A Close Run Thing (45 page)

Not so in the Sixth. They could not claim to have suffered as the infantry, and Hervey had two thoughts only: to recover their dead and wounded, and to make ready for the advance on Paris, which he knew must follow soon. Making-ready he could, with confidence, leave to RSM Lincoln and Assheton-Smith, the senior of the other three lieutenants still in the saddle, but recovering the dead and wounded was another matter.
‘Mr
Lincoln,’ he began thoughtfully, ‘we have but a half-hour of twilight. Scour the slopes in front of the battery we overran, but no further. I myself shall search for Serjeant Strange.’

‘As you wish, sir,’ replied the RSM, his voice for once muted, ‘but I urge that your cover-serjeant goes with you.’

Hervey was more than content to take the counsel, since there was no one else with whom he might begin to relate his sense of guilt at this time.

In failing light, and against the flow of Prussians, they trotted north-east, the sights and sounds all about them reducing even Armstrong to silence, for never before had either of them re-crossed a battlefield. And never, for sure, one as bloody as this. What therefore made Hervey check in front of La Haye Sainte he could not tell: the ground was everywhere covered with the dead and dying. But one body lying face-down, sword still clutched in an outstretched hand, even among all the others drew his eye (perhaps the uniform looked too pristine compared with the muddy, gory remains all around). He dismounted and turned the scarlet-jacketed body over. The wild, staring eyes, which he had last seen on the ridge that morning, rolled upwards, yet there was no other life.

So Styles had reached the slopes in front of the batteries, dying with sword drawn, going for the enemy. Whether those eyes stared in wild fear or with the exhilaration of the charge mattered not: Hervey would be able to tell his people that their son had died
among
the enemy. And that was all he would need to say.

It was after midnight before they found Strange. Hervey had prayed so fervently that they might not, but his body they found easily, alone, and where he had last seen him, contorted in the agony that the dozen or more lance wounds had inflicted (for that was the number the lantern revealed).

‘Jesus, Mr ’Ervey,’ cursed Armstrong, ‘it’s an infernal weapon; it’s …
unchristian
.’

They wrapped him gently in a blanket, as if wounded, and then Armstrong caught one of the loose horses roaming even this remote corner of the battlefield – a chestnut (Strange had always liked chestnuts). Unmarked by the battle, she stood patiently while they lashed his body into the saddle.

They picked their way back to La Belle Alliance, in silence once more, across a moonlit landscape where ghostly figures shuffled or darted in and out of the shadows. At times they were accompanied by a press of riderless horses seeking the security of the herd, some barely able to walk so appalling were their wounds. It was past three o’clock when they reached the inn, and burial that night was unthinkable. Hervey had resolved that Strange would have the rites of the Wesleyan service, so they wrapped his body in a velvet curtain (blue – the colour which had clothed him in life) and laid him in one of the rooms. Soon afterwards, Assheton-Smith and the RSM came with the
regiment’s
parade-strength. Hervey studied it through eyes that already ached, and which now filled with tears. He could scarcely believe the order of their loss, for they had been so late engaged. Only five officers and 123 other ranks would be ready for duty at dawn.

‘I have posted an inlying picket only, sir,’ said the lieutenant. ‘Do we stand-to as usual before dawn?’

Hervey checked his irritation at the suggestion they might do otherwise. ‘Yes,’ he replied simply.

His leg ached, his head pounded, and he felt weak for want of food. He ought to do his rounds of the squadrons – that was what Edmonds would have done, was it not? But surely he had done sufficient of his duty, and was it not now his duty to rest? The RSM insisted it was, and Hervey yielded. Johnson had already taken Jessye, who had carried him through so much that day without once even stumbling, and he now brought his valise. Hervey put his hand on his groom’s shoulder. ‘I am glad that you at least …’ he began, but then stayed his sentiments and went instead to the next-door room in silence. He lay on the floor by Strange’s body and struggled to think of a prayer. But sleep came quicker.

PART III

AFTERMATH

Were you at Waterloo?

I have been at Waterloo.

’Tis no matter what you do

If you were at Waterloo!

Popular ditty

XVII

THE AUDIT OF WAR

Before Dawn, 19 June

AT HIS HEADQUARTERS
, the inn on the Brussels
chaussée
at the village of Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington slept. He had returned after dark, eaten some supper with those of his staff who had survived, and then sat down to write his dispatch to the prince regent. When he had finished, he had instructed the headquarters physician, Dr Hume, to bring him the casualty list at first light so that he might attach it. One of his ADCs, Sir Alexander Gordon, had lain mortally wounded in the duke’s camp-bed, so he had, instead, lain down in an adjacent room, wrapped in his cloak. Hume crept in silently and placed the list by the sleeping commander-in-chief. When he returned after daybreak he found the duke up, studying it intently. His face was still grimy from the previous day, and there were traces of tears.

On the other side of the battlefield, Hervey, wrapped also in a cloak, slept, too. And death, in the shape of
a
comrade, was likewise but a few feet away. Johnson roused him as late as he dared before the squadrons paraded for stand-to.

‘Are there no orders for the pursuit?’ he asked as he took the canteen of coffee (the beans were Johnson’s sole find in the inn’s cellars).

There were none. And RSM Lincoln had disquieting news: there had been no contact during the night with Sir Hussey Vivian or his staff.

‘Very well, then, RSM,’ said Hervey resolutely as he rose (stiffly), ‘We must stand-to with extra vigilance lest there has been some unaccountable reverse since last light.’

‘Shall I detail parties to search for our wounded, sir?’

Most of their losses had been on the ridge at Mont St-Jean: they would surely by now have been recovered. ‘No, Mr Lincoln,’ he concluded, ‘I cannot spare even a dozen. We must trust to the medical services.’ Had he but known that these were already overwhelmed, that the wounded were yet lying on the ridge – and that some would do so another night – he might have dispensed with all caution and taken the whole regiment back to scour for their fallen. ‘Ask the RM to get the squadrons collecting loose horses, if you please, but not to venture beyond carbine-range: we shall need all the prize money we can lay in for widows’ pensions.’ The RSM saluted and made to leave, but Hervey had one more concern. ‘Is Corporal Sandbache fit, Mr Lincoln?’

‘Yes, sir,’ he replied dubiously.

‘Then, I wish him to read the burial service over Serjeant Strange; he is a preacher, is he not?’

Hervey made his rounds in silence, except for the briefest word here and there to warn for an outlying picket, and he held the squadrons a full quarter-hour beyond first light, for without knowledge of who else was about he would not risk an encounter with stragglers. There was a mood of numb relief about the Sixth. All they wanted to do was get away from this place, for never before had they halted where they fought, so that the sights, the sounds and the smell of the battlefield had remained with them as they lay, recruits and older hands alike unnerved by the strangeness of it. All night long there had been moaning and shouts for help. Those of the regiment who had not been called for duty, and who had slept soundly, had indeed been fortunate. Those who had stood sentinel would tell of the moaning, the cries, the screams, and the ghoulish sights which the moon had shone upon. They had seen men sitting clutching at a stomach ripped open by a sabre slash or a piece of shrapnel, one by one succumbing to death as their life-blood drained away. Others, less dreadfully injured, or possessed of some last strength, had risen and staggered off into the darkness, only to fall down again after a few steps. There were horses, too, that suffered no less, and claimed more pity by their helplessness. Some still lay with their entrails hanging out (and yet some of these would live), attempting to rise from time to time, only
to
fall back again in the manner of their fellow, human sufferers. And then, all strength spent, their eyes would close gently, there would be one last convulsive struggle, and their suffering would be at an end. All this as close, in places, as a dozen yards. Yet few, even the usual Samaritans, had dared to venture out of the lines that night, for there were too many roaming the field intent on evil business, and shots had punctuated the small hours as the wounded who tried to resist the looters were sent to join the dead.

He walked through the lines of tethered troop-horses, casting an eye over each to gauge their condition, and exchanging a word here and there with a dragoon who felt the need of something to say. It amounted to little, however, since the exhilaration of the gunfire and stirrup-charges had passed, and the reality – thinned ranks and lost comrades – was grimly apparent in the daylight. As he neared the in-lying picket-post the corporal (the ubiquitous Collins) rousted its troopers for a salute. ‘Picket! Commanding officer approaching.
Pree
-sent … arms!’

Hervey glowered at him, but Collins returned the look with defiant pride. As far as
he
was concerned Hervey was commanding officer irrespective of rank: arms would be presented, not a mere butt-salute.

He left the bivouac and crossed the rutted road to see the ground over which they had fought with such resolve. Smoke still drifted in places, but to his left and right he saw clearly the shattered remains of Bonaparte’s folly. Where, the day before, there had
been
magnificence – proud
cuirassiers
, fine horses, burnished guns, fluttering lance-pennants, the bearskins of the Garde, eagles, tricolours, and everywhere ‘Vive l’empereur’ – there was now only desolation. Even the silence was melancholy. No wind, no rain – not even the skylark was tempted to song. Here and there a single shot rang out as a horse, too badly injured to be worth hobbling with to the meat-market, was put out of its protracted misery. And long, chilling screams, ending as abruptly as they had begun, reminded him that death, were it to come, were best to come quickly in his profession.

In the distance the sight was no less doleful, for on the slopes of the ridge at Mont St-Jean – the sea wall against which the French-blue waves had battered all day – was the red of Wellington’s dauntless infantry. But they lay in lines rather than standing upright in squares. Was there so great a difference ’twixt a battle lost and this?

‘De l’eau, monsieur – pour l’amour de Dieu, de l’eau,’ cried one of Bonaparte’s gunners, propped up against a limber wheel. His pipeclayed-white breeches were blood-darkened from the oozings of the slash across his chest – a slash which one of the Sixth’s own troopers must have made. Hervey stooped to pick up a water-canteen from a gunner who no longer had need of it, and put it to the man’s lips. The water trickled down his tunic, for he had not the strength to swallow, and he slumped to one side, eyes open in a look of bewilderment – yet stone-dead. Hervey closed them
with
his thumbs. ‘Into thy hands O Lord …’ he murmured.

He opened a pocket of the man’s tunic to see who this soldier of France might be. Gaspard Juvenal, said his papers, from Saintes in the Charente-Maritime – a provincial Frenchman whose blood had flowed into foreign soil. Had he served these guns in the Peninsula? Had they met before in battle? Or had Gaspard Juvenal ventured even further from the Gironde, perhaps to Muscovy, and seen the basilicas of the tsar’s capital?

‘That ’un dead an’ all, sir?’ called an orderly, examining each body in what remained of the battery.

‘Yes, just,’ replied Hervey, more than ever conscious of the slender divide.