The familiar, acrid stench of smoke and powder drifted with the staccato rattle of musket fire up towards them across the river. Captain Jack Steel, standing on one of the wooden pontoon bridges laid earlier that morning over the river Scheldt, was drawn away for a moment from the spectacle of battle unfolding before him by the sound of laughter.
Looking to the left and down towards the water, he saw three of his men pissing into the river, the pale streams of urine arcing against water and landscape as they competed to be the highest. Steel listened to their laughter and boastful claims and decided to allow them one more moment of innocent fun. For who knew if this day would be their last – or indeed his own? The remainder of Steel’s company of Grenadiers, fifty-one men all told, stood and sat at their ease directly to his rear, as they had been told they might. They talked among themselves, not of the battle going on below them, nor of anything to do with the war, but of other things: of women and booty and glory and the various virtues of English porter and Scottish ale. But gradually their diverting conversations were turning thin and more men became silent by the minute.
It was hardly surprising, thought Steel. They had been here for near on two hours now and it was not hard to see the telltale signs of impatience and growing unease that came when death was near. The long march to the guns had taken them sixty miles in fifty hours, some of it cross-country, and now those who chose to stand, drawn to the music of the battle, found themselves reluctant yet compelled spectators looking down on a bloody struggle. There was nothing worse than this for a soldier, thought Steel, save of course death itself, and maiming. Nothing worse than this waiting. For with it came the rising fear that clawed away at your guts and lurked like some evil spirit or canker inside your brain. The knowledge that soon, very soon he reckoned now, they too would be part of that maelstrom of hot lead, cold steel and all too yielding flesh down there in the little valley. And if that moment was to come, then he damned well wished it would come soon.
Steel turned to the men behind him and found at only a few paces distant the company’s young, rosy-cheeked ensign, Tom Williams, now aged twenty and no longer the gauche boy he had been when he had purchased into the battalion – Sir James Farquharson’s Regiment of Foot – four years ago this summer. Williams had joined the colours shortly before the great victory at Blenheim, Marlborough’s first great triumph in which the regiment and in particular Steel’s Grenadiers had won renown. Steel had grown to feel an almost fatherly obligation to Williams in that campaign and he felt no less close now, imparting when he could sage advice and reasoned reprimand where necessary.
‘Tom, I think that we might fall the men in again now. It shouldn’t be too long before we go, by the look of things. But we’d best keep them on their mettle, eh? You might inspect their weapons again. That sort of thing. I want every musket checked and re-checked. And make sure that their bayonets are all well greased. Oh, and before you do that get those three idiots back from the river. Their tackle might just prove too tempting a target for the French, and we don’t want to draw enemy fire without good cause.’
Williams laughed. He loved Steel’s wry wit and envied him his way with the men. It was the pinnacle to which he aspired. And what better model to have? The ability of this man to combine all the qualities of a gentleman with a genuine empathy with his troops picked him out as a natural leader. Yet at the same time it seemed that Steel always kept an implicit awareness of his own station and their place. In short, Jack Steel was everything that a soldier should be, thought Williams: cool in battle, ruthless and implacable in combat, level-headed, intuitive and pragmatic. Throw into the equation the fact that he was also enviably handsome, and at six foot tall a giant among men, and you had a worthy hero for any young subaltern. This was precisely how Williams hoped the men might see him when he too rose to the rank of captain in command of his own company – if he should manage to survive that long.
He knew that he mustn’t think that way. Hadn’t the sergeants told him so in his first battle? And Steel for that matter, more times than he could remember. But still he could not banish the dark thoughts from his mind. Like Steel, he knew that if there was any obvious target for the enemy it was sure to be an officer. And, like Steel, Tom Williams was tall for his time. Both men were remarkable in an age when the average height was a good ten inches less. But then these were grenadiers – a company of giants, hand-picked from the regiment and the army as much for their stature as their skill at arms. They were the storm troops of the army, the first into any fight and more than likely the last men out.
Williams turned to the company’s senior sergeant, a similarly tall, bluff Geordie with an infectious grin named Jacob Slaughter, whose hard-bitten face told of countless actions and larger engagements. ‘Sar’nt Slaughter. Those men there – discourage them from that, if you will.’
He had learnt his style of command direct from Steel, and the coolly laconic order still did not sit quite as easily as he would have liked on his lips. The sergeant smiled at the boy’s attempt, confident in the knowledge that Williams could do no better than model himself on Captain Steel, and in turn barked a command towards the clowns on the river bank.
The three men suddenly went quiet and hurriedly buttoned their breeches. Then, turning back towards the company, they scrambled up the muddy slope and returned to the grinning ranks. As they passed their captain, Steel nodded and ensured that they could see his gaze, half disapproving, half amused. As they hurried into rank Slaughter shouted further commands, which were echoed by the other sergeants and corporals of the company. Then, careful to be firm but not too forceful, he began to use the wooden staff of the long sergeant’s half-pike to urge the files back into line and dress the ranks, ready for the long-awaited march attack.
Steel knew of course that all their muskets were clean and had been checked. In fact they had been cleaned and checked these past two hours, and at all the halts on the long march that had brought them to this place. He knew too that every man’s razor-sharp socket bayonet, newly issued to replace the old plug variety, was slick to perfection with grease so that it would slide smoothly from the scabbard when the time came and slot with ease on the steel nipples at the end of their muskets before slipping just as easily between the ribs of the French when eventually they met them on the field below. But he knew too that in their present condition anything must be done to keep the men’s minds off the carnage now so evidently taking place to their front.
Steel stared back into the smoke of the battle. He heard the crash of musketry again and the distant cries of anguish caught on the wind that he knew would also be only too audible to the men. Behind him, as if to affirm his fears, one of the younger recruits to his largely veteran company vomited onto the white-gaitered legs of the man to his front, who, naturally, turned and swore at the youngster and, even though he carried his musket at the high porte, still attempted to swing a punch. Sergeant Slaughter shouted to both of them and, mouthing oaths, went to help the terrified and now mortified recruit to regain his composure and wipe the dribbles of vomit from his scarlet coat. Steel turned back towards the enemy. He would give almost anything now to propel his men into a state of readiness, bursting to be at the enemy. Yet at the same time he wanted to make them feel at ease. It was a hard trick, this balancing act. But, he told himself, hadn’t he done it many times before? And didn’t he know most of these men like his own family? Better, now he thought of it. He turned to Williams.
‘A song, I think, Tom. Let’s have a song. Who’s the best voice in the company, would you say? Taylor? Dan Cussiter?’
‘It must be Corporal Taylor, sir, to be sure.’
‘Then Matt Taylor it shall be.’
Steel scoured the ranks for the man.
‘Taylor. Where are you? Come on, Matt. Give us all a tune. Sing up above the guns. And be sure to make it a good ’un. “The Rochester Recruit” or something similar.’
Corporal Matthew Taylor, a gangly, bankrupted clerk from Hounsditch and for the last six years, since the start of this war, the company’s invaluable and learned apothecary and medical expert on account of his knowledge of herbals, cleared his throat and began to sing in a hearty tenor: