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FLANDERS ~ DECEMBER, 1794
Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur Wesley was angry. He could not recall ever being so angry in his life. It was his first campaign, first time in the field; he was young and inexperienced, barely 25 years old – some might think ridiculously young to command a regiment – but he was certain this was not how things were meant to be done.
He was also hungry. Out here on the front food was dangerously short, and it made him even more bitter to think of those bastards back at headquarters thirty miles away eating and sleeping in comparative comfort whilst he and his men were left to practically fend for themselves. Damn them and their folly. Now he contrived to keep away from headquarters as much as possible, which was not very difficult, as in the three months he had been stationed on the banks of the Waal he had only ever been visited twice by a superior.
The 33rd had arrived relatively late to the campaign, but they had by no means been spared the worst and with the onset of winter his men were suffering. Every day he passed the bodies of soldiers dropped dead on the roadside from cold, hunger or disease – denied the most basic of necessities such as shoes, blankets, food and decent clothes (some of the new recruits for want of a proper uniform were still in their linen barrack slops); things which should have been simple enough to arrange, but these things had been overlooked, and now the army was falling to pieces. Some of the soldiers did not even have muskets. The Newgate Blues didn’t make it any better; scoundrels, each and every one of them more interested in their own profit than the success of the Duke of York’s campaign. To add insult to injury the ground was frozen solid; so solid that it was impossible to give those dead a Christian burial and they were left to freeze, covered by the snow to make grotesque mounds. Lord knew the stench there would be when they thawed in the spring, if such a season as spring existed in this Godforsaken place.
He walked amongst the meagre campfires the 33rd had managed to tease out of the damp, unforgiving earth, a blanket wrapped over his greatcoat, a comforter around his neck knitted for him by his sister Anne, a pair of fine woollen gloves covering his slender hands. He shivered as he stood there, heavy goose feather flakes of snow swirling around him, watching his men freeze to death… and he could do nothing about it, though he damn well should be able to.
They were morose, dissatisfied, restless, and he could not blame them for it. He walked on.
Wesley was not a well man either. The cold and damp had brought about the return of an old complaint – ‘aguish’ his doctor had called it – and several times already he had been laid prostrate with fever and convulsions, vomiting on the rare occasions when he had a full enough belly to do so. His current treatments were keeping all but the worse bouts in check, but the last letter from his doctor held a ring of concern which he did not much like, and his thoughts were increasingly turning to home; to Dublin and the family estates in County Meath. He had hoped that the regiment would have been recalled by now – had written home to his brother Richard stating as much – as Lord knew they could do nothing else out here. The armies of the Republic had pushed them back, made a complete mockery of the campaign… yet for some reason they were still here. Though there must be an end to it soon; they could hold out to January at the most, perhaps, and not even the French could possibly keep such ground in winter without heavy losses. They couldn’t.
He was greeted by the picquets as he made his way down to the waterfront where the French were encamped on the far side of the river, acknowledging them with a curt nod. They were good men; thieves and drunkards the lot of them, yet sturdy and disciplined in a fight. Good men, but useless when in the hands of bad officers. Wesley squinted across the inky-black water, trying to catch to glimpse of any movement through the blinding snow, but he could see nothing save the distant glow of their fires. Almost every night he and his men were turned out to deal with enemy skirmishers, constantly harassing them. He could not recall when he had last had the clothes off his back – he had been sleeping in them for some time now – or when he had last had a wash and he strongly suspected he was lousy. Yet tonight all seemed quiet in the French camp; perhaps even those devils had decided it was too foul a night to try something. He had been out here six months, three spent freezing on the Waal, and he had hardly seen any action worth mentioning. The skirmish at Boxtel had got him noticed by the Duke, but apart from that there had been next to nothing. Although, he thought vaguely as he scratched absently at his coarse chin (he had not been given a chance to shave that day either), perhaps that might be considered accomplishment enough to make Pakenham change his mind? Perhaps, when he returned home, he might now be considered ‘something’ and would be a decent suitor for Kitty? It was a faint hope, for he was still deeply in debt, and Tom Pakenham’s rebuff had a ring of finality about it that extinguished the small flare of hope almost as soon it was kindled. A foolish hope, he told himself, and it must be forsaken since there was no future in it.
However these reflections were swiftly driven from his mind, for as he turned to make his way back to the camp his eyes fell on a private who for want of a tent was sleeping in the open. Though young – not much younger than himself – he was a tall lad, skinny as a rake, shivering under a greatcoat which was obviously several sizes too small for him. Another flash of anger stabbed at Wesley’s heart, and determined to do what little he could for the boy he took the blanket from around his shoulders and laid it over the soldier. It was a pathetic gesture, but whilst he could not conjure a wagon-load of provisions or order the snow to cease falling, this at least was one thing he could do. The boy made a sleepy protest as the blanket was draped over him, brushing his face, but Wesley hushed him.
“Keep it, private.”
“But what about you, sir?” the feeble question came. The voice, though strained came clearly, if not a little muffled, and the Colonel could not mistake its distinct Yorkshire accent.
“I have another,” Wesley said firmly. He actually had two others, but the exact quantity was not significant. “No sense in me having two when you don’t even have one.” He paused for a second, then stripped off his gloves as well and put them on the boy’s hands, unconsciously brushing a stray lock of dirty-gold hair away from the thin, pale face as he did so.
“Thank you, sir.” Wesley caught a glimpse of wide, bleary green eyes just visible above the blanket. “Thank you.”
With a curt nod Wesley returned to his tent, a grim expression on his young face, fighting a sense of acute embarrassment which seemed to have sprung out of nowhere. Blow snobbishness, he thought furiously, pulling up the collar of his greatcoat as he stalked away, feeling the keen wind bite through the thick wool and smart his now bare hands; damned if he would watch another man die if he could do something about it! Damned if he would…
The private curled up under the blanket, grateful for the new warmth it provided and the gloves. They were nice gloves, he thought drowsily, made of fine-spun expensive wool; not the usual coarse kind which were standard issue, and his tired mind half registered the fact that the others would be jealous and he’d have to keep an eye on them, else they’d be nicked. He knew it had to have been an officer by the clipped accent and the feel of the smooth hands which had brushed his face; hands which had never done an hour’s, let alone a day’s hard labour, but he was made stupid by cold and fatigue, and to some degree the flurrying snow had obscured the man’s features rendering them unrecognisable.
“Who was that, Tom?” he mumbled to his friend, who had been watching the exchange from a respectful distance and now came and sat down beside him.
“Only the bleedin’ colonel, Dick,” Garrard said, smiling because Sharpe, too exhausted to keep his eyes open, had already gone back to sleep before he could hear the reply. “Only the bleedin’ colonel,” he murmured to himself, blowing into his frostbitten hands before tucking the blanket around Sharpe more effectively, laying down next to him to share their body heat.