The Winter Soldiers Read online

  Wynter was sceptical. ‘Sounds messy. We got this lot,’ he pointed at the prisoners. ‘Why not just take them back and say we did our best?’

  Yorwarth snorted. ‘Half a job? That’ll satisfy the major.’

  ‘Better a dressin’ down from Major Lovelace than gettin’ your arse shot off,’ countered Wynter.

  ‘Might be a good idea to shoot your bloody arse off,’ retorted Yorwarth. ‘Save you stinking out the place with your damn farting every five minutes. I swear you eat shit on the quiet, Wynter. I never smelled anything so foul in all my life, before I met you.’

  ‘Sleep upwind, is my advice,’ replied the unperturbed Wynter, ‘then you won’t have nothin’ to complain about.’

  4

  Just as it was getting dark Ali, who was on guard at a high point, called down that an attack was coming. Reece had not waited for Crossman to come to him. The leader of the deserters had taken the initiative and had come looking for the sergeant. The enemy were on horseback and on foot, and they still outnumbered the defenders. After the first few shots, the prisoners held in the caves guessed what was happening, and began yelling down to their comrades below, calling for rescue and the destruction of their captors.

  Wynter rushed into the cave with his bayonet fixed. ‘Anyone makes another sound and I’ll run ’em through,’ he swore. ‘Just try me if you think I’m bluffing. I’m not regular army. It don’t matter to us whether we bring in prisoners or not, and we’d just as soon not if we’re given any kind of excuse.’

  They took him at his word. During the night there were spasmodic exchanges of fire, but nothing serious. Just as dawn crept over the horizon there came the screams of dying men from the deserters’ position. Ali and Gwilliams had got a man each with their knives and had slipped away amongst the grey stones, in the grey light, to rejoin Crossman’s group. The situation began to unnerve the enemy. If this small band of men had killed and captured the first fifteen of their number, they could surely do the same with the second half of their gang. With the true morning light the firing increased. Victoria carbines and Minié rifles blasted at each other from high and low. Chunks of rock flew as large calibre balls struck boulders and stacks. It was now stalemate of a different kind. Every man had his niche and was well hidden amongst the natural fortifications. Lead would continue to fly back and forth with no definite result, unless something unusual happened.

  The unusual came from young Yorwarth. The Australian managed to wriggle along a rock chimney to a position where he could see the enemy’s mounts. Taking up a stance in a rock chimney he shot one of the horses through the head. The dying beast let out a horrible unearthly scream before dropping to the ground with a thump. The other horses panicked and started thrashing and kicking.

  Most of the deserters’ mounts had been hobbled at the ankles but two were tethered to boulders. These two broke away and bolted. One of the deserters shouted, ‘They’re killing the horses. We’ll be trapped!’ Now it was the men who panicked. One rushed for a charger, cut its hobble, and jumped on its back. He rode off towards the farmhouse, only to be shot out of the saddle by Peterson. A second one tried, and a third. One of these managed to get away. The rest of the deserters began to fight amongst themselves for the remaining three mounts.

  ‘Down amongst them!’ ordered Crossman. ‘Shoot to kill!’

  The peloton then moved swiftly down the slopes, firing at will, the deserters now thoroughly disorganized. Two of them tried to escape on foot. The first was shot in the legs by Ali, with a kind of blunderbuss he carried. The second was felled by the butt of Gwilliams’ rifle; the American was fast on his feet and determined not to be outrun.

  Lieutenant Pirce-Smith was attacked by a deserter visibly foaming at the mouth. His heated brain had been maddened at the height of the battle, and he came at the lieutenant shrieking. Crouching like a big cat, he sprang, avoiding the swing of Ali’s blunderbuss barrel, to slice the air with his sword just a fraction of an inch before Pirce-Smith’s throat. No longer human, the face was black with rage, the lips thickened with blood, the eyes wide and rolling. The officer stood his ground and shot his attacker twice in the chest with his pistol. The man dropped, not quite dead and still twitching, at the officer’s feet, his head on one of the infamous brown boots.

  It was Pirce-Smith’s first close-quarter action and he was surprised to see how steady his firearm hand had been. A while later, when the action was over, he was again surprised to find himself shaking violently. His teeth rattled in his head and it was all he could do to stand upright since his legs were almost uncontrollable. He did his best to hide the shock he was going through from the others, being ashamed of his reaction and mistakenly feeling that it was somewhat cowardly to tremble like a frightened child. Ali took him aside, gave him a drink, and murmured his admiration for the calmness Pirce-Smith had shown when faced with death. Pirce-Smith was grateful for both water and words.

  In the meantime, Crossman pursued a man into a cluster of rocks, ordered him to drop his weapon and halt, and when this order was ignored the sergeant shot the man through the spine. The soldier, a sergeant sapper, fell to the ground with a groan. He lay there staring bleakly up at Crossman, who kicked his weapon away from him, then went back to the main fray to assist his men. When Crossman returned, the sapper’s eyes were glassy. A new wound gaped. Left alone, he had cut his own throat. Crossman could not help but feel it was for the best. Hanging a man was unpalatable enough, but when the victim had to be assisted to the noose, lifted and carried in some form of chair or litter, with public eyes following his progress, it made for a most unbearable execution.

  With the new prisoners under guard, Crossman thanked his men and praised their actions. ‘Well done. Any wounds? Peterson?’

  ‘My shoulder, sergeant. A bayonet.’ Her face was the colour of old bread. Crossman told her to sit on the ground until she could be attended to.

  ‘Any others?’

  Yorwarth, it seemed, had a broken jaw, from a rifle butt. Since he could not speak to tell of it, Wynter did it for him.

  ‘Strap his jaw up, Wynter, until we can get him to a surgeon.’

  ‘I’ll fix it,’ Gwilliams said. ‘I’ve fixed many a jaw, collarbone and broken joint. Is there any liquor, sergeant? He can still scream. His throat’s not broken.’

  ‘The Turk has some,’ replied Wynter. ‘Ask him. But don’t you go cracklin’ no bones near me. I can’t stand the sound of grinding bones, specially in a man’s face. It gives me a funny feelin’ in my belly. Just you wait till I’ve gone for the water.’

  Peterson, still on the ground, said, ‘What, you volunteering to go for water, Wynter? It’s worth a blade wound, to hear that.’

  Later, Yorwarth’s face was looking like something that had been cobbled together with sticks and straps. He was quietly drunk and beyond pain. Peterson had been attended to by Ali, and began looking much better once she got some soup inside her. Pirce-Smith had been observing her a lot of late and she knew he suspected her of being something other than she claimed. She asked Crossman to have a word with the officer about it. It was Pirce-Smith, however, who came to Crossman.

  ‘The leader, Corporal Reece. He doesn’t seem to be amongst the prisoners.’ Pirce-Smith nodded towards the sullen group of men huddled in the cave.

  ‘No,’ replied Crossman. ‘He’s one that got away. I think there were four who escaped on horseback. One of the horsemen was the Pestilence we happen to call Morgan Reece.’

  The lieutenant’s humour was buried too deep beneath his sense of duty and overwhelming current feeling of self-importance.

  ‘I don’t follow.’

  ‘The Four Horsemen of the . . . Oh, never mind,’ sighed Crossman. ‘I don’t see the man, he’s not here, so one of those who escaped must have been him.’

  ‘You told Colonel Hawke we would bring him in alive.’

  ‘No, Colonel Hawke asked me to do so, and I said I would try. The colonel is not expecting miracles. It’s
unfortunate, but we don’t have mounts ourselves.’

  ‘There are two remaining horses.’

  ‘Peterson can probably walk, but Yorwarth will need to ride. Also two of the prisoners are too badly wounded to go on foot. Would you have me execute them here, without a trial? No. Then the two horses are spoken for. Reece will have to wait until another day.’

  Pirce-Smith, surprisingly, remained calm. It seemed he had lost his taste for trying to assert his authority over Crossman. In all attempts he had come off worse, mainly because of the collusion between the sergeant and his men. In fact, he was biding his time. Yes, the colonel had told the lieutenant he was there in the role of an observer, that Sergeant Crossman was the man in charge, but the colonel was not here to see things. Pirce-Smith felt sure that once certain circumstances were explained to the colonel, he, Pirce-Smith, would be vindicated in his attempts to take control of matters. An officer instinctively knew what was the best course to take in any given military situation: that was his vocation. A sergeant, high born or not, was subordinate to that instinct. The colonel must be made to realize that it was impossible for a lieutenant to remain a dispassionate observer, while his sergeant made all sorts of errors of judgement. It could be expected of no officer worth his salt.

  ‘I wish to speak to you of another matter, sir,’ said Crossman, interrupting Pirce-Smith’s train of thoughts. ‘Lance-Corporal Peterson feels you are sitting in judgement over him the whole while.’

  ‘Peterson? Well, I just find the boy strange. There’s something peculiar about him. What was he in civilian life?’

  ‘A carpenter. Actually, a cabinet maker.’

  ‘Really?’ the officer glanced over at Peterson, who was quietly sipping her soup. She caught the look and turned away. ‘I would have taken him for a callow bank clerk, or something of that nature. There’s something of a smoothness about him.’ Pirce-Smith’s voice fell to a whisper. ‘I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but he bears all the mannerisms of a sodomite, sergeant. I’m not accusing him of anything, you understand, but I feel there is a latent force at work there. When the other men talk of whores, in the way that common soldiers will do, a look of annoyance, almost anger comes over the boy’s face. It leads me to believe that not only is he not interested in wenches, as any strong-blooded soldier is, but he actually dislikes them. You should keep a keen eye on that youth and steer him away from any unfortunate tendencies to follow an unnatural carnal course.’

  It was all Crossman could do not to roar with laughter.

  ‘I shall bear your warning in mind, sir,’ he said, with all the gravity he could muster. It was not enough.

  ‘You find the situation funny, sergeant?’ Pirce-Smith’s prickles were up again.

  ‘No, no – I can understand your concern, sir. Peterson, well, he doesn’t like doing his ablutions with the rest of us, but I always put this down to natural shyness. He’s a quiet, kind-hearted boy, despite his remarkable ability with a rifle. He was raised in a remote country district by his mother, with no father present, and that probably accounts for his – his strange ways. The way he sits, and holds his plate when he eats, and that moist look in his eye when we come across a dead animal. He’s a sensitive creature, whose model has been his mother, who I understand was a fine gentle creature with a heart of gold. Why, he hardly needs to shave yet. You must have noticed that?’

  ‘Yes, of course, but there are many boys here in the Crimea whose faces have never felt a razor. It’s just that . . .’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ interrupted Crossman.

  The lieutenant rocked back on his heels. ‘What? You shock me, sergeant. To blaspheme in front of a superior officer?’

  ‘No, no. You misunderstand, sir. I was just drawing a comparison. Christ was a carpenter, was he not? He was not interested in the ladies, not in that way. Perhaps we have the makings of a Messiah in young Peterson?’

  ‘You are making fun of me, sergeant,’ said Pirce-Smith, stiffly. ‘It does not do you justice. I resent it very deeply.’

  Crossman realized he had overstepped the mark and was seriously offending his lieutenant. ‘Forgive me, sir,’ he said, ‘I mean no disrespect, but Peterson has been with us a long time. I merely sought to lighten a situation which was also becoming offensive to me. I’m sure you have the peloton’s best interests at heart, but I fear you are completely on the wrong track in this assumption. Peterson is a fine soldier and I am wholly convinced he is not interested in sodomy – I am absolutely certain of it. So, forgive me, lieutenant, if we dismiss the subject now. I’m sure you understand that I always have the best interests of my soldiers at heart and I’m grateful for your observations, but in this instance you are mistaken.’

  Pirce-Smith cleared his throat. Clearly the subject itself was unpleasant and distasteful to him, so there he left it with a, ‘Quite. Well, I shall continue to give you the benefit of my observations, whether they be mistaken or not. Good night to you, sergeant.’

  ‘Good night, sir.’

  Later, when Pirce-Smith was out of the way, Peterson came to Crossman.

  ‘What did he say? He was talking about me, wasn’t he?’

  Crossman smiled. ‘He thought you were trying to get into bed with Wynter.’

  A look of such utter revulsion came over Peterson’s face, Crossman had to growl out a laugh this time. Peterson said, ‘Wynter? What, he knows about – about me?’

  ‘No, he thinks you are a male homosexual, Peterson.’

  ‘What?’ Her face was a picture.

  ‘It’s a reasonable assumption to make, given the circumstances. Let’s not labour it.’

  ‘A male what? I don’t know what one of them is.’

  ‘It’s a man who prefers the sexual favours of other men – to those of women.’

  ‘Oh?’ Clearly this quirk in life had never entered Peterson’s thought patterns before now. She struggled with it for a while, silently, before shrugging. ‘Well, that’s a turn, isn’t it? I don’t feel ignorant. It’s not something I would get around to knowing, things being as they are.’

  ‘You’re surely aware of women who enjoy other women?’

  ‘Yes, but that’s different. Women are nice soft creatures, mostly with nice ways. They seek comfort in each other. They let men do things to them, because that’s the way things are, but you should hear how much in contempt they hold men, when men aren’t around. I can’t understand it, the other way around, sergeant. I mean, what’s nice about a man? Nothing. Not their ways, not their bodies. That’s why men prefer to fall in love with women and to kill each other. That’s why men would rather live with women, because they can’t stand each other. Isn’t that so, sergeant?’

  Crossman shook his head to clear it and found it still tangled with her argument. ‘I don’t follow your reasoning, Peterson, though I’m sure to you it’s perfectly sound. Can we leave it there?’

  ‘Does it bother you, sergeant?’

  ‘No, not a great deal anyway. I would just prefer not to delve too deeply into matters of human biology that few of us understand. They lead nowhere. Now, if you would like to talk of Mr Brunel’s latest achievement in the field of engineering, then I should be happy to accommodate you, Peterson. Yes?’

  ‘No,’ replied that soldier, and went back to her warm fire to contemplate the fathomless mysteries of mankind.

  For most of that evening, both prisoners and captors were licking their lips, trying to get the taste of gunpowder out of their mouths. The loading and firing of weapons involved biting the paper cartridge, which inevitably meant a residue of gunpowder on the tongue. It was an acrid taste which opened up the taste buds and seemed to stay in the mouth for long hours afterwards.

  One of the prisoners died of his wounds in the night. There was nothing Crossman or anyone could do to save him. A round from a large calibre firelock, a Brown Bess or a Minié, left a huge hole and often smashed through vital arteries and organs, and shattered bones. Flesh tore away easily under the impact of
a chunk of lead which was over two-thirds of an inch in diameter. Crossman reflected that in this war there was around thirty times more chance of being hit than in previous wars, if you were up against the mighty Minié. In the Peninsular wars one round in 460 fired was likely to hit its target, while with the Minié, it was down to one round in sixteen. The modern rifle was a devastating weapon, highly accurate over much greater distances, with great penetrating power. Crossman wondered whether any new rifle could ever become more powerful than this weapon which could shoot through three or four bodies in a closely packed column of men.

  Those who had slept woke to a bitterly cold morning, with the wind slicing down from the Ukraine like a scythe. Wynter, who was never seen out of ratty-looking fur hat, head-sock and mittens, rose stiff and blood-eyed to begin arguing with Gwilliams. The barber had started the day by bragging that he had shaved an American frontiersman, a fellow by the name of James Bowie, just before a battle called the Alamo, which he said was in a place called Texas. Wynter, whose first experiences of travel were in this war, and whose knowledge of geography was sparse, considering that before the age of seventeen he had not been more than fifteen miles from the hut in which he was born, hated it when Gwilliams went on like this.

  ‘Boo-ey? Never heard of ’im,’ said Wynter. ‘Ain’t never heard of no place called Texas, neither.’

  ‘You ain’t heard of much at all, now have you?’ said Gwilliams, wryly. ‘The Alamo was where we taught the Mexes something about fighting, my friend. Something about the mettle of us Americans.’

  Pirce-Smith, who had been unable to sleep because of the cold, and had sat up through the bleak small hours running the day’s events through his mind, over and over again, and wondering at his reactions to the killing of the madman who almost took his life (whether he trembled afterwards because he almost died, or because he had killed another man) felt inclined to join in this conversation for once. It had been a long lonely night for him and he needed human contact, even if it was with these common soldiers that even Wellington had called ‘scum’.