20. Waterloo
CHAPTER 20
Waterloo
W aiting for a battle, waiting for news, Shaun kept busy organising troops as best he could. The less experienced men were eager to “Take the fight to Boney” but the seasoned soldiers remained calm.
Or, appeared calm on the surface, anyway. Shaun too did his best to calm his nerves as they waited, and waited some more with Wellington’s army in Belgium.
At least his quartermaster skills were proving useful, and were keeping him busy. Too many of the experienced fighting men had been sent off to the Americas with their rifles and equipment for the War of 1812, and what was left was a ragtag bunch of those who’d sold out and come back - like himself - green lads, and a few experienced regiments being rushed in from elsewhere and trying somehow to integrate all together with not much time and definitely not enough equipment. Just trying to find every man a uniform, a rifle and enough shot to be useful was quite a task, not to mention keeping them all fed.
He’d been welcomed back at his former rank with open arms, and had been able to keep the Fox brothers and Riot Jones with him by virtue of simply insisting that he needed them. He’d managed to get them all ranked as sergeants, too, which meant they got better treatment than most, a tent to share between them and decent rations.
The first qualms of doubt had hit Shaun on the ship heading across the Channel. The white cliffs of Dover were receding in the distance, and Shaun was standing at the ship’s stern. Several of the soldiers were noisily casting up their rations into the water. ‘Feeding the fish’ the captain had called it.
What difference was he really going to make? It wasn’t as though he was going to personally collar Boney and drag him before Wellington by the scruff of his neck, as some of the silly young boys were bragging they’d do. Shaun knew better; it would be muck and blood and, from what he was hearing the more serious older men saying, he’d be lucky to get home alive this time.
He cast one more look at the distant cliffs, before they vanished below the horizon and all that was left to see was churning grey waves.
“Thinkin’ of Miss Baxter?” Hugh Fox stepped up alongside him, leaned on the rail.
“Aye.” There wasn’t much point in denying it, after all. “Wondering if I should have left her. If we were right and Benjamin Baxter was the arsonist…” He’d shared his suspicions with his men weeks earlier.
“He didn’t come home for Easter,” Hugh pointed out.
“Looks like his school got wise to his temperament. But they’ll not keep him over summer.” Shaun sighed, looking out at the rolling waves. Holding the thought of Louise close. She knew about Benjamin, at least, and forewarned was forearmed.
He just couldn’t keep from thinking that he’d made a mistake. That she might need him far more than His Majesty’s Army did.
Two months later, Shaun’s doubts only grew stronger as he looked about the gathered men before him. They were not battle ready. In fact, they were hardly trained at all, but Napoleon wasn’t waiting. His Armée du Nord was marching towards them, over a hundred thousand men strong from all reports, and growing by the day.
The days were filled with exercise and marching, weapons cleaning and preparations, and charging into strawmen with bayonets.
Each night, he wrote to command, pleading for more ammunition and weapons, rations and uniforms. He had no idea if any would arrive in time, but he had to try. After sending his reports, he would write to Louise and beg her to forgive him, promise her he was doing everything to keep safe and hoping this madness would be over soon.
He was not expecting his notes to Louise to have any chance of arriving. He only hoped that if he wrote enough, one of them might get through. She would know he was still alive.
The fear of never seeing her again sat like a rock in his throat.
The world turned to hell before dawn the next day, when word spread through the camp that Napoleon had turned aside from the expected course and taken Charleroi.
“The Dutch are at Quatre Bras,” Shaun’s commanding officer said grimly, hunching over the map spread over a camp-table in his tent. “We’re heading there to reinforce them.”
“Where are the Prussians?” Shaun asked.
“Ligny, and they’ve got their own battle to fight. Gather your men, Jackson. You’re with the 3rd Division, and Count Alten will tell you where to march.” The general straightened and looked Shaun in the eye. “It’s time to face the French. And may God preserve us all.”
It was a long march on foot; they were out of position because of the French army’s quick, unexpected manoeuvres, and most of the 3rd Division was foot troops. Shaun marched with his men, refusing to ride when they could not.
They began to hear the guns mid-afternoon, and soon the smoke from the cannons was visible, along with the continuous crack of rifle fire. Shaun saw faces pale, throats convulsively swallowing, and exchanged glances with Riot and the Fox brothers.
“Make your way along the line,” Shaun said quietly. “Stiffen the spines of these young lads. For God, England and King George, men.”
“Sir!” They saluted him and marched away, and Shaun watched them go, wondering if he’d see them again before the battle.
Or after.
“Louise,” he breathed to himself, pressing a hand to his heart. He had nothing personal of hers to carry with him, had never asked her for a token. What he would not give for a lock of her hair! But all he had was a book, the one she’d sold him that very first day, tucked inside his coat over his heart.
He doubted it would stop a bullet or a bayonet, but perhaps it would bring him luck, all the same.
It was all over by dark; short and sharp, and by the end of it there were almost nine thousand dead on the field and huge numbers of wounded. The French had retreated, though, at least for now.
Shaun was exhausted, filthy and entirely out of ammunition, but he was alive and, miraculously to his way of thinking, completely unharmed, with not so much as a scratch on him. He was gathering up what remained of his regiment when Riot Jones came marching up, no smile on the Welshman’s face.
“Riot, thank God,” Shaun said, but his relief died when he saw Riot’s expression.
“Come,” was all Riot said, and Shaun followed.
Hugh and John Fox lay side by side, as close in death as the brothers had been in life. A cannon blast had taken both of them in the same moment, from what Shaun could tell.
The backs of Shaun’s eyes burned, but he refused to let the tears fall. He stood in silence for a moment.
“Make sure they’re picked up,” he said hoarsely to Riot at last. “Make sure all our men are picked up.” They’d not get much more dignity than a mass grave and a chaplain’s hasty prayer for their souls, but better that than being left out here like carrion.
Riot saluted him in silence, the Welshman’s brown eyes wet. Shaun gave a jerky little nod and turned away.
There was no time to grieve.
The next day was a blur of exhaustion; there was no time to rest. Shaun identified and recorded the name of every man dead or injured in his regiment, and by the time he’d passed that to the clerks to send on, Wellington had ordered the retreat from Quatre Bras, to regroup in greater strength on better ground. The Prussians had not done well at Ligny, despite having a numerical advantage, and had splintered. Wellington was determined to pull together the largest force he could manage at Mont-Saint-Jean escarpment, and when the Duke set his mind to something, it was as inevitable as the dawn.
The march back the way they’d come was even worse, through a torrential rainstorm. Tired and mourning, Shaun and Riot marched side by side, grim-faced.
Shaun had seen some terrible battles in the Peninsula, but he had never seen anything like the battle of Waterloo. More than 500 cannon and almost 200,000 men clashed in one of the bloodiest days the world had ever seen, and by the end of it the French were routed, but at a shocking cost.
Near-deafened by the constant boom of guns, utterly exhausted, Shaun wandered the battlefield afterwards, searching for his men. Too many dead, they numbered in the thousands, and many more wounded. He could not find Riot anywhere.
Dark was falling, and the cries of injured men around him were weakening. Many were in French, but he hardened his heart, looked away, though he didn’t join those who made sure the Frenchmen would call no longer. It was nearing midnight when a lilting Welsh voice called his name.
“Riot!” Shaun scrambled over bodies, at last found Riot lying in a shallow ditch.
“Took your bloody time, didn’t you?” Riot was filthy, covered over in mud and blood and who knew what else.
“What’s been keeping you?” He knew it was serious. Going to his knees in the mud, he reached for Riot’s hand, relieved at the strength in his grip.
“My leg.” Riot grimaced. “Fell in this bloody ditch and broke it, didn’t I. Can’t stand.”
Relief flooded through Shaun. Riot could and would survive a broken leg. “Is that all?” he almost begged.
“Bloody enough, isn’t it!”
Shaun laughed, suddenly feeling a weight lift off him. “Come on. Let’s get you out of here.”
Riot wasn’t a big man; Shaun had carried bigger off battlefields. The gutsy Welshman didn’t make a single sound as Shaun lifted him up and carried him almost a mile to where the field hospital was set up, though his leg must have been sheer agony.
The doctors were run off their feet, but one of them looked at the bars of rank on Shaun’s shoulders and at the sergeant’s jacket on the man in his arms. “What’s wrong with him?”
“Broken leg. Clean break, I think.” He hoped, anyway.
“I’ll set it if you’ll splint and wrap it and take him away again,” the doctor bargained, and Shaun nodded.
“I can do that.”
The doctor was quick, but Riot still screamed and fainted as the leg was straightened.
“Best thing for him,” the doctor said briskly. “Here’s your splints and bandages,” as a young apprentice hurried up with them.
“Thank you,” Shaun said humbly, reaching out to take the items. The doctor looked down at his hands, reached out to take his left one.
“Did you realise you’ve got two broken fingers, Colonel?”
Shaun blinked. “I… what?”
He had no idea when it had even happened, but looking down now he saw that his ring and pinky fingers were indeed bent outwards at unnatural angles.
“Do they not hurt?” The doctor probed lightly.
“Ah, they do now!”
“Well, no nerve damage, then.” The doctor smiled tightly. “Need something to bite down on?”
Shaun clenched his teeth and shook his head. Two horrible crunching sounds later and his fingers looked almost normal. Shaun let out his breath, spots briefly spinning before his eyes.
“Jacobs, splint those, and help the colonel splint his man’s leg,” the doctor said, before nodding briskly and walking away.
The young apprentice stepped forward hesitantly - he couldn’t have been more than fourteen or so, Shaun thought, not much older than Brutus Baxter. He hoped the boy had been far away from the battlefield today, though the lad’s eyes were haunted by what he’d obviously seen in the hours since.
“Thank you,” he said quietly as the boy slipped two thin shims of wood between his fingers and carefully bound up his hand, before turning to Riot. “Have you eaten today, lad?”
The boy shook his head.
“If you’ll help me get Sergeant Jones here back to my tent once his leg’s splinted, I’ll have a hot meal brought. Enough to share.”
The small bribe was eagerly accepted, and the lad found a stretcher. Shaun’s fingers hurt now, but he was still able to keep his end up and the two of them carried Riot to where Shaun’s tent had been set up. Shaun kept his promise, and by the time the food arrived Riot had woken up.
“Smells bloody good, at least,” Riot said, accepting the bowl of stew and spoon Shaun held out.
“We’ve barely eaten more than stale bread in three days,” Shaun pointed out dryly. “I wouldn’t ask what’s in it.”
“Wasn’t planning to.” Riot tucked in, as did the young apprentice, who handed his bowl back afterwards and disappeared into the night.
Shaun ate more slowly, almost too exhausted to lift the spoon to his lips. The stew wasn’t bad, but he thought wistfully of the potato and leek soup from the Red Lion, Louise’s mother’s recipe, or of the wonderful Sunday dinners at Ferndale Hall, Louise sitting beside him with her eyes alight with joy. It was Sunday today, or had been, it was long after midnight by now, and all he could think of was her, his beautiful Louise, far away from this hell of death and horror.
Enough of this.
He was going home.
“Two broken fingers?” the general said the following morning. “Can you fire your rifle?”
“I doubt it,” Shaun said honestly. His fingers hurt like the devil this morning, and he could tell they were swollen beneath the bandages. He could barely use his left hand.
“It’s your left hand, you can still write… your skills would be useful with the quartermasters, Jackson. I’ll reassign you.”
Shaun swallowed a protest. He nodded, slowly. “Very well, sir.”
Riot wasn’t fit to travel anyway, Shaun consoled himself as he made his way slowly back to his tent, and there was no way he could leave the Welshman who’d followed him into hell and out again.
The Prussians were pursuing Napoleon, though Wellington would no doubt follow, wanting to be there when Boney was finally run to ground. But there was so much to be done here; Shaun had heard figures of ten thousand men injured, and somehow they would all have to be doctored, fed, and returned to England to recuperate. The logistics of that alone would be a staggering task.
Well, once he could manage it, he’d assign himself and Riot aboard a ship to go home. And when he got back to Hatfield, the very first thing he was going to do was lay his heart at Louise Baxter’s feet and beg her to be his wife.