Barracks, Bivouacs and Battles

by Archibald Forbes

The brothers shook hands on the compact, and resolved to ’list without delay. They were stirring times, those early months of 1849, when news was coming home of the outbreak of the second Sikh war, and we were reading of the glorious death of Cureton, “the fair-haired boy of the Peninsula”; of young Herbert Edwardes’ ready prowess—a junior lieutenant, yet in command of an army with which he had won victories and was beleaguering Mooltan; of William Havelock’s wild gallop to his death across the Ramnuggur sands, and of stout old Thackwell’s stiff combat at Sadoolapore. The old sergeant had not been buried a week when his sons were tramping over the hills to Aberdeen, where was the nearest recruiting station, and presently we heard that both had enlisted in the same regiment, a corps which was in sore need of recruits, for it had suffered terrible losses in the desperate struggle of Chillianwallah. That news would have been the last tidings of the brothers that ever reached the highland glen, but for one letter from John to the minister of the parish, written about the end of 1850. He was doing well in the regiment, being already a full corporal; but now that there was peace and idleness, Aleck had grown restless and had volunteered into another regiment, since when he had not heard of him. No word more came of, or from, either of the brothers, and as the years passed they fell out of memory.

Many years later I paid my first visit to India. The seven years of peace, after Chillianwallah and Goojerat and the annexation of the Punjaub, had been followed by the ghastly period of the great Mutiny, and now the blood of the Mutiny had been long dry. On the maidan of Cawnpore one could scarce discern the traces of the poor earthworks that had constituted Wheeler’s intrenchment, and Marochetti’s marble angel spread pitying wings over the well which had been filled to its top with our slaughtered ladies and their children. The shot-wrecked Residency of Lucknow stood, and still stands, in the condition the relieved garrison left it, a monument of that garrison’s heroic constancy; but otherwise the stains of battle had been wiped from the beautiful capital of Oude, and gardens bloomed where the dead had lain thick. The subalterns of Chillianwallah and Goojerat were general officers now—those whom the climate and the Mutiny had spared—and the talk in the clubs and at the mess-tables was no longer of old Gough and his “could steel,” and of the “Flying General” chasing the fugitives of Goojerat into the Khyber Pass, but of Clyde and Hugh Rose and William Peel and John Nicholson.

In the course of my travels I was the guest for a week of a general officer who was kind enough to recount to me many reminiscences of his long period of soldiering in India. One of those narratives had for me a special pathetic interest, and perhaps the emotion may be in a measure shared in by the reader who shall have already accompanied me thus far. I wrote down the story the same night it was told me, when the old soldier’s words were fresh in my memory.

“In the early ‘fifties,” said the general, “our European troops serving in India were not in good case. In those days they were constantly quartered in the plains, the barracks were dismal, pestilential, thatched sheds, there were none of the comforts the soldier now enjoys, and in the dismal ennui his only resources were his canteen and the bazaar. The revulsion from the stir and variety of marching and fighting, superinduced widespread discontent, and in many instances depression intensified into actual despair. Quite an epidemic of suicide set in, and was but partially cured by Sir Charles Napier’s very Irish expedient of sentencing a man to be shot who had unsuccessfully attempted to take his own life. At this time transportation to West Australia was the usual punishment in the army for the military crime of grave insubordination. So low had sunk the morale of too many of the rank and file, and so ardent was the desire for change of any kind, no matter what or where, that men deliberately laid themselves out to earn the punishment of transportation. This was not a difficult task. The soldier had only to make a blow at his superior officer—and all above him from a lance-corporal to the colonel were his superior officers—or even to throw a cap or a glove at him, to have himself charged with the offence of mutinous conduct. The pro forma court-martial sat; the soldier pleaded guilty; the sentence of transportation was duly ‘approved and confirmed,’ and presently the man was blithely on his voyage to join a chain gang at Perth or Freemantle.

“This state of things was too injurious to the service to be allowed a long continuance. The Commander-in-Chief promulgated a trenchant order, denouncing in strong terms the utter subversion of discipline that seemed impending, and sternly intimating that death, and not transportation any more, should in future be the unfailing penalty for the crime of using or offering violence to a superior officer. The order was read aloud at the head of every regiment in India, but its purport did not seriously impress the troops. The men were fain to regard it in the light of what the Germans call a stroke on the water, and they did not believe that it would be actually put in force. They did not know the nature of Sir Charles Napier.

“It was in my own regiment, then quartered in Meerut, that the first offence was committed after the promulgation of the order. A young private named Creed, who had joined us in India from another regiment, one morning casually met on the parade-ground a young officer on the staff of the General, and without a word threw his cap in the face of the aide-de-camp. He was made a prisoner, and when brought before the colonel, frankly owned that he had no ill-feeling against the officer, whom, indeed, he did not know that he had ever seen before, and his simple explanation of his conduct was that he had acted on ‘a sudden impulse.’ It was proved, however, that the night before the assault he had been heard to say in the canteen that he meant to ‘qualify for West Australia’ within the next twenty-four hours. The case was reported to the Commander-in-Chief, who directed that the prisoner should be tried by a general court-martial, the attention of which he called to his recent orders. The sentence of the court was ‘death,’ which his Excellency approved and confirmed. It was read to the prisoner by the colonel, in front of the regiment, and he was informed that the sentence would be carried into execution on the morning of the next day but one.

“The night before the morning fixed for the execution there reported himself to me as having joined, a non-commissioned officer whose arrival I had been expecting for some days. Wishing to remain in India he had volunteered to us from a regiment which had been quartered at Agra, and which had been ordered to return to England. He was scarcely a prepossessing-looking man, but looked every inch a good soldier, and his face indicated self-command and dauntless resolution. Standing composedly at attention, he handed me the documents connected with his transfer and a private note from the adjutant of the regiment he had quitted. It ran thus—

“‘Sergeant Russell will hand you this note. We lose him with great regret; he will do you credit. I never have known a better non-commissioned officer. Duty to its last tittle is the man’s watchword and what he lives for. I verily believe were he detailed to the duty of shooting his own brother, he would perform the service without a word of remonstrance. I own that I grudge him to you.’

“I told the newcomer that his late adjutant had given him a high character, and that I was glad to have in the regiment a man so well recommended. He saluted silently; I detailed him to a company and told him he might go. But as he was leaving the orderly room a thought struck me and I recalled him. I knew how strong throughout the regiment was the sentiment in favour of the poor fellow who was waiting his doom; and it occurred to me that this new sergeant, who in the nature of things could not be a warm sharer in this sentiment, was a fitting man to detail to the command of the firing party. I briefly explained to him the circumstances, and then told him to what duty I purposed assigning him. ‘Very well, sir,’ was his calm remark; ‘it is an unpleasant duty, certainly, but I can understand the reason why you put it on me.’ Then, telling him to apply to the regimental sergeant-major for details, I let him go.

“I need not ask you whether you have ever seen a military execution; it is the most solemn and fortunately the rarest of all our military spectacles. It was not yet daylight when all the troops of the garrison, both European and native, were on march to the great parade-ground. The regiments, as they arrived, wheeled into position, the whole forming three sides of a vast square, the dressed ranks facing inwards. The dead silence was presently broken by the roll of the drum, announcing the approach of the procession escorting the doomed man, and a moment later the head of it rounded the flank of one of the faces of the great hollow square. In effect the yet living soldier was marching in his own funeral procession, his step keeping time to the swell and cadence of his own dirge. At the head of the sombre cortège was borne the empty coffin of the man whose sands of life were running out; there followed in slow march, with arms reversed, the execution party of twelve privates and a corporal, under the command of Sergeant Russell; and then a full military band, from whose instruments there pealed and wailed alternately the Dead March in Saul. There was a little interval of space, and then, alone save for the Presbyterian chaplain walking beside him in his Geneva gown, and praying in low, earnest accents, marched with firm step the condemned man, his face calm, but whiter than the white cap on his head. Close behind marched, with fixed bayonets, a corporal and a file of men of the quarter-guard. Thus was constituted what, save for the central figure of it, who still lived and moved and had his being, and for the empty coffin, was in every attribute a funeral procession.