Chapter XXXVIII: War in Grim Earnest

Jack and Will, both feeling sore and stiff, went off together to their own lines, and were busy with their horses when Sergeant-major Barrymore came striding along.

‘Oh Blair,’ he cried out, ‘I’ve been looking for you. Get saddled up as quickly as you can; you’ve got to go down to Balaclava with a despatch.’

‘Right you are, major,’ replied Jack; ‘I’ll just scrape a few pounds of mud off my poor beast, then I’ll be ready.’

Jack was soon on his way, and many a sad sight did he see as he went along. Dozens of poor fellows who had died of exposure during that dreadful night were being carried off for interment. The sufferings of those in the trenches had been terrible, and many a stalwart soldier had succumbed to the fury of the storm.

The road to Balaclava was a mere quagmire, and Jack had to struggle along through lines of ammunition-mules, artillery wagons, and so on, the poor exhausted beasts being hardly able to drag the vehicles through the sludge. Dead horses and cattle were scattered all over the country, with the débris of the camp, personal belongings, roofs of huts, and shreds of tents.

Balaclava itself far exceeded in filth and dirt anything that Varna had ever been. Its main street was simply a channel of mud, through which horses, camels, mules, soldiers, and sailors, with artillery and transport-wagons, continually fought their way. The air was full of the cries of Turks, Arabs, Italians, Maltese, Greeks, Tartars, Bulgarians, all offering the worst wares at fabulous prices.

From the side lanes one heard continually the cries of pain and the prayers of Moslem soldiers dying by dozens of cholera and other diseases. Since their conduct on the 25th of October the Turks had been treated with contempt by the British, and, finding no favour at the camp, had made Balaclava their headquarters, where, neglected by their own government, they had contracted the seeds of disease and made Balaclava a very pest-house. The bodies of the Turks lay sometimes for days where they had died. The stench in these narrow lanes was appalling, and the different forms of human suffering which met the sight at every turn enough to shock the most callous.

As Jack’s horse slowly and painfully made its way down towards the harbour, where he had to deliver his despatch, signs of damage done by the great storm met him on every side. Windows were blown in, roofs torn off, and at the neck of the harbour Jack saw two or three large boats which had been driven up inland and smashed to pieces. Floating on the waters of the harbour were trusses of hay, heavy pieces of timber, broken spars and masts, and all sorts of other things, indicating that great damage must have been done to the shipping.

From those employed in the harbour Jack learnt sad news indeed. During the storm twenty-one vessels had been wrecked. The new steamship _Prince_, which had arrived but a few days previously with the 46th Regiment, had gone down with a cargo valued at half a million aboard her. The whole of the winter clothing sent out for the troops, and of which they were fearfully in want, was lost. Forty thousand thick suits, with woollen underclothes, socks, gloves, boots, and blankets; hundreds and thousands of pounds of biscuit, salt-meat, coffee, and rice, thousands of gallons of rum; millions of pounds of forage and compressed hay; and millions of rounds of ball-cartridge, with all the artillery reserve ammunition were lost in that terrible storm.

Jack was appalled at the news, and as he made his way back to camp, through a biting snow and sleet storm, it seemed as if the very elements themselves were fighting for the Russians against the Allies.

Those were terrible days! Rain, fog, frost, and snow, followed one another in rapid succession. The winter set in with unwonted severity; the camp became a quagmire, and the men in the trenches were often up to the middle of their thighs in mud and slush for sixteen hours at a time. The road to Balaclava was often impassable, the putrid carcasses and skeletons of horses, camels, and mules lay half-buried in mud from one end of it to the other; and for days no sugar, coffee, tea, or rum was issued to the troops; biscuit and meat were also scarce. There was very little in Balaclava, and it was impossible to get what was there up to the camp. Thus, only half-fed, in rags, exposed to the rigour of a severe climate, working often twenty hours out of the twenty-four, the men broke down. Cholera raged more fiercely than ever, and things looked in a bad way in the camp of the Allies.

The Russians gave them no peace. By day and by night they kept up a heavy fire and made frequent sorties; but the British, with dogged persistence, pushed their parallels nearer and nearer, repulsed the sorties, and snapped their fingers at the cannonading.

‘Heaven help us!’ said Jack to Will one morning about the middle of December. ‘I’m for Balaclava to-day, and my poor horse can hardly stand. It’s no good saddling him, for I know he couldn’t carry me. He won’t last another day, I’m sure.’

‘He’ll only go the way of most of the others,’ said Will. ‘There are only twenty-seven horses fit for duty left in the whole brigade.’

‘I know; we lost five the night before last and three last night,’ said Jack gloomily. ‘Will, unless we soon get big reinforcements from home, with stores and warm clothing, England will wake up one morning to find that her army in the Crimea is a thing of the past.’

‘Serve ’em right too,’ said Will as he proceeded to twist some hay-bands round his legs, his overalls having been worn to tatters weeks before. ‘Jack,’ he continued, ‘have you got a bit of that string left? I might be able to tie the sole of my left boot on so that it will last for another day.’

Jack, who was busy sewing a patch made of a shred of old blanket on his own overalls, passed Will the piece of string he had brought up from Balaclava; then went on with his work.

The boots and fur-coat he had become possessed of on the day of the capture of the convoy by Mackenzie’s Farm proved of the utmost value to him, and in this respect he was better off than Will.

Jack’s horse being too far gone for further work, Barrymore told him he must take his.

‘Thank God, poor Dainty did not live to be starved to death here,’ said Jack as he and Will mounted, the latter going out on escort-duty with a mixed troop.

A party of Rifles went by, many of the men having made themselves a sort of smock from blankets fastened round their waists with their belts, their trousers being patched with every variety of stuff, from pieces of cloth cut from Russian uniforms to scraps of canvas or bagging.

Jack joined the squad, mostly men of the Guards, who were going down to Balaclava for supplies; bearded, haggard-looking fellows, whose greatcoats were thick with successive layers of mud, and whose feet were almost bare, but in whose eyes burned that fierce, unquenchable light that spoke of a resolve to conquer or die.

The journey was the same as dozens of others Jack had made, except that Balaclava looked filthier than ever and more full of misery. On the road back to camp several horses, after stumbling a few times, fell one by one. They would lie in the mud looking up with lack-lustre eyes, their tongues hanging out. A few spasmodic movements of the legs, smoothing down the mud, would follow, and then the poor beasts would die, being left where they had fallen--a few more carcasses to rot and putrefy; while their loads would be distributed among the other animals or on the men’s shoulders.

December wore on and Christmas approached. Jack received letters from his mother and sisters and from the Lelands. Mrs Blair’s and the girls’ were full of thankfulness that their dear one had escaped so far, prayed that the war might soon be over, and wound up by saying they had sent him a small hamper which they hoped he would find useful at Christmas. The hamper contained some warm shirts and socks, a bottle of brandy, a ham, and a plum-pudding. Poor Jack could almost have cried when he read the list, just the very things that would be most acceptable; but he knew well enough he would never see the hamper, and he never did.

What became of the things sent to the soldiers during the Crimean war remains a mystery to this day.