Until the Colours Fade (49 page)

Later, sitting in his room, Tom had no difficulty in thinking of the most suitable place in which to see her. Only the previous Sunday, Dr Sutherland had mentioned that the
Morning
Post
’s
correspondent in the city had placed his house in Orta-köy at the Commission’s disposal for its members’ use while he was with the Turkish troops at Silistria. The village was seven miles from Constantinople: a journey which not even the deplorable roads could extend much beyond an hour in a decently sprung
carriage
. Since Sutherland had already suggested that Tom make use of this offer to get a sight of the neighbouring countryside before he left, there seemed little possibility of any difficulties being raised.

He would write a letter tomorrow. No – best write it at once before his mood changed. Possibly in war-time letters not
arriving
with the diplomatic bag or service mails would be opened and read by the Embassy staff. He would have to write the sort of note which a friend of the family might be expected to send, but one still making it clear that he did not intend to be fobbed off with a refusal to see him. Since Helen would be most unwilling to risk his coming to the Embassy, in case Charles or Sir James should hear about her receiving a young man having nothing to do with the navy or the diplomatic corps, he would need to imply that, if she rejected his choice of day and venue, she could expect him to seek her out at his own time and pleasure. By asking her to lunch with him at Orta-köy, he might be able to prevent her leaving after a few words.

Still apprehensive, but by now elated too, Tom paced across to his window and gazed out over the glistening roofs, seeing the distant lights of Stamboul reflected in the black waters of the Golden Horn; his thoughts though were not of what he saw, but of a building scarcely a mile away, overlooking the Bosphorus. Somewhere in that gigantic square neo-classical palace faced with gleaming stucco, Helen Crawford was living her life in total ignorance of his proximity. Outside her windows would be spacious gardens, guarded by soldiers in white and red sentry boxes; each morning bands would play in the central courtyard at the base of the tall flag-staff. A new life, utterly removed from her old one. A nervous flutter of doubt assailed Tom, but his mind was made up. She had owed him a final meeting and he would have it.

He had not moved from the window when his opening lines came to him.

Quite prepared to run to many drafts before reaching a final
version
, Tom sat down, picked up a pencil and started to write.

Magnus had seen sights on the battlefield, which, at the time, he had thought impossible to surpass for the depths of suffering and degradation revealed: a Zouave roughly pulling the boots off a screaming Russian soldier, whose legs had been shattered by a round-shot; a sergeant of the Connaught Rangers, who had died in such pain from bayonet wounds to the stomach that he had bitten into the earth – when Magnus had seen him, his limbs had stiffened and one arm was held aloft, the fingers still clutching tufts of earth torn up in his last agony. Only the faces of men killed instantly by bullets in the head or heart, looked peaceful in death. A French chasseur had crawled to quench his burning thirst in a ditch, but had fallen forwards exhausted arid had drowned in the few inches of muddy water he had so painfully fought to reach. Worst of all to watch had been the gangs of Turks clearing the Russian dead from the field, dragging the corpses by the heels towards the shallow communal pits,
bumping
their heads on the ground, not caring that skulls were split open on stones, and partially severed limbs wrenched clean off. Outside a hospital marquee he had seen a pile of amputated legs with boots and stockings still on them; as he had passed, an orderly tossed out a dozen fingers and toes as coolly as if they had been fowl’s feet.

Yet within a week of Inkerman Magnus had described scenes of greater horror for his newspaper; no scenes of death were as heart-rending as the processions of wounded on their way down to Balaclava for embarkation to Scutari. At first it had been intended to let the dying remain in the camps, rather than
subject
them to the additional suffering of a futile journey, but when a week after the battle, a night of heavy snow had been followed by three days of torrential rain and finally a prolonged and
intense
frost, the hundreds of cases of frostbite, pneumonia and rheumatism could only be accomodated in the hospital tents by evacuating all the battle-wounded, whether recovering or
sinking,
to the port.

*

When George Braithwaite had seen the surgeons working through the night after Inkerman, and for most of the following
day, he had been ashamed to ask these men, red with blood to the elbows, to turn their attention from gravely wounded soldiers to deal with his torn hand and lacerated arm. For a while he had sat in line, and many times had seen the fearful cut made, the white flesh spring back and the saw laid against the bone. The surgeons had been so hard-pressed that they had often pinched the arteries together with their fingers, only tying them with ligatures when the limb was off and tossed aside. Men with similar wounds had been able to see every movement and had writhed and groaned not so much with pain as with terrified anticipation. The
chloroform
had soon been exhausted, and then the roars and screams of men under the knife had been more than George could bear and he had fled to his tent, having his servant bind up his wounds with an old shirt. Next day his arm was swollen and caused him such pain that he had been forced to return to his regiment’s hospital marquee. Later the surgeons had been pleased by the steady ooze of ‘laudable pus’ from his arm, but when this
suppuration
had shown no signs of diminishing, and the inflammation had grown worse, he too had been ordered down to Balaclava with the rest.

The shortage of stretchers and the absolute impossibility of dragging the heavy British ambulance waggons, with their
gun-carriage
wheels, through the quagmire of mud on the sloping track, meant that many of the wounded had to be carried on the backs of men often themselves suffering from exposure. Others were strapped to mules and horses, but the lack of forage had so decimated the army’s baggage train that even with teams from the artillery and cavalry, there were far too few, and most so weak that they constantly stumbled, causing terrible agony to men with freshly amputated limbs and open wounds.

George had initially been fortunate enough to be strapped to one of the upright mule-seats lent by the French; but on seeing many far more severely wounded men struggling through the mud on foot, he had asked to be taken down so that the seat could be given to one of them. He did not feel heroic to have made the sacrifice, since, just as in the hospital tent, he had felt shamed by the greater distress of others; now he was unable to allow himself to be carried when his legs were whole and men in crude splints were limping by, using their rifles as crutches. In spite of his sling, his arm hurt him with each step, and the half-frozen mud was so thick and adhesive that every few yards he was obliged to rest for several minutes before once more lifting his soil-clogged boots and squelching on. He thought of the impeccable uniforms
of the regiments which had embarked with the Coldstream at Portsmouth and looked around him in incredulity. Some of the officers had tied hay in sacking round their rags of trousers to keep out the cold; others had made leggings of sheepskins and horse hides. He saw a colonel on a stretcher with a mess-tin cover pulled down over his ears. To save their faces from frostbite, a number of private soldiers had bound strips of old blankets round their heads, layer upon layer, leaving only the mouth and eyes exposed, making their skulls appear swollen and deformed.

Many of those on the mules were almost past pain and caring, with eyes sunk deep in their sockets, dull and dead, mouths open and faces gaunt and grey, tinged with blue. A Turk was carrying a handsome dark-haired man roped to his back; the blanket covering him had slipped exposing the bandaged stump of his left arm, cut away a few inches from the shoulder. The only way of knowing which of the worst cases were alive was the film of their breath, visible in the raw cold air. One who passed by, strapped upright in a mule-seat, was obviously dead, his head lolling
drunkenly
with every lurch of the animal, and teeth clamped hard on his already blackened tongue. Often a death remained unnoticed for several miles, when the fixed stare of an eye or the rigid set of an arm would announce that all was over. If the eyes were closed, the lids would be prised open and the pupils peered into for any signs of life. If dead, the man’s body was lifted down and left by the side of the track, while another took his place in the seat. Many seats and stretchers had had several occupants before Balaclava was reached.

George’s arm burned and throbbed sharply, but the sight of so much suffering on every side gave him strength, convincing him of his own insignificance in comparison with so many deaths and so much pain. He was also humbled by the uncomplaining
stoicism
of the ordinary soldiers; men at whom in England he would never have glanced a second time, but whose courage in two battles and now, on what would for many be their last journey, made him wince at his past arrogance and blindness. Only once had he entered the work-house at Rigton Bridge, and had almost vomited at what he had then considered a sub-human stench only possible among derelict working men; and now he stank more vilely than any pauper in that workhouse, and could not write on a sheet of paper without it being covered with lice. He remembered the hatred he had felt for the mob on the day of the election and could no longer understand or remember his
reasons
. His only anger left was for those responsible for sending an
army to fight in these conditions with woefully inadequate
supplies
and so small a chance of survival.

*

Early in the morning Magnus had learned with misgiving that just over a thousand wounded were to be transferred from the 2nd and 4th Division’s camps to the port. On previous occasions, he had heard it said that, when as few as two hundred had been embarked, they had been left unattended by the landing stage for hours on end while two or three boats ferried them out to a
hospital
ship in an endless relay of trips.

When Magnus arrived at the quay, he passed within twenty yards of the spot where George Braithwaite was lying, but did not see him. All around on the muddy ground were prostrate men, some groaning feebly, others too weak to make a sound. A light rain was turning to sleet, slanting across the harbour with freezing gusts of wind. No awning had been erected, and Magnus saw only three covered stretchers; the vast majority of the men were lying on the bare earth, without as much as a blanket under them. Two assistant-surgeons and half-a-dozen medical orderlies were wandering amongst their charges doling out water.

Magnus went up to an orderly and asked why the men were getting no food, since many would not have eaten since the
previous
evening; he was told that they would have all they required on board. Estimating that less than half of those
waiting
would have left the quay by mid-afternoon, Magnus asked why they could not have some arrowroot and beef essence at once. The orderly explained wearily that ground rice and sago was all that was left in store, and that since the principal
medical
officer had not given any instructions, none would be issued.

A man near them was moaning softly, a low rhythmic
plaintive
sound, not unlike an exhausted child sobbing itself to sleep. The orderly bent down to adjust the loose bandages round the soldier’s hand and wrist; as he unwound the cloth, the man’s frostbitten thumb and two fingers dropped off. Calmly re-tying the bandage, the orderly told Magnus that the hand of a rifleman he had just looked at, had come away at the wrist in the same way.

At the landing-stage itself, Magnus saw badly wounded men roughly bundled off their stretchers, lifted up under their
armpits
and carried down to the boats where they were laid on the bottom boards between the thwarts in several inches of slopping
water. The slightest movement caused them acute pain, but when they were hauled along the quay and slung down bodily by Turkish porters, accustomed to tossing around barrels and boxes, to the seamen in the boats, they suffered unendurable agony and roared out like men under the lash. Although Magnus realised that they were taken off the stretchers because these would be needed again to carry down more men, he was outraged that they were being packed so tightly in the boats. If even a small proportion of ships’ boats from the fleet had been used, there would have been no need for such barbaric cruelty.

The unmoved and dignified indifference of the assistant
surgeon
supervising, with pipe in mouth and hands in pockets, made Magnus shudder; this spectacle, which he was witnessing for the first time, had obviously been taking place several times a week on a reduced scale. The surgeon was probably no more callous than others of his calling, but hardened by familiarity, had come to look upon such torture as a regrettable but inevitable part of the medical department’s routine. As Magnus was walking away, a young officer with fair curly hair matted with blood begged him to cover his face so he would be spared seeing what was going on.

At the commissariat wharf Magnus found a Maltese boatman prepared to take him out to the
Medway
in mid-harbour.

Even on the open upper deck of the hospital ship, the putrid faecal smell emanating from the hatches made him feel sick. On the enclosed decks below, the air was so foul that he was afraid of fainting.
Medway
was a troop-transport and had never been
converted
for her present use. There were perhaps twenty cots and fifty mattresses for six hundred men and no additional lavatories beyond the ‘heads’ in the bows, which had been barely adequate for the needs of healthy soldiers but were ludicrously unsuitable for sick and wounded, most of them barely able to crawl and many suffering from dysentery. The few bed-pans in use on the middle deck had been emptied into a portable bath near the main-companion, and Magnus did not have to use his eyes to know that it had not been emptied since the day before.

The men were lying at random all over the decks, the majority on the planks. One man who had had both his legs amputated was crying out and dashing his head against the bulwark behind him. Disgusted and furiously angry, Magnus sought out the
surgeon
in charge and told him that unless the man were placed on a mattress and attended to, he would do everything in his power to make
Medway
’
s
name a national byword for criminal neglect.
The surgeon listened in silence; his eyelids were inflamed and swollen, and his unshaven face yellow and pinched with fatigue. When Magnus had finished, he asked quietly:

‘Do you suppose it makes any difference to a delirious man whether he’s on a mattress or not? The one you saw has gangrene in both stumps and won’t last the day.’

‘What will happen if there’s a storm on the crossing?’

The surgeon looked at Magnus with sudden anger.

‘Men will be thrown across the decks. If I waited for this ship to be put in order, she wouldn’t sail for a month. The navy
chartered
her from a shipping company, the army are meant to equip her and the Medical Department to provide staff; who found the crew, I’ve no idea. How can you expect anybody to accept
responsibility
with such a system? I’ll tell you something else. There are three hundred stoves in one warehouse ashore – just three or four of them would save lives on the voyage, but the
harbour
master can’t spare dock labour to move the stores on top of them; he needs every man he’s got to unload food and
ammunition
for the men in the camps. Why not blame him? Blame who you like, but it’ll make no difference.’

*

Two hours later Magnus was aboard H.M.S.
Retribution
intent on seeing his father.

The beautiful whiteness of the decks, achieved by the use of lime juice and constant scrubbing and holystoning, the ebony gloss of the guns, the glistening pikes and tomahawks strapped to the beams, and the polished brasswork, seemed to Magnus to belong to another world from that of the mud and ordure of Balaclava and the military camps. The sailors’ low-crowned
varnished
hats were immaculate, their deep turned-back collars, edged with white tape, were spotless, and their clean-shaven faces glowed with health, making them seem men of a different species from the bearded and emaciated wretches serving ashore.