“No dead, sir, and only two lightly wounded. We came off rather easily, altogether,” Strickland reported, “though it seems that your men took the brunt of it, holding the centre of our line.”
“Once down with the nearest regiment, please direct their surgeon in our direction, sir, and we’ll try to move our wounded to them,” Lewrie requested. Strickland saluted and set off.
“Mister Rossyngton?” Lewrie called over his shoulder.
“Aye, sir?” the Midshipman replied.
“You’ve young and sturdy legs,” Lewrie said. “Do you run down to our waggon and order it up.”
“At once, sir!” Rossyngton said, doffing his hat and setting off at trots and bounds.
I just hope no one takes him for Dutch in his blue coat, and shoots him! Lewrie thought.
He went to where their Surgeon’s Mate, Durbin, was binding up his men’s wounds, and knelt and spoke words of assurance and thanks to them.
“Beg pardon, sir,” Durbin said, “but, do we take the blankets from the dead Dutchies’ bed-rolls, we can fashion ways to bear our men down the hill.”
“Aye, see to it,” Lewrie agreed.
That scavenging, and the slow procession of bearing both dead and wounded off the knob, was a gruesome ordeal. There were nearly fifteen or so dead horses which had to be bridged, and dead Dutchmen to be stepped and stumbled over, with here and there some few cruelly wounded, some still pinned under their dead mounts, who reached out with weak, bloodied hands, crying “Hilfe!” and “Wasser!” Sailors who were not carrying their mates bent down to give them a drink, a pat on the shoulder, but there was little they could do for them, not ’til all the British wounded had been seen to. That was the necessary triage following combat. Lewrie looked up to the morning sky and grimaced at the sight of hideous vultures already circling, and daring to swoop near the corpses round the Dutch trenches. The warm, coppery reek of spilled blood was almost as strong as the stink of voided men’s bowels and un-ravelled horse intestines.
At last, they got past the last of the Dutch casualties, and reached the South end of the Dutch trenches, where Army bandsmen were already carrying dead soldiers, British to one trench and Dutch to another, for a quick burial.
Lewrie stood and watched as Durbin had his two dead borne to the appropriate trench, and began to compose some final words in his head to see them off. He had left his Book of Common Prayer aboard ship, and would have to depend on an Army chaplain for the bulk of it. He was interrupted, though, by loud shouts, and turned about.
“You, there! You, sir!” a senior officer of cavalry shouted, coming on astride a glossy horse with a long riding crop in a gauntletted hand. “Come here at once, do you hear me? I’ve a bone t’pick with you!”
Damned if I ain’t gettin’ tired o’ bein’ shouted at! Lewrie fumed inside; From the Thirty-fourth? Their Colonel? Serve him sweetness and light, old son … sweetness and light. He put a faint smile on his face and raised a brow as if hailed by an old school chum.
“Good morning, sir!” Lewrie perkily said, doffing his hat. “I take it that you are Colonel Laird of the Thirty-fourth Light Dragoons? Sorry we have not yet made acquaintance. I am Captain Sir Alan Lewrie, Baronet, of the Reliant frigate, which escorted part of your regiment.”
“I know who you are, sir, and I am indeed Colonel of the Thirty-fourth Dragoons!” the livid fellow barked. “Those fools, Veasey and Strickland, have already informed me of your high-handed actions which instigated this idiocy!” he roared, sweeping a hand towards the carnage on the knob. “How dare you! Who gave you the right to order my officers about, deprive me of half a troop, and lead them into un-necessary peril, sir? Damme, had we gotten orders to charge this position, I would have been under-strength!”
“Captain Veasey, Leftenant Strickland, and I considered it a reconnaisance in force, since the knob was un-occupied, sir, so we came up to discover the enemy’s forces,” Lewrie replied as congenial and casually conversational as he could and still smile. “It worked, as you see.”
“Damn your eyes, sir!” Colonel Laird exploded, frightening his horse into shivers, circles, and flat-eared, eye-blared dread. “I’ll not have a bloody sailor, who knows nothing of proper military tactics, play ‘tin soldiers’ with my regiment! And, just what the Hell are you doing up here in the first place?”
“We’re part of the Naval Brigade that Commodore Popham offered to General Baird, sir, under the command of Captain Byng of the Belliqueux,” Lewrie sweetly answered, shifting the sling of his rifled musket on his shoulder. “We were landed to get the siege guns ashore, and re-enforce the guard on the baggage train. We came up alongside the train, sir.”
“The bloody baggage train is still far down bloody there!” Colonel Laird howled, pointing downhill to the West, where the regiments of the Light Brigade were now tramping up the slope to the crest of the Blaauwberg. “Damme if I do not settle you, this instant, Lewrie, for here comes General Sir David Baird. I will see you brought before a court! I will see you sacked!”
Colonel Laird snatched the reins of his horse and sped away at a brisk gait towards a clutch of senior officers at the head of the first regiment of the Light Brigade.
“Ehm … our waggon is coming up, sir,” a cautious Midshipman Warburton announced, daring a grimace of worry. “Should I see our wounded into it when it arrives, sir?”
“Do so, Mister Warburton,” Lewrie told him, “and break out the spare scuttle-butt. Our people will have need of replenishing their water bottles when the waggon’s up.”
“Warm work, indeed, sir,” Warburton commented, then went to his work.
“Mister Westcott, let’s see to collecting those canteens from the Dutch prisoners,” Lewrie ordered.
“Aye, sir,” his First Officer replied.
Minutes later, and Westcott was back, to whisper, “Trouble’s coming, sir,” as General Baird, Brigadier Beresford, and their staff came over. Lewrie tried not to wince, for that supercilious officer they’d met by the baggage train was with them, as was Colonel Laird.
He set his shoulders, un-slung his champagne bottle canteen, and took a sip to moisten his suddenly dry mouth, wondering if he really was “in the quag” up to his neck, this time.
“He’s drunk, by God!” Colonel Laird exclaimed. “That explains his actions, Sir David! Just as Mortimer here saw earlier. They all are! See those wine bottles, sir?”
“Good morning, sir,” Lewrie said, ignoring that rant, doffing his hat to the senior officers with more deference. “I would offer you some of our water, General Baird, but I fear it comes from our butts aboard Reliant, and is rather stale, by now,” and went to explain again how they had had to improvise before coming ashore.
General Baird took the offered bottle just long enough for a quick sniff, wrinkling his nose. “Well, I do remember how foul water becomes, after a few months in cask, Captain Lewrie,” he said in a rather kindly way. “What happened up here? Colonel Laird seems to think that you have acted rashly with some of his troops.”
“In point of fact, sir, it was a co-operative endeavour that could not have succeeded without the participation of the Thirty-fourth, and the skill and experience of Leftenant Strickland and his half-troop,” Lewrie replied.
Out of the corner of his eye, Lewrie saw disaster looming, of a sudden, and he tried not to quail. His sailors had approached the Dutch prisoners and had gotten their wood canteens, here and there in exchange, but mostly by appropriation by the victors. Patrick Furfy and a few others were looking just too damned sly-boots as they took sips, sniffed with sudden delight, and tipped the canteens back for deeper quaffs. It wasn’t just British soldiers and sailors who were mad for drink, any sort of alcoholic guzzle; the Dutch soldiers were just as guilty, and had filled their canteens with rum, brandy, or the national “treasure”, gin!