Flashman's Escape (9 page)

You stupid, brave bastard, I thought as I looked at the boy’s corpse in the dirt. I might be a coward but I can recognise courage in others. There are some I have known who have not felt fear, at least not until the last. But young Price-Thomas had been frightened; despite that he had still charged into the fray to do what he thought was his duty.

I looked up into the heavens to utter a prayer for both Price-Thomas and myself, as I did not think it would be long before I joined him. My commune with the Almighty was interrupted by a dog’s whimper. I looked down and Boney was struggling to reach me. His back had been damaged and he could not use his rear legs properly, but he was half crawling and half scrabbling across the mud to join me. I reached forward and grabbed him by the collar to pull him the last yard to lie beside me.

The exertion caused more blood to come from the hole in my chest. My already soaked shirt, was now a mixture of red and pink. I put my arm around Boney and held him close. He gave a little whine and rested his head on my shoulder. There was a puddle in the ground between our bodies and I watched as blood from my leg wound mixed in the muddy water with blood from the hole in Boney’s side.

I was resigned to dying now and I could not think of better company. The battle still raged, but in the distance. There was no shooting nearby and I leant back against the French corpse and shut my eyes. A few moments later I felt Boney’s head come off my shoulder and he uttered a low but ferocious growl. Opening my eyes, I saw that soldiers from the French third column had come over and were now looting the dead and taking what wounded they could move as prisoner. They searched the French bodies as well as the British for any valuables, and I saw a group of French soldiers driving some prisoners back to the French lines beyond the southern end of the ridge. Amongst them were two survivors from my own company.

I heard one French soldier crouch near me and rummage through the pack of the man I was lying against. I did not have the strength or the will to object when he turned his attention to me. He removed a ring from my finger and a pistol from my left coat pocket. I hoped he would not find the gold coins that I kept sewn into my belt for emergencies. When he moved to my right coat pocket Boney growled again and his top lip curled up to show his teeth. The soldier thought twice about it and looked on the ground nearby.

“Where is your sword,
monsieur
?”

It had a gold hilt and was one of the most valuable things I owned, but I could not think where it had gone. The last time I remembered it clearly was when I had stabbed the lancer with it. I just stared at the man, puzzled myself as to its location. He looked around at the other men looting the bodies and must have assumed someone else had taken it. He moved on to find some more corpses to search. Boney lay his head back down on my shoulder and in doing so moved his front paw. Beneath it I saw a glint of gold and realised that the dog must be lying on my sword. He had done me one final service.

I think I passed out then for I do not remember any of the rest of the day. From the fact that I am writing this memoir, you will have concluded that I survived. So I should tell you a little of what I missed, which I gleaned from subsequent accounts. The Poles rampaged through three quarters of Colborne’s brigade, effectively destroying three battalions. Of the twenty-seven officers and seven hundred and twenty-eight other ranks that had started the day in the Buffs, only eighty-five unwounded men remained. There were various accounts of the Poles striking down those attempting to surrender and misusing prisoners. They were only stopped when they reached the thirty-first regiment, which was still in a column at the end of the Spanish line. The infantry swiftly formed a square to fight the horsemen off. Even then the Poles were not done and some rampaged behind the Spanish line where they found a group of senior officers including Beresford. One charged our commander, and while he might have been an ineffectual general, Beresford could deal with a lancer. He used his immense strength to pull the man clean off his horse and dash him to the ground, where he was despatched by the bodyguard.

Some units of our cavalry belatedly tried to see off the Poles but soon found that they were facing the masters of cavalry warfare. Each lancer had a little red and white pennon flag at the end of the lance. When I had been disguised as a lancer I had assumed that these were for decoration and recognition. But they had a more lethal purpose. As the two groups of horsemen met, the Poles would wave the flags in the faces of the British mounts, causing them to rear and create confusion in the British lines, just as the lance point moved with the momentum of half a ton of horseflesh into the red-coated ranks.

Both sides then launched fresh infantry attacks, and while I lay supine a battle continued to rage all around me. Another stalemate was achieved, but while Beresford dithered several of his subordinate commanders launched a further assault, which broke the deadlock. By dusk the field was ours, but it was a field thickly carpeted with the dead and dying.

Chapter 9

My next recollection was that night. It was still raining and a thunderstorm was raging over the battlefield. I guessed that it was the flashes of lightning and crashes of thunder that had roused me. For a while I was confused as to where I was. As the memories came slowly back I remembered that I had been dying. The chill of that thought closed around me like a cloak. For a moment I wondered if I was already dead, but after trying to move I decided that I remained with the living. There was still a stabbing pain in my chest and I was shivering with cold. Surely, I reasoned, you would not feel cold and pain when you were dead. Indeed, given the life I had led, if there was a heaven and hell, I was expecting to feel things get too hot rather than too cold.

I could only see out of one eye and, reaching up, I found that dried and congealed blood had sealed the lashes of the other eye shut. With my remaining eye I looked down at Boney in the gloomy darkness of the night and touched his side. He had passed on to whatever afterlife awaited animals. He lay damp and stiff beside me with his head still resting on my shoulder. I gently moved it aside so that I could sit up. My leg had stopped bleeding and I pulled open my shirt and looked at the wound in my chest. There was a ragged hole I could put my little finger in just beneath my ribs on the left side. It hurt me to breathe, but at least I was still breathing. Staring about, I saw that there were many more bodies than I remembered. There was now a dead British infantryman lying across my feet who had not been there before. I slowly realised that the battle must have continued, but I had no idea whether we or the French were victorious.

There was a low, continuous murmur of moans and groans from the wounded, interspersed by the occasional high-pitched shriek or shout for help. Somebody nearby was muttering a prayer in French and in the distance a woman was calling out for someone called George. I was staring down the battlefield to my left when the next flicker of lightning illuminated the scene. If I thought the night had no more horrors left, I was wrong. The first thing I saw was a swathe of naked bodies lying across the battlefield. Their white skin shone in the electric light of the storm. Apart from the odd wicked gash, they had been washed clean by the rain. At first I was puzzled: why would there be naked bodies? No one had fought naked. But the next flash of lightning gave me my answer. At the edge of the naked bodies a line of people was moving. There were men, women and even children in local peasant dress. They had sacks and were systematically stripping the dead. But the thing I remember to this day was that, as the lightning flashed to hold the scene in my memory, a peasant woman was frozen in the act of raising a hammer that she must have been using to quell any resistance from one of her victims.

The indignity of being left a sprawled, naked corpse filled me with more anger than the thought of dying at all. I did not have the strength to use my hidden sword but I remembered the pistol that I had managed to keep in my right-hand coat pocket. I pulled it out. The powder would be soaked but I hoped that the act of pointing and cocking it might deter those intent on making me leave this world in the same undressed state as I had arrived in it. I heard a movement to my right and looked around in that direction. Sure enough another of those harridans was working her way over the bodies. This one was alone, and instead of stripping was reaching down and emptying their pockets, doubtless with a weapon ready if needed. I lay back, hoping she would pass by without touching me, but no, she seemed set to travel along the tidemark of bodies I lay amongst.

She was four bodies away when I moved. I sat up suddenly, gasping at the pain this caused in my chest. I raised the pistol and said hoarsely in Spanish, “I have a pistol. Keep away.” To emphasise the point I cocked the weapon.

“Oh! Thank God you are alive, Thomas,” cried Lucy Benton. She was in the act of throwing herself into my arms when she stopped, her face frozen in horror. I must have looked a sight, half my face covered in dried blood and gaping holes in my chest and leg. She slowly surveyed my wounds, with her eyes coming back to the hole in my chest. She knew what that meant as well as I. “Oh, my poor Thomas. First Bill and now you.”

“I am not dead yet,” I grumbled.

“No, of course not, and some pull through from terrible wounds.” She tried to sound more cheerful but she was not convincing. “I will stay with you anyway.” She paused. “So that you are not alone.” The unspoken words ‘when you die’ hung like lead between us.

“Could you get help?” I asked. “Someone to take me to the surgeons.”

“Not now,” she replied gently. “The few that are left are just exhausted. They battled all day and have just dropped to sleep where they stopped, even in this storm. They will come back in the morning.”

The talk of exhaustion made me realise how tired I was. I had used all my energy to make the challenge with the pistol. The rain still beat down around us and I was shivering slightly with shock, cold or both. I remembered the locals still working their way towards us. “Well, you will not have long to wait if those villagers come over here. I think they kill the wounded who resist being robbed of everything.”

Lucy looked over at the line of villagers industriously progressing across the battlefield. “We will see about that,” she muttered firmly while reaching into her skirts and withdrawing a dagger that I had not known she carried. She marched across to the villagers, shouting at them in Portuguese. I did not understand all of the words, but the gist was that she would cut their throats if they came anywhere near us and her friends, the soldiers, would hunt down every last one of them. The peasants shouted some reply and, satisfied, Lucy came back. “Don’t worry, they won’t bother us now.”

She busied herself amongst the bodies for a while and I realised that she was making stands of muskets around us. Then she rummaged around, finding blankets tied to packs, and stuck them over the bayonets in the musket stands to make a canopy over me. Finally she lay down beside me under the rudimentary shelter and spread more blankets across us. We talked quietly for a while about the battle. I told her how Price-Thomas had died and asked her to tell his uncle. She told me how the battle had been won and held me close. Even though we were both soaked through, slowly I began to feel some warmth.

I must have fallen asleep again for it was dawn when I awoke, a dead dog under one arm and a pretty living girl on the other. As I watched the sun slowly creeping up into the sky, I began to think that if I had lived this long, perhaps I would not die of these wounds after all. It had finally stopped raining and some soldiers were slowly picking their way over the battlefield, looking for comrades and chasing off any of the villagers still working in the daylight. Eventually Lucy saw two men she knew from the Buffs and called them over.

“Take my sword to Lieutenant Hervey and ask him to look after it for me,” I told her. “It is hidden under Boney.”

A few minutes later I was hoisted up on a stretcher made, ironically, from a broken lance fed through the sleeves of several uniform coats. It was only as I was carried across the battlefield that I realised the true scale of the carnage. The ground was covered with mostly naked white bodies for hundreds of yards. It was estimated that over eight thousand men had died, with at least as many wounded. I remember seeing three wounded and naked men who had dragged themselves to a shallow trench in the mud, probably made by a cannon ball. It had filled with water during the night and they were drinking from the puddle to satisfy their thirst. I was grateful to Lucy, who had found me a canteen to drink from during the night.

My stretcher bearers carried me down to the chapel in the village where the surgeons had set up their dressing station, but I was not seen by a surgeon. One of their assistants had a brief glance at my chest and directed the men carrying me to an open yard behind the church. There I was left with hundreds of other seriously wounded men. Officers were put alongside the wall out of the wind; even near to death rank had its privileges. The rest of the men were laid out all over the yard. There were shocking injuries all about me: chests flayed open by shot, stomachs cut open by bayonets, a head half smashed by a musket butt. The stench of fouled bodies made me gag when I first arrived, but I soon ceased to notice it. What I did see, though, was that hardly anyone from this yard was taken into the church where I thought the surgeons would be operating. Instead padres roamed amongst the prone men with pocket books, taking down last requests, while half a dozen men were fully occupied taking the recently deceased out of the yard to make room for more seriously injured coming in. Finally I realised that this was the open-air equivalent of something I had heard about after earlier battles, a ‘death room’. Surgeons, or their assistants, would put those that were beyond hope in a quiet space, where they could pass away in peace. That freed up time to deal with those that they thought they could save. Well, dammit; I was not ready to die yet.

Eventually I managed to catch the attention of one of the passing padres.

“What is it, my boy?” he asked solemnly. “Would you like to pass on a message for a loved one?”

“No, I would like you to fetch Surgeon Price for me.” Price was Ensign Price-Thomas’s uncle.

“The surgeons are far too busy dealing with the injured to be interrupted now,” exclaimed the padre, sounding slightly indignant at the very idea.

I gritted my teeth to stay calm for a moment. Getting angry would not help and I did not have the strength to box his ears. “You may have noticed that I am a little injured myself,” I said acidly, but then I thought I would be better served to play on his Christian heartstrings. “I was with Price’s nephew when he died,” I explained, trying to adopt a look of God-fearing piety. “He was only fifteen, and as he prepared to meet his maker he begged me as a charity to speak to his uncle for him. With his last ounce of strength he made me give an oath that I would do so.” I was wringing my hands at this point like a proper Christian martyr. “He insisted it was the only way he could pass into heaven with a clear conscience. I beg you, sir, let me fulfil the boy’s dying wish.” It was of course errant bosh – poor Price-Thomas had died alone with at least one lance driven clean through him – but the padre did not know that. The Bible thumper was positively wiping his eye when I had finished and he assured me that he would do my bidding at once.

I sank back against the stone and shut my eyes in relief. In what seemed no time at all a voice was calling out, “Captain Flashman.” I looked up and in front of me there was a vaguely familiar cove in a blood-soaked apron with more bloodstains up his arms to his shoulders. The padre also hovered nearby to overhear the conversation. “Lieutenant Hervey has already told me what you…” The newcomer paused before continuing. “… and your dog did to save young Edward. I am much obliged to you. The padre says you have a message for me.”

I looked at the padre, who leaned in close to hear the message and nodded at me encouragingly. “Thank you, Padre,” I murmured. “If we could have a little privacy…”

“Of course, of course,” replied the padre, looking crestfallen and moving away.

I looked the surgeon in the eye and asked quietly, “This is a dying room, isn’t it?”

He glanced around briefly at those nearby to check that they were not listening and then slowly nodded.

“Well, I am not ready to die. I want to be looked at by a surgeon.”

“What was the message from Edward?” asked Price sternly.

“He declared you were the best damn surgeon he knew and that if I was ever wounded I should ask for you.” For a moment I thought Price was going to walk away, but then a sad grin crossed his face.

“I very much doubt he did say that, Captain Flashman, but Edward did speak warmly about you. So for his sake I will examine you. It is only the chest wound that matters; the rest can be healed.”

He got down on one knee beside me. I expected him to probe or prod the hole, but instead he moved his head towards my chest and smelt it. He gave a grunt of approval and made me lean forward so that he could smell the entry wound too. “The ball does not seem to have punctured your bowel, and it has missed your ribs. What about breathing – are you coughing up blood?” I assured him I wasn’t. “Well, it seems you are in the wrong place after all,” he stated at length. Then he beckoned some stretcher bearers and I was carried into the chapel.

I will spare you a detailed description of that charnel house, but after one glance at the buckets of severed limbs and the sweating, screaming bodies tied down to one of the four tables in use, I began to wonder if I had been better outside after all. I joined a queue on stretchers of those waiting to be treated and can honestly say it was one of the most terrifying half hours of what had already been a colourful life.

In battle there was always the chance you would escape unscathed, but waiting there you knew that in a short while you would be hauled up onto one of the blood-soaked doors resting on barrels that served as operating tables in this primitive field hospital. Anyone who tells you that he lay there like a gentleman and had a civilised conversation while his leg was sawn off is a lying bastard. By that point the surgical brandy to numb the pain had long since been used up, as had any opiates. The assistants were exhausted, like the surgeons, and instead of trying to hold down the struggling victims, they had taken to lashing them firmly to the table before proceedings started. Even then the poor devils under the knife thrashed about. I saw one fellow, mad with pain, get a cudgel to the head for his trouble. As he slumped unconscious it seemed a kindness.