shelter. He could now see the river again. Pulling upstream were a dozen boats filled with marines and men from the Calcutta brigade, not yet 'blooded' in this curious inaction. He had helped write their orders the night before: they were off to do what he and his dragoons could have done in a fraction of the time and with far less effort. If only those who had conceived this adventure had allowed the possibility of action over land rather than solely from water! He had heard it said in Calcutta that horses could not pass over such terrain. How could anyone doubt that, where a man could go in this country, there for the most part could a horse? Nor, indeed, that when the monsoon turned the country to nothing but swamp there would be no passage for beast
or
man.

Hervey thought of hailing the boats. It would be diverting to join them, for there was nothing to do here but watch the Eighty-ninth put the place in a state of defence. But he reluctantly concluded that it was time he reported himself back to Campbell's military secretary. He was sure there would be nothing for him to do - nothing, at least, of the slightest consequence - but if he exhausted Major Seagrass's indulgence too soon it would be so much the harder to get leave for when the infantry made a determined foray. He slapped his neck with left and right hand in rapid succession, but too late to prevent the bites, and he cursed. It was worse than the fleas in the lousiest billets in Spain.

CHAPTER THREE

THE POINT OF THE BAYONET

Four days later

H
ervey slipped into the room where Major-General Sir Archibald Campbell was about to hold his council. It was not very large - enough for a couple of dozen people - and the lamps and candles were making the otherwise coolest time of the day hot. Hervey wondered what could be the imperative for calling the conference three hours before dawn. He supposed he would have heard of any alarm,
so
the general must have intelligence new come by; or else he had resolved on something that he had been privately turning over for days.

The two brigadiers rose as the general entered, and with them the dozen or so officers on the headquarters staff. Sir Archibald Campbell nodded - all sat - and then he nodded once more, to his quartermaster-general, who pulled loose the knot that held furled a sheet on the wall. Down rolled a hand-drawn sketch of the stockaded port and the Rangoon river to the extent of some two leagues to the north. At the furthest point

of the river, on the eastern bank, there was a red circle.

'Gentlemen,' began the general briskly, seizing the bayonet on the table beside the wall and tapping the map with it. 'In the five and one-half days since we hove to in the river yonder' (he inclined his head to indicate the direction), 'our circumstances have changed so decidedly that I am obliged to conceive a wholly new plan of campaign.'

Hervey, as every man in the room, was all attention. He was hardly surprised to hear the assessment, only that it had been the best part of a week in the making. And he was as much relieved as he was surprised to hear it stated so candidly. There had never been any doubting Major-General Sir Archibald Campbell as a fighting officer. Word was that he had been given the exacting command of a Portuguese brigade in the Peninsula because of his impressive physique and offensive spirit, and because the duke himself knew at first hand of his youthful exploits in Mysore. But fearless and spirited fighting was one thing; the design of a campaign - the decision
how
to fight - was quite another. And the design of a campaign was not something to which General Campbell had had any apprenticeship.

'Or perhaps, gentlemen, I should say that it is necessary to recognize that our circumstances are not as were earlier imagined. It is evident that the Burman people are either too afeard to rally to us, or have no heart to do so. We are therefore in want of supplies from Calcutta, and any expedition to Ava will be through hostile territory. Indeed, it will need to be
supplied
through hostile territory.'

Every man in Rangoon must be of the same opinion, thought Hervey. Indeed, Peto had told him yesterday that the sloops he had sent to reconnoitre the mouths of the Irawadi had reported the channels running close in to numerous forts. But at least now they might proceed openly on the presumption of Burman hostility. They might even be allowed to butcher the few cattle that remained. Immunity from the slaughterman's axe had been one thing five days ago, but there was scant reason now to let the troops starve so that sacred cattle could live.

'It is also evident,' continued General Campbell, his voice slowing a little as if to emphasize the importance of what was to follow, 'that the enemy have built themselves stockaded forts upriver, and that thence they are in a position to assail us at will, by land and, what is more, by river, and not least is the renewed threat of fire boats.'

Hervey wondered which might be the general's inference, for there were two that he and Peto had drawn. Would he require to hold Rangoon as a base for operations against the interior, or did he intend to abandon the port since its capture was evidently not the calamity the Governor-General had anticipated? Although, in fairness, there had scarcely been time for the news to shake Ava.

The general brandished the bayonet again. 'And so, gentlemen, our first object is to destroy the Burman capacity for the offensive.'

The declaration of the objective and the jabbing of the bayonet had an immediate effect. There was such a hubbub that the sentry posted outside peered round the door.

The general raised his other hand, and there was silence again. Today, therefore, we make a beginning. Colonel McCreagh, you will seize the stockaded village of Kemmendine,
here
.'
He stabbed at the red circle on the map. 'And I wish the assault to be given to my own regiment, the Thirty-eighth.

Colonel McCreagh simply nodded. There was no need of questions: it would be boat work and the bayonet.

'Colonel Macbean, I wish the Madras brigade to ascertain where to the west of Rangoon the enemy are encamped, and what their intentions are.' The general pointed vaguely at the left of the map, where the forest was represented by pictures of trees of very English appearance.

Hervey hoped that no one imagined it would be like taking a walk in an English park. He had memories enough of the jungle, and he counted that he had been very lucky in his adventures.

'Very well, General,' replied Colonel Macbean. There was no need of questions in this either, for the colonel saw it much like searching for the needle in the bottle of hay.

'And now the matter of supply.'

The general's voice did not falter, but Hervey thought he detected a note less assured. It beggared belief that within hours of the start of England's first war since Waterloo (as Campbell had grandly announced it to his officers in Calcutta), the regiments had been placed on half rations and sentries set to guard the water butts. In the decade since that battle had every hard-learned lesson been forgotten?

'Gentlemen, as I speak, the Royal Navy is taking in hand the unsatisfactory state of affairs in which we find ourselves. They shall provision the expedition direct from Bengal.'

There was much nodding of heads, and murmurs of 'Hear, hear'. Hervey smiled to himself. The navy would have to keep them alive in the old way. It were better, without doubt, that the extended 'exterior lines' were afloat rather than on land - even on a river whose banks were not free of the enemy - but he couldn't help wondering if it would end in the old way, like Walcheren and Corunna.

There followed detail that would much occupy the staff in the days to come, and then the general stood up again. 'I shall have a word in private with the brigadiers,' he said, laying the bayonet at rest on the table. 'For the remainder, you may dismiss to your duties . . . except for Captain Hervey, if you please.'

Major Seagrass eyed his deputy curiously. And well he might', thought Hervey, for he himself could not imagine why the general had singled him out. Poor Seagrass: he was not enjoying this expedition one bit, and now he was looking in distinctly poor spirits - an ague coming on, perhaps?

When the room was empty but for those bidden to stay, which also included the general's chief of staff, the quartermaster-general, Hervey stepped forward and stood at attention.

BOOK: The Sabre's Edge
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