Flashman's Escape (3 page)

Chapter 2

As I walked up the hill towards the little stone church, I saw that the rest of my company had not gone inside it as I had expected. Instead they were gathered around the stone wall of the churchyard, staring at something inside.

“What is it, Sergeant?” I called.

“You had better see for yourself, sir,” the man shouted back.

A couple of the soldiers were crossing themselves and there was a look of shock, disgust or naked curiosity on the faces of the others. When I finally got to the wall, I saw a scene of macabre devastation. All of the graves had been dug up; there were mounds of earth and deep holes all around the enclosure. Scattered amongst them were splinters of wood, presumably from where the coffins had been chopped up for firewood, and in the corner was a mound of old bones, some with bits of burial shroud still attached.

While young Price-Thomas watched in silent fascination, his lieutenant was more vocal in his outrage. “Why on earth would they do such a thing?” asked Hervey, looking appalled. “There are much easier ways to get fire wood; there are plenty of trees still around here.”

“They were searching for gold, sir,” answered the sergeant. “I saw the same in Oporto. The Spanish and Portuguese often bury people wearing gold rings and jewellery, and the French dig up the bodies to steal it.”

“The desecrating barbarians,” exclaimed Hervey.

But it turned out that this was only the start of the savagery we were to witness in that small village. I guessed that it must have been home to around a hundred people before the French arrived, but there was no one left now, at least not alive. Every house had been torn apart by the French in the search for food. Then they must have turned their attention to the few inhabitants they had found, to reveal any hidden supplies. We found the bodies of three of the villagers hanged from a tree near the church. Two now blackened corpses still dangled from the ropes while the third had rotted so that its remains rested in a heap below a now vacant hoop of cord. They, it turned out, might have been the lucky ones.

In the centre of the village we found two more blackened corpses, one small enough to be a child’s. These had not been hanged in the conventional sense but suspended from a high beam by ropes tied around their wrists. Underneath both fires had been lit and the heat had caused the muscles to contract so that the bodies were twisted into grotesque shapes. It was hard to tell from their blackened remains if they had been male or female but it was clear that they had died slowly and in agony. There were murmurs of outrage as the men gathered around the scene, interrupted only by the spatter of vomit as Lieutenant Hervey leaned over the far side of his horse.

“How could Christian men do that?” asked a pale-faced private.

“They were searching for food,” I replied. “Most villages around here would have hidden food for their own survival, expecting the French to search the houses. The soldiers must have thought that burning these poor souls would persuade either them or other villagers to reveal the cache.” I paused, staring at the awful scene, before adding, “Of course they might not have been the first French troops to raid the village. Other French soldiers could have already taken any cache, meaning that there was nothing left to give.”

There was silence for a while as those watching imagined the horror of that inquisition. I had seen that the company was naturally divided into two groups. There were what I judged to be the old hands; they gazed at the scene with nothing more than curiosity. These men had seen such atrocities before, either at Oporto or elsewhere. If they had been on the retreat to Corunna, they may have even carried out some of their own. The other, newer men were reinforcements; they had arrived over the winter while the regiment was in Lisbon. Not accepted into the group of veterans, they tended to look to Sergeant Evans for leadership. These men looked on the scene with horror on their faces, clearly wondering what kind of men they would be fighting.

I felt pretty disgusted about it myself, particularly over what seemed to be a child’s body. I had been left hungry and thirsty before, especially when on the run in India, but never bad enough to do anything like that. Mind you, since then I have been left adrift with others in a lifeboat at sea. Extreme starvation and dehydration is a terrible thing. I had hallucinations and came close to cannibalism before I was rescued.

Hervey interrupted any further reflection on the scene by shouting, “I want them buried, and those poor devils hanging from the tree.” He turned to the sergeant. “Bury them at once, d’ye hear?”

“The ground is frozen hard, sir, and we have no spades.”

“I don’t care. I want them buried!” Hervey was nearly shrieking now, his face filled with revulsion at the bodies slowly swinging in the wind. The sergeant turned an enquiring face to me, to see if I was willing to countermand the order.

“Cut them down and put them in the open graves in the churchyard,” I told him. “Tip the other bones in as well and then cover them with those piles of dirt. You won’t need to dig then.”

I left them to it while I went into the little church. It was stripped bare inside, with a black scorch mark in the middle of the floor where previous occupants had burnt a fire to keep warm. There were stone steps in the short tower which served as a lookout and a chimney for the smoke. I went up the turret before the redcoats started to build their own fire. The countryside looked as bleak up there as it did at ground level. I wondered how many more devastated villages like this there were spread across it. Two more companies of the battalion could be seen making their way past on either side of the village some distance away. They would have a long march to find another stone building like the church, as I could see no more from my high vantage point. I hoped wherever Grant was that night he was camping out in the freezing wind, but I doubted it. I still resented my change in circumstances, but at least with the French withdrawing as fast as they could, there seemed little chance of imminent battle.

I turned and went back down the stairs into the body of the church. As I had hoped, some men were already starting a fire in the hearth left by the French. The space was filling with the men, women and children of the company. We had brought our own cooking kettle and rations and it seemed that dinner would soon be on the way. An infantry company at its full complement was a hundred men but that was rarely achieved. There had been around eighty men in the companies at Talavera two years ago but now the average size of a company in the Buffs was just over seventy men. While Evans kept them organised they seemed a sullen lot, with little of the banter that I had known in other units. Mind you, Hervey did not help with his high-handed way of dealing with the men.

They had managed completely without officers for a while during the retreat to the lines and perhaps wondered why they needed Hervey and me at all. The major had hinted that some of the ‘casualties’ on the retreat might actually have been desertions. Back then morale in the army had been low, and while running to the French would not have been appealing, there was another option.

A cook had deserted the French army, taking around a hundred of the roughest and most rebellious men with him. They had gone up into the hills and taken over an old convent. Well out of the route of either army, they had raided the surrounding countryside, capturing food and women, and settled down to live the high life while the war went on without them. Word of their existence had spread and deserters from both the British and Portuguese slipped away to join them. Soon the French cook, known as Marshal Stockpot, had several hundred men of various nationalities under his command, who dominated the land for miles around their lair.

I wondered if the deserters from my company had ended up with the ‘marshal’. If so, they had a grim ending. The French commander Marshal Massena had left them alone to operate behind his lines until they challenged one of his own foraging parties, which, outnumbered and under fire from Stockpot’s men, was forced to retreat. Massena then sent a force to destroy the deserters. Stockpot’s French soldiers were given a choice: they could either serve in the front ranks in an attack against their former comrades, in which case they would be pardoned, or they would be shot when captured. For the British and Portuguese there was no choice. When the convent was overrun by the French, those wearing red coats or the green and blue of the Portuguese were made prisoner and marched back to the British lines, where they were handed over. Wellington had hanged them all as an example.

If a number of their comrades had been executed then you could understand the resentment of some of the men. Certainly the major sensed the air of rebellion amongst this company, which was why I think he did not make his nephew the captain. He told me that he wanted an experienced man in charge, but he had been deluded by my unwarranted repute. The last company I had commanded had been back in India years ago and I had swiftly learnt that it was best to leave everything to the very capable Sergeant Fergusson. Still, they seemed content to be away from the rest of the regiment now. There were even some smiles as they huddled round the now blazing fire in the centre of the church to get warm. Soon there was a smell of cooking and the chill in my bones started to recede.

Hervey, Price-Thomas and I had taken a corner of the church as our nominal officers’ quarters and were making ourselves as comfortable as we could.

“Still want to be camping on a frozen field, Lieutenant?” I asked as I laid out my blanket.

Hervey grunted a non-committal reply and then the door opened and slammed shut to a chorus of groans at the blast of cold air. It was the last of the burial party coming inside for the night.

“Sergeant, are all the bodies and bones buried?” I called.

“Yes, sir, all tidied away.”

“You are sure about that, are you?” I asked, noticing some movement amongst the men.

The sergeant followed my gaze and grinned. Boney was weaving his way towards me through the men. He had muddy front paws from where he had been digging and what looked suspiciously like a human thigh bone in his mouth.

“Oh my God!” exclaimed Hervey. “He has got someone’s leg. Someone should take that off him.”

“I wouldn’t recommend it,” I replied as Boney settled against the wall of the chapel to gnaw on his prize. “He gets particularly cross if people try to steal his dinner.”

“Well, I am not putting up with it,” stated Hervey, and he got up and strode purposefully towards the hound.

He has more courage than I imagined, I thought, as I watched him approach the dog. Of course Boney was watching as well and when Hervey was halfway towards him the dog dropped the bone and went down on his haunches, ready to spring. His top lip curled up and he gave a bloodcurdling growl. Hervey stopped in his tracks. After a moment’s hesitation he turned, to several jeers from those who had seen the encounter. Despite the cold, Hervey was colouring in embarrassment as he came back.

“I don’t know why you would have such a dog,” he grumbled.

“Ignore them,” I said of the jeering soldiers. “None of them would take the bone off him either. He was a gift from Lord Byron, the poet, and I keep him because once he saved my life.”

“How did he do that?” asked Price-Thomas.

“I would have been skewered on the point of a Polish lancer if it had not been for that dog,” I told him. “Several stone of angry wolfhound jumping up onto his saddle is inclined to put a lancer off his aim. In fact he has been damn useful to have around on a number of occasions.”

Hervey looked dubiously at the dog and then winced as he heard the crunch of the bone between the animal’s powerful jaws.

“How did you come to join the regiment?” I asked him. Hervey seemed far too sensitive to be an army officer.

“My uncle gave me a vacant lieutenancy as a favour to my father late last year. The major told me to learn from you, but I am sure he would not approve of us bivouacking away from the battalion.”

“Well, we will be more effective tomorrow after a good night’s sleep in the warm than if we had spent it half frozen in the open.”

Food was served and I tried not to look across too often at where Lucy was settling down for the night with the recently returned Corporal Benton. Despite the lack of female companionship, I am bound to say it was a comfortable night. The warmth from the roaring fire made up for the hard stone floor. There was little privacy in an infantry company and I noticed the odd rhythmic movement and groan from some couples under their blankets. But the children did not cry much; they were exhausted from the day’s march. For most of the night there was just a rumble of assorted snores, the occasional quiet bleat of a goat and, every now and then, the crunch of teeth on bone.

The chapel got warm and stuffy so that next morning, when we threw open the doors, the cold air struck us like a physical blow. As we set off again the newer recruits were still indignant over the behaviour of the French towards the villagers; but that was to change during the course of the day. We were following the line of the enemy withdrawal and we saw the first French body later that morning. He must have just dropped from exhaustion on the march and fallen onto the road. His comrades could not have had the strength to get him off the track for he was half buried in the frozen mud. Ruts in his back showed that at least three wheels passed over him, pushing him further into the ooze. We found some of the wheels at midday. They were attached to an eighteen-pounder cannon that had been simply abandoned. They had not even bothered to spike the touch hole.