WAR IN GRIM EARNEST.
Jack and Will, both feeling sore and stiff, went off together to their
own lines, and were busy with their horses when Sergeant-major Barrymore
came striding along.
‘Oh Blair,’ he cried out, ‘I’ve been looking for you. Get saddled up as
quickly as you can; you’ve got to go down to Balaclava with a despatch.’
‘Right you are, major,’ replied Jack; ‘I’ll just scrape a few pounds of
mud off my poor beast, then I’ll be ready.’
Jack was soon on his way, and many a sad sight did he see as he went
along. Dozens of poor fellows who had died of exposure during that
dreadful night were being carried off for interment. The sufferings of
those in the trenches had been terrible, and many a stalwart soldier had
succumbed to the fury of the storm.
The road to Balaclava was a mere quagmire, and Jack had to struggle
along through lines of ammunition-mules, artillery wagons, and so on,
the poor exhausted beasts being hardly able to drag the vehicles through
the sludge. Dead horses and cattle were scattered all over the country,
with the débris of the camp, personal belongings, roofs of huts, and
shreds of tents.
Balaclava itself far exceeded in filth and dirt anything that Varna had
ever been. Its main street was simply a channel of mud, through which
horses, camels, mules, soldiers, and sailors, with artillery and
transport-wagons, continually fought their way. The air was full of the
cries of Turks, Arabs, Italians, Maltese, Greeks, Tartars, Bulgarians,
all offering the worst wares at fabulous prices.
From the side lanes one heard continually the cries of pain and the
prayers of Moslem soldiers dying by dozens of cholera and other
diseases. Since their conduct on the 25th of October the Turks had been
treated with contempt by the British, and, finding no favour at the
camp, had made Balaclava their headquarters, where, neglected by their
own government, they had contracted the seeds of disease and made
Balaclava a very pest-house. The bodies of the Turks lay sometimes for
days where they had died. The stench in these narrow lanes was
appalling, and the different forms of human suffering which met the
sight at every turn enough to shock the most callous.
As Jack’s horse slowly and painfully made its way down towards the
harbour, where he had to deliver his despatch, signs of damage done by
the great storm met him on every side. Windows were blown in, roofs torn
off, and at the neck of the harbour Jack saw two or three large boats
which had been driven up inland and smashed to pieces. Floating on the
waters of the harbour were trusses of hay, heavy pieces of timber,
broken spars and masts, and all sorts of other things, indicating that
great damage must have been done to the shipping.
From those employed in the harbour Jack learnt sad news indeed. During
the storm twenty-one vessels had been wrecked. The new steamship
_Prince_, which had arrived but a few days previously with the 46th
Regiment, had gone down with a cargo valued at half a million aboard
her. The whole of the winter clothing sent out for the troops, and of
which they were fearfully in want, was lost. Forty thousand thick suits,
with woollen underclothes, socks, gloves, boots, and blankets; hundreds
and thousands of pounds of biscuit, salt-meat, coffee, and rice,
thousands of gallons of rum; millions of pounds of forage and compressed
hay; and millions of rounds of ball-cartridge, with all the artillery
reserve ammunition were lost in that terrible storm.
Jack was appalled at the news, and as he made his way back to camp,
through a biting snow and sleet storm, it seemed as if the very elements
themselves were fighting for the Russians against the Allies.
Those were terrible days! Rain, fog, frost, and snow, followed one
another in rapid succession. The winter set in with unwonted severity;
the camp became a quagmire, and the men in the trenches were often up to
the middle of their thighs in mud and slush for sixteen hours at a time.
The road to Balaclava was often impassable, the putrid carcasses and
skeletons of horses, camels, and mules lay half-buried in mud from one
end of it to the other; and for days no sugar, coffee, tea, or rum was
issued to the troops; biscuit and meat were also scarce. There was very
little in Balaclava, and it was impossible to get what was there up to
the camp. Thus, only half-fed, in rags, exposed to the rigour of a
severe climate, working often twenty hours out of the twenty-four, the
men broke down. Cholera raged more fiercely than ever, and things looked
in a bad way in the camp of the Allies.
The Russians gave them no peace. By day and by night they kept up a
heavy fire and made frequent sorties; but the British, with dogged
persistence, pushed their parallels nearer and nearer, repulsed the
sorties, and snapped their fingers at the cannonading.
‘Heaven help us!’ said Jack to Will one morning about the middle of
December. ‘I’m for Balaclava to-day, and my poor horse can hardly stand.
It’s no good saddling him, for I know he couldn’t carry me. He won’t
last another day, I’m sure.’
‘He’ll only go the way of most of the others,’ said Will. ‘There are
only twenty-seven horses fit for duty left in the whole brigade.’
‘I know; we lost five the night before last and three last night,’ said
Jack gloomily. ‘Will, unless we soon get big reinforcements from home,
with stores and warm clothing, England will wake up one morning to find
that her army in the Crimea is a thing of the past.’
‘Serve ’em right too,’ said Will as he proceeded to twist some hay-bands
round his legs, his overalls having been worn to tatters weeks before.
‘Jack,’ he continued, ‘have you got a bit of that string left? I might
be able to tie the sole of my left boot on so that it will last for
another day.’
Jack, who was busy sewing a patch made of a shred of old blanket on his
own overalls, passed Will the piece of string he had brought up from
Balaclava; then went on with his work.
The boots and fur-coat he had become possessed of on the day of the
capture of the convoy by Mackenzie’s Farm proved of the utmost value to
him, and in this respect he was better off than Will.
Jack’s horse being too far gone for further work, Barrymore told him he
must take his.
‘Thank God, poor Dainty did not live to be starved to death here,’ said
Jack as he and Will mounted, the latter going out on escort-duty with a
mixed troop.
A party of Rifles went by, many of the men having made themselves a sort
of smock from blankets fastened round their waists with their belts,
their trousers being patched with every variety of stuff, from pieces of
cloth cut from Russian uniforms to scraps of canvas or bagging.
Jack joined the squad, mostly men of the Guards, who were going down to
Balaclava for supplies; bearded, haggard-looking fellows, whose
greatcoats were thick with successive layers of mud, and whose feet were
almost bare, but in whose eyes burned that fierce, unquenchable light
that spoke of a resolve to conquer or die.
The journey was the same as dozens of others Jack had made, except that
Balaclava looked filthier than ever and more full of misery. On the road
back to camp several horses, after stumbling a few times, fell one by
one. They would lie in the mud looking up with lack-lustre eyes, their
tongues hanging out. A few spasmodic movements of the legs, smoothing
down the mud, would follow, and then the poor beasts would die, being
left where they had fallen--a few more carcasses to rot and putrefy;
while their loads would be distributed among the other animals or on the
men’s shoulders.
December wore on and Christmas approached. Jack received letters from
his mother and sisters and from the Lelands. Mrs Blair’s and the girls’
were full of thankfulness that their dear one had escaped so far, prayed
that the war might soon be over, and wound up by saying they had sent
him a small hamper which they hoped he would find useful at Christmas.
The hamper contained some warm shirts and socks, a bottle of brandy, a
ham, and a plum-pudding. Poor Jack could almost have cried when he read
the list, just the very things that would be most acceptable; but he
knew well enough he would never see the hamper, and he never did.
What became of the things sent to the soldiers during the Crimean war
remains a mystery to this day.