Redcoat's Rifle, page 8
“What do you reckon, Sarge, can we beat this Arabi Pasha bloke then?”
I do not know what they expected of me. My battle in Natal had been a fierce one but was nothing like this. I tried to answer. “I have seen nothing so far that worries me, Corporal. Our platoon is a good one. We stand our ground and do not flinch. We have good rifles and if it was not for this damned heat then I would be even more confident. Oh, we will beat them but then what? I hope we are sent back to England.”
“You have a kiddie, don’t you?”
I nodded, “And the last time I saw him he was less than a month old. He will be almost toddling now and I would like to see him.” We had not been sent any letters yet. That did not surprise me but I hated the lack of word from my family. I wondered if I was cut out to be a soldier. Before Annie, I had not considered any other life other than being a redcoat but now I had a son and that changed everything.
The Battle of Tel-el-Kebir
Chapter 6
The Battle of Tel-el-Kebir September 1882
When the word came to us that it would be a night attack then the lieutenant and I were summoned to a meeting with the other officers and NCOs from the regiment. Our experience of the first night march was considered invaluable. I did not mind that the lieutenant took credit for my idea of having a piece of white material hanging down from our helmets. The colonel thought it was a good idea and the lieutenant’s star rose a little higher. I liked the lieutenant and he and I had become closer as a result of the actions in which we had fought. The colonel was worried that marching over unfamiliar terrain, in the dark, was a recipe for disaster and he ordered the whole regiment to adopt the white cloth.
The day after the briefing we met a patrol of the 7th Dragoon Guards and it was the same sergeant we had met before. He reined in and I could see, from his face, that he had good news to impart. “What is new Sergeant?”
“We had a bit of luck, yesterday, one of our patrols caught a civilian and brought him back to the general. It turns out he is the best leader the Egyptians possess, General Mahmoud Fehmy. The general was pleased and gave our troop an extra rum ration! Happy days, eh?” I knew what he meant. I did not know this general but I knew from the lieutenant that the rebel generals were not the best and if we had captured the one with talent then that boded well for our attack. This time we would be attacking as we had the first time. The difference would be it would not be a couple of battalions it would be against an enemy who was dug in, prepared and who had artillery.
Having been in action our platoon was well-placed to prepare for the fight. Weapons were cleaned and bayonets sharpened on a whetstone. I ensured that we had plenty of bullets and the men had learned to do as I did and use the pockets of our tunics to keep them. An overloaded valise made marching, firing and charging, more difficult.
The attack was set for the morning of the 12th of September at dawn. I was happy about that as it meant we were marching in the cool of the night. Even the cool of the night, however, was still warmer than summer in England. We marched in battalion order and we preceded the Guards Division commanded by the son of Queen Victoria, Arthur, Duke of Connaught. We were on the northern flank of our advance and I think that the presence of royalty behind us made everyone nervous. We stopped many times to dress ranks. It proved to be a good thing as we reached the Egyptian lines just as dawn was breaking.
The unlimbering of the forty-two artillery pieces we had brought with us was both time-consuming and noisy. The handful of Egyptian sentries heard us and began to pop off their rifles at us. We heard their bugles call men to arms and we dressed ranks to prepare for the charge. The Egyptian artillery began a ragged bombardment as our own guns fired in response. They fired first but it was an ineffectual barrage. Some shells fell short and some were long. I know not about the other regiments but ours had not a wound between us. The bugle from the Highland Division precipitated the attack and as the Highlanders charged towards the Egyptians, we were ordered to fix bayonets. Our charge was but a short time later. The word charge suggests running but we just marched resolutely forward. Running invited disaster for as we were in battalion order one man tripping could bring down eight or nine men. Walking smartly was the safer option. This was where all the drills paid off. We kept in step and the line was as straight as it was possible to be. The uneven ground, rocks and small craters created by the artillery inevitably meant it sometimes became uneven. We had, however, to endure the fire from the enemy infantry as well as their shells and I dreaded the thought of canister which would scythe through us like wheat. I was scared for this was unlike anything I had experienced. The first night action had been against a handful of men with no artillery. Natal had been fought against natives with assegais. As the shells screamed over our heads and the air was filled with the buzz of bullets, I knew that while I had every likelihood of surviving, an unlucky bullet or shell could make my son an orphan. I concentrated on keeping dressed lines.
“Keep steady lads. Hargreaves, it is not a race. We get there together and then we go in with the lunger.”
Further along the line, I heard one of the younger lieutenants, Cartwright-Jones, exhorting his men, “Think of England, lads. The eyes of the son of the Empress are upon us. Let us do our duty.”
It was stirring stuff but I knew that the men I led just wanted to survive with all their limbs intact. The redoubts had been hastily thrown up by the Egyptians but they were an obstacle. They rose from the ground and the earth and stakes protected not only the gunners but also the riflemen. The trenches were now filled with the Egyptian fellahs, the red fez they each wore making a good target. We marched and kept a straight line. Had the Egyptians filled their trenches then more of our men would have died but the Egyptians had been woken from their slumbers and were unprepared for battle. Some of them fired a volley and then fled. When we were just forty yards from the trenches and redoubts, the order was given to charge home and we ran. I saw an Egyptian soldier raise his rifle and aim at me. I ran harder but I knew that he would fire before I reached him. I was twenty feet away when I saw him squeeze the trigger and I braced myself for the impact. It was a misfire and I saw the horror on the man’s face as he ejected the cartridge to load another. He never made it and I rammed my bayonet into his chest. Around me, my men were doing as they had been trained. They lunged with their bayonets and cleared the Egyptians before us. They chambered bullets and fired at every hint of danger. That some bullets missed was immaterial as it kept the enemy heads down. The bayonet on the end made the rifle harder to fire but we had trained well enough and all of them knew how to compensate. This was not Rorke’s Drift where we fired so many bullets that chambers jammed. Here we were firing steadily. At Rorke’s Drift, we had fired six or seven bullets a minute, sometimes for twenty odd minutes at a time. Here we were choosing targets and the rate was nearer three bullets a minute. Our guns would not jam. We moved along the trenches and redoubts seeking enemies. It was clear that many had fled but there were others who had remained. I had heard of soldiers at Isandlwana who had found perches in the rocks and held off Zulus for a couple of hours after the battle had ended. A man fights and clings to life beyond all hope. There would be Egyptians who were of the same mind.
As I had learned before, night fighting was a confused and dangerous affair and although the sun was rising behind us, the smoke and the slight mist from the canal made visibility difficult. Faces, bayonets and swords came out of the smoky murk. The flash of muzzles made a man temporarily blind and there was always the unknown factor of the numbers you were facing. We had been told that there were twenty thousand in the enemy army. We had less than nine thousand men and that meant we were outnumbered by more than two to one. The complete rising of the sun revealed that we had killed many in the trenches already.
I had come to trust both my senses and my rifle. As I scanned the trenches, I looked for movement and when I saw a fez move I raised my rifle and I sent a bullet into it. It was now an automatic reaction for me to chamber another bullet and then look for another target. There were fanatics amongst the enemy and a couple of dozen of them, hidden behind a redoubt, suddenly ran at us.
“Number three section, ware enemy to the right.” I dropped to one knee and, as my section joined me, began to fire. This was like Rorke’s Drift all over again. Wild men who were determined to kill at all costs. I remembered the routine. Stay steady and make sure you drop the nearest man. My bullet caught the closest man in the chest and my rifle switched to the next target, the man to his left. I had not even been aware of loading the round but as I squeezed the trigger my bullet spun him around. I fired a third one before I knew that I would have to use my bayonet for two men were closing with me. I had chambered the rifle but they were on me. The rest of the section was all engaged and I was, to all intents and purposes, on my own. I blocked the bayonet of one Egyptian with the stock of my rifle while I parried the sword that came down for my head. I twisted my body so that the fellah who had struck at my stock tumbled. I turned my rifle and fired at the officer. The man who had stumbled rose and I barely had time to swing my bayonet. I was lucky and he was not. My lunger tore across his throat and he tumbled into the trench.
The attack beaten off, I loaded another bullet. There were six men with me. “They came from behind that redoubt. Let’s make sure there aren’t more there. Skirmish order and shoot first. Do not hesitate.”
They chorused, “Yes, Sergeant.”
The redoubts had been hastily constructed. The barrels of the artillery pieces poked from between gaps. They had built up soil embankments before the guns and used timber to hold them in place with sandbags at the side. It explained why they had remained undamaged in the artillery duel. I waved Hargreaves and Thomas to the left with Lowe while I led the others to the right. The gunners had been killed by shrapnel from one of our howitzers. It had exploded behind the gun where there was no protection and the gun crew had been shredded by the metal from the exploding shell. There was no one left alive but it made sense to check.
“Make sure that they are not playing dead, eh?”
It was a gruesome task but it needed to be done. They were all dead.
Sergeant Major Lowery’s voice echoed across the battlefield. “King’s Light Infantry, hold at the trenches! Secure the guns.”
It was a sensible order for we had cavalry to chase after the fleeing enemy cavalry and camel riders. “Right lads, let’s do as we have been ordered.” I ran to the nearest breech-loading artillery piece. After checking that there were no enemy soldiers close by, I laid down my rifle. “You four, swing this one around. Corporal Walters, do the same with the next gun. Corporal Cole, have your men swing around the next gun.”
I was no gunner but the breech-loading cannons were relatively simple to operate and I loaded a shell. I doubted that we would need it but, should disaster strike and the enemy counter-attacked, they would have a shock as we fired on them with their own guns.
By the time noon arrived, we had every one of the fifty-eight guns we had captured facing west. Our dead had been collected and the wounded were being tended to. Although our regiment had not suffered any deaths the Highlanders had. They had suffered more from the artillery and they had been wild in their charge. Altogether fifty odd men had died. To me, that was too many but Lieutenant Hodges was in good humour. The regiment had suffered fifteen men wounded and although none was of a serious nature, he had been sent by the colonel to report on their condition. It was he who brought us the numbers.
“And the Egyptians, sir?” We had already cleared the bodies from our section of the trenches. We had not burned them as we were waiting for orders but something would have to be done soon as the heat of the African sun began to make them swell and stink.
“From what I can gather, Sergeant Roberts, more than eight hundred bodies have been counted. A victory.”
That brightened me, “Then we can go home soon, sir?”
He shook his head, “Sorry, Roberts, we have to take Cairo first and then ensure that the Khedive is securely placed in command again. We don’t want to risk the Suez Canal falling into the hands of the enemy of the Queen.”
I had, perhaps, been unrealistic in my expectations but I wanted to see my son.
We did not have long to wait at Tel-el-Kebir. We were ordered to bury the bodies and then our friends from the engineers cleared the tracks of discarded engines and we were taken by train to Cairo. The cavalry had pursued Arabi Pasha and his army to an undefended city and had taken him prisoner. We spent a couple of months tented in Cairo while order was established. The enemy had been beaten three times and many of their keenest warriors had fallen. The heart had gone from them. Lord Cromer was appointed as adviser to the khedive. Lieutenant Hodges had it on good authority that his task was to ensure that the huge tracts of land that ran the length of the Nile were properly managed. To that effect, a couple of regiments would stay with him to ensure that order was maintained. I think that some of the officers hoped that we would be one of the regiments but, thankfully, we were not. It became clear that we would be going home and I was delighted. The time we spent in those tents in Cairo was not pleasant. The heat, the stink from Cairo and the flies were worse than the battle had been.
Thanks to our victory we had all taken from the dead. It was in the nature of war. The winners always took the spoils. The officers might not approve and the generals certainly wouldn’t. They did not need any extra money and viewed it as banditry. We were realists and knew that if we didn’t take it then the locals would. As the coins we had taken were Egyptian there was little point in taking them back to England and we spent all of them in the souks, the markets of Cairo. I bought gifts for my family. Griff was too young to need anything that we found in Cairo but there were many pretty items of clothing for my mother, aunt and sisters. I knew that Billy had begun to smoke a pipe and I bought two matching tobacco pouches for us. They were beautifully decorated and so cheap that I thought they had been given away. I had a present in mind for Griff and it was one I hoped he would like. I just had to find it.
With the railways under British control, the journey back to Alexandria was a more comfortable one than the march west had been. We rigged shelters over the tops of the wagons in which we travelled but the engineers had done a good job and we made excellent time. We had to wait in Alexandria for a fortnight for the ships to arrive to take us home and it was an unpleasant time. When we first arrived the bombardment and the subsequent fires meant that much of the city was destroyed. There was rebuilding and clearance of demolished buildings all around us. It was like living on a building site and we were all glad when the transports arrived and we were allowed to board and leave Egypt.
I was relieved that we had not been one of the regiments ordered to stay in Cairo. I had found the city hot, dirty and smelly. We had seen the pyramids and whilst they had been impressive the squalor in which the people lived was not. Lord Cromer, the new governor, would have his work cut out to ensure that he improved the lot of the common man. If he did not then there would be another revolt.
We saw less of the lieutenant on the voyage home for he messed with the officers and we only saw him at the daily parade. When we did see him, he was a different man from the slightly diffident officer who had seemed to lack confidence on the way south. He would occasionally join Bob and me as we smoked our pipes at the stern. When he did so he gave us news. He was to be promoted. The colonel and the major were pleased with his performance. Bob too was to be made a lance sergeant. I was pleased for them both. I had my promotion and I was happy with that. The soon-to-be captain also told us of trouble further south, in the Sudan. “Egypt, it seems, has lost control of half of the country. Sudan now has more rebels than we fought in Egypt.”
“Does that mean we will have to go back, sir?” The last thing I wanted was another war that would deprive me of the chance to see my son and my family.
He shook his head, “The Prime Minister, it seems, is loath to have British lives wasted. The colonel has heard that it will be the Egyptians who will fight against the rebels. They will be given British officers and NCOs. As we saw the soldiers are brave enough but badly led.” He looked at Bob, “If you wished to transfer, Walters, I could put a word in. You get more pay and an increase in rank.”
Bob shook his head, “Thank you for the offer, sir, but that little jaunt in Africa was enough for Mrs Walters’ boy and besides I like this regiment.”
“So do I, Walters, but some of the lieutenants in other regiments stayed in Cairo. They are guaranteed the rank of major. For some chaps that is the be-all and end-all. Not for me. I want to stay with this regiment and earn my promotions.” He smiled, “I want to thank you two chaps for all that you did. I know I was a little green when we landed but I appreciate that you looked after me.”
Bob shook his head, “That was Sergeant Roberts, sir. He is an old hand at this sort of thing.”
I was not and I knew it but my experience in Natal had stood me in good stead. The question remained, would I want to stay in the army when my son and family lived so far away?
The voyage back was less pleasant than the one out had been. After we passed through the Straits of Gibraltar we were hit by an Atlantic storm. I learned then that I had sea legs. Many of the others did not. It might have been the result of heat stroke in Egypt and other illnesses contracted in camp but more than half of the regiment became very ill as a result of the tossing and turning. When the storm burnt itself out there were more men in their beds than reporting for the morning parade on the foredeck. Once again fewer of the men in our platoon were incapacitated. We had eaten better and protected ourselves from the sun more. There were men who were seasick; Potter and Hargreaves were particularly ill but they soon recovered.
