ND
now I come to a bit of my story that clean takes my breath away
as I think of it, and makes me wish that I had never taken the job of
telling it in hand. For when I write I like things to come slow and
orderly and in their turn, like sheep coming out of a paddock. So it
was at West Inch. But now that we were drawn into a larger life, like
wee bits of straw that float slowly down some lazy ditch, until they
suddenly find themselves in the dash and swirl of a great river; then
it is very hard for me with my simple words to keep pace with it all.
But you can find the cause and reason of everything in the books about
history, and so I shall just leave that alone and talk about what I
saw with my own eyes and heard with my own ears.
The regiment to which our friend had been appointed was
the 71st Highland Light Infantry, which wore the red coat and the
trews, and had its depot in Glasgow town. There we went, all three, by
coach: the major in great spirits and full of stories about the
Duke and the Peninsula, while Jim sat in the comer with his lips, set
and his arms folded, and I knew that he killed de Lissac, three times
an hour in his heart. I could tell it by the sudden glint of his eyes
and grip of his hand. As to me, I did not know whether to be glad
or sorry; for home is home, and it is a weary thing, however you may
brazen it out, to feel that half Scotland is between you and your
mother.
We were in Glasgow next day, and the major took us down
to the depot, where a soldier with three stripes on his arm and a
fistful of ribbons from his cap, showed every tooth he had in his head
at the sight of Jim, and walked three times round him to have the
view of him, as if he had been Carlisle Castle.
Then he came over to me and punched me in the ribs and
felt my muscle, and was nigh as pleased as with Jim.
"These are the sort, major, these are the sort," he
kept saying. "With a thousand of these we could stand up to Boney's
best."
"How do they run?" asked the major.
"A poor show," said he, "but they may lick into shape.
The best men have been drafted to America, and we are full of
Militiamen and recruities."
"Tut, tut!" said the major. "We'll have old soldiers
and good ones against us. Come to me if you need any help, you two."
And so with a nod he left us, and we began to
understand that a major who is your officer is a very different person
from a major who happens to be your neighbour in the country.
Well, well, why should I trouble you with these things?
I could wear out a good quill-pen just writing about what we did, Jim
and I, at the depot in Glasgow; and how we came to know our officers
and our comrades, and how they came to know us. Soon came the news
that the folk of Vienna, who had been cutting up Europe as if it had
been a jigget of mutton, had flown back, each to his own country, and
that every man and horse in their armies had their faces towards
France. We heard of great reviews and musterings in Paris too, and
then that Wellington was in the Low Countries, and that on us and on
the Prussians would fall the first blow. The Government was shipping
men over to him as fast as they could, and every port along the east
coast was choked with guns and horses and stores. On the third of June
we had our marching orders also, and on, the same night we took ship
from Leith, reaching Ostend the night after. It was my first sight
of a foreign land, and indeed most of my comrades were the same, for
we were very young in the ranks. I can see the blue waters now, and
the curling surf line, and the long yellow beach, and queer windmills
twisting and turning -- a thing that a man would not see from one end
of Scotland to the other. It was a clean, well-kept town, but the folk
were under-sized, and there was neither ale nor oatmeal cakes to be
bought amongst them.
From there we went on to a place called Bruges; and
from there to Ghent, where we picked up with the 52nd and the 95th,
which were the two regiments that we were brigaded with. It 's a
wonderful place for churches and stonework is Ghent, and indeed of all
the towns we were in there was scarce one but had a finer kirk than
any in Glasgow. From there we pushed on to Ath, which is a little
village on a river, or a burn rather, called the Dender. There we were
quartered -- in tents mostly, for it was fine sunny weather -- and the
whole brigade set to work at its drill from morning till evening.
General Adams was our chief, and Reynell was our colonel, and they
were both fine old soldiers; but what put heart into us most was to
think that we were under the Duke, for his name was like a bugle call.
He was at Brussels with the bulk of the army, but we knew that we
should see him quick enough if he were needed.
I had never seen so many English together, and indeed I
had a kind of contempt for them, as folk always have if they live near
a border. But the two regiments that were with us now were as good
comrades as could be wished. The 52nd had a thousand men in the ranks,
and there were many old soldiers of the Peninsula among them. They
came from Oxfordshire for the most part. The 95th were a rifle
regiment, and had dark green coats instead of red. It was strange to
see them loading, for they would put the ball into a greasy rag and
then hammer it down with a mallet, but they could fire both further
and straighter than we. All that part of Belgium was covered with
British troops at that time; for the Guards were over near Enghien,
and there were cavalry regiments on the further side of us. You see,
it was very necessary that Wellington should spread out all his force,
for Boney was behind the screen of his fortresses, and of course we
had no means of saying on what side he might pop out, except that he
was pretty sure to come the way that we least expected him.
On the one side he might get between us and the sea, and so cut us off
from England; and on the other he might shove in between the Prussians
and ourselves. But the Duke was as clever as he, for he had his horse
and his light troops all round him, like a great spider's web, so that
the moment a French foot stepped across the border he could close up
all his men at the right place.
For myself, I was very happy at Ath, and I found the
folk very kindly and homely. There was a farmer of the name of Bois,
in whose fields we were quartered, and who was a real good friend to
many of us. We built him a wooden barn among us in our spare time, and
many a time I and Jeb Seaton, my rear-rank man, have hung out his
washing, for the smell of the wet linen seemed to take us both
straight home as nothing else could do. I have often wondered whether
that good man and his wife are still living, though I think it hardly
likely, for they were of a hale middle-age at the time. Jim would come
with us too, sometimes, and would sit with us smoking in the big
Flemish kitchen, but he was a different Jim now to the old one. He
had always had a hard touch in him, but now his trouble seemed to have
turned him to flint, and I never saw a smile upon his face, and seldom
heard a word from his lips. His whole mind was set on revenging
himself upon de Lissac for having taken Edie from him, and he would
sit for hours with his chin upon his hands glaring and frowning, all
wrapped in the one idea. This made him a bit of a butt among the men
at first, and they laughed at him for it; but when they came to know
him better they found that he was not a good man to laugh at, and then
they dropped it.
We were early risers at that time, and the whole
brigade was usually under arms at the first flush of dawn. One morning
-- it was the sixteenth of June -- we had just formed up, and General
Adams had ridden up to give some order to Colonel Reynell within
a musket-length of where I stood, when suddenly they both stood
staring along the Brussels road. None of us dared move our heads, but
every eye in the regiment whisked round, and there we saw an officer
with the cockade of a general's aide-de-camp thundering down the road
as hard as a great dapple-grey horse could carry him. He bent his face
over its mane and flogged at its neck with the slack of the bridle, as
though he rode for very fife.
"Hullo, Reynell!" says the general. "This begins to
look like business. What do you make of it?"
They both cantered their horses forward, and Adams tore
open the dispatch which the messenger handed to him. The wrapper had
not touched the ground before he turned waving the letter over his
head as if it had been a sabre.
"Dismiss!" he cried. "General parade and march in
half-an-hour."
Then in an instant all was buzz and bustle, and the
news on every lip. Napoleon had crossed the frontier the day before,
had pushed the Prussians before him, and was already deep in the
country to the east of us with a hundred and fifty thousand men.
Away we scuttled to gather our things together and have our breakfast,
and in an hour we had marched off and left Ath and the Dender behind
us for ever. There was good need for haste, for the Prussians had sent
no news to Wellington of what was doing, and though he had rushed from
Brussels at the first whisper of it, like a good old mastiff from its
kennel, it was hard to see how he could come up in time to help the
Prussians.
It was a bright warm morning, and as the brigade
tramped down the broad Belgian road the dust rolled up from it like
the smoke of a battery. I tell you that we blessed the man that
planted the poplars along the sides, for their shadow was better than
drink to us. Over across the fields, both to the right and the left,
were other roads, one quite close, and the other a mile or more from
us. A column of infantry was marching down the near one, and it was a
fair race between us, for we were each walking for all we were worth.
There was such a wreath of dust round them that we could only see the
gun-barrels and the bear-skins breaking out here and there, with the
head and shoulders of a mounted officer coming out above the cloud,
and the flutter of the colours. It was a brigade of the Guards, but we
could not tell which, for we had two of them with us in the campaign.
On the far road there was also dust and to spare, but through it there
flashed every now and then a long twinkle of brightness, like a
hundred silver beads threaded in a line; and the breeze brought down
such a snarling, clanging, clashing kind of music as I had never
listened to. If I had been left to myself it would have been long
before I knew what it was; but our corporals and sergeants were all
old soldiers, and I had one trudging along with his halbert at my
elbow, who was full of precept and advice.
"That's heavy horse," said he. "You see that double
twinkle? That means they have helmet as well as cuirass. It 's the
Royals, or the Enniskillens, or the Household. You can hear their
cymbals and kettles. The French heavies are too good for us. They
have ten to our one, and good men too. You 've got to shoot at their
faces or else at their horses. Mind you that when you see them coming,
or else you 'll find a four-foot sword stuck through your liver to
teach you better. Hark! Hark! Hark! There 's the old music again?"
And as he spoke there came the low grumbling of a
cannonade away somewhere to the east of us, deep and hoarse, like the
roar of some blood-daubed beast that thrives on the lives of men. At
the same instant there was a shouting of "Heh! heh! heh!" from
behind, and somebody roared, "Let the guns get through!" Looking back,
I saw the rear companies split suddenly in two and hurl themselves
down on either side into the ditch, while six cream-coloured horses,
galloping two and two with their bellies to the ground, came
thundering through the gap with a fine twelve-pound gun whirling
and creaking behind them. Behind were another, and another,
four-and-twenty in all, flying past us with such a din and
clatter, the blue-coated men clinging on to the gun and the tumbrils,
the drivers cursing and cracking their whips, the manes flying, the
mops and buckets clanking, and the whole air filled with the heavy
rumble and the jingling of chains. There was a roar from the ditches,
and a shout from the gunners, and we saw a rolling grey cloud before
us, with a score of busbies breaking through the shadow. Then we
closed up again, while the growling ahead of us grew louder and
deeper than ever.
"There's three batteries there," said the sergeant.
"There's Bull's and Webber Smith's, but the other is new. There's some
more on ahead of us, for here is the track of a nine-pounder, and the
others were all twelves. Choose a twelve if you want to get hit; for a
nine mashes you up, but a twelve snaps you like a carrot." And then he
went on to tell about the dreadful wounds that he had seen, until my
blood ran like iced water in my veins, and you might have rubbed all
our faces in pipeclay and we should have been no whiter. "Aye, you'll
look sicklier yet, when you get a hatful of grape into your tripes,"
said he.
And then, as I saw some of the old soldiers laughing, I
began to understand that this man was trying to frighten us; so I
began to laugh also, and the others as well, but it was not a very
hearty laugh either.
The sun was almost above us when we stopped at a little
place called Hal, where there is an old pump from which I drew and
drank a shako full of water-and never did a mug of Scotch ale taste as
sweet. More guns passed us here, and Vivian's Hussars, three regiments
of them, smart men with bonny brown horses, a treat to the eye. The
noise of the cannons was louder than ever now, and it tingled through
my nerves just as it had done years before, when, with Edie by my
side, I had seen the merchant-ship fight with the privateers. It was
so loud now that it seemed to me that the battle must be going on just
beyond the nearest wood, but my friend the sergeant knew better.
"It's twelve to fifteen mile off," said he. "You may be
sure the general knows we are not wanted, or we should not be resting
here at Hal."
What he said proved to be true, for a minute later down
came the colonel with orders that we should pile arms and bivouac
where we were; and there we stayed all day, while horse and foot and
guns, English, Dutch, and Hanoverians, were streaming through. The
devil's music went on till evening, sometimes rising into a roar,
sometimes sinking into a grumble, until about eight o'clock in the
evening it stopped altogether. We were eating our hearts out, as you
may think, to know what it all meant, but we knew that what the Duke
did would be for the best, so we just waited in patience.
Next day the Brigade remained at Hal in the morning,
but about mid-day came an orderly from the Duke, and we pushed on
once more until we came to a little village called Braine something,
and there we stopped; and time too, for a sudden thunderstorm broke
over us, and a plump of rain that turned all the roads and the fields
into bog and mire. We got into the barns at this village for shelter,
and there we found two stragglers -- one from a kilted regiment, and
the other a man of the German Legion, who had a tale to tell that was
as dreary as the weather.
Boney had thrashed the Prussians the day before, and
our fellows had been sore put to it to hold their own against Ney, but
had beaten him off at last. It seems an old stale story to you now,
but you cannot think how we scrambled round those two men in the barn,
and pushed and fought, just to catch a word of what they said, and how
those who had heard were in turn mobbed by those who had not. We
laughed and cheered and groaned all in turn as we heard how the 44th
had received cavalry in line, how the Dutch-Belgians had fled, and how
the Black Watch had taken the Lancers into their square, and then had
killed them at their leisure. But the Lancers had had the laugh on
their side when they crumpled up the 69th and carried off one of the
colours. To wind it all up, the Duke was in retreat in order to keep
in touch with the Prussians, and it was rumoured that he would take up
his ground and fight a big battle just at the very place where we had
been halted.
And soon we saw that this rumour was true; for the
weather cleared towards evening, and we were all out on the ridge to
see what we could see. It was such a bonny stretch of corn and grazing
land, with the crops just half green and half yellow, and fine rye as
high as a man's shoulder. A scene more full of peace you could not
think of, and look where you would over the low curving corn-covered
hills, you could see the little village steeples pricking up their
spires among the poplars.
But slashed right across this pretty picture was a long
trail of marching men -- some red, some green, some blue, some black
-- zigzagging over the plain and choking the roads, one end so close
that we could shout to them, as they stacked their muskets on the
ridge at our left, and the other end lost among the woods as far as we
could see. And then on other roads we saw the teams of horses toiling
and the dull gleam of the guns, and the men straining and swaying as
they helped to turn the spokes in the deep, deep mud. As we stood
there, regiment after regiment and brigade after brigade took position
on the ridge, and ere the sun had set we lay in a line of over sixty
thousand men, blocking Napoleon's way to Brussels. But the rain had
come swishing down again, and we of the 71st rushed off to our barn
once more, where we had better quarters than the greater part of our
comrades, who lay stretched in the mud with the storm beating upon
them until the first peep of day.
