If there were reason to complain of the want of fresh meat none could be alleged against the quantities of rations supplied. While the troops were suffering great privations, the sappers always had full provisions and “when warm clothing was available for them it was brought up without delay.” This arose from the mules furnished for the engineer field service having been planked up in sheds at Balaklava in the early campaign and carefully attended to.[[182]] In the fatal winter that followed, the engineer mules were thus protected from its rigours, while the unsheltered baggage animals of different corps, and even the troop horses, fell dead in frightful numbers at their tethers. The great storm of November, 1854, rendered the animals almost powerless and the little strength they possessed wholly gave way when the slightest pressure was applied to derive from their employment any urgent assistance. Nothing on the other hand baffled the few mules attached to the engineer department but the conveyance of the huts; and this was a service so extremely heavy, it was utterly beyond their capabilities. To corporal Matthew Stevens was attributed the preservation of the engineer transport stud. He had with him a small party of sappers who soon turned themselves into efficient drivers, and emulating the energy and care of the corporal, assisted to produce a result which became a striking incident of the campaign.[[183]]
So effective an adjunct of the siege was the rifle screen, that on the left attack four pits commanding the Woronzoff ravine were commenced in front of the second parallel on the night of the 22nd April and daily additions were made to the number. A fortnight later other pits in the same attack were made extending from the right of the second parallel to the front of the third, and also from the right flank of No. 8 battery. The chain consisted of forty holes spotting the ground with light troops in snug and commanding positions. These were commenced by Lieutenant C. G. Gordon of the engineers, with a force of 180 linesmen and a proportion of 24 sappers who were that night allotted for the works. In time the pits became an enlarged item in the system of attack, and formed, occasionally, the starting points from which new zigzags or parallels were struck out. Old pits, moreover, which had been abandoned by the Russians—as the besiegers’ works compressed their circumvallation—were taken advantage of and turned against them.
Corporal John Landrey, a very good sapper, was noticed for his zeal and intelligence in leading and instructing the working parties on the 24th, and sergeant Benjamin Castledine, while visiting a working party in the extended parallel to the right of the mortar battery on Gordon’s attack, received a bullet wound in the hand.
Battery No. 11 for seven guns was begun in the night of the 27th on a rocky eminence, somewhat isolated though imposing, to the left of the second parallel. Ground was broken by 300 of the line and 50 seamen with as many sappers as could be taken out of 35 detailed that night for the trenches of the left attack. Captain Porter had the direction of the work. All his arrangements were so admirably carried out, that the parapet—256 long—was risen to a height of six feet, and the two right gun portions and epaulment, worked as a half sunken battery, had a parapet nearly twelve feet thick revetted with sand-bags. Nor was this all; the remaining portion of the battery, shaped after the elevated form, was revetted partly with casks and partly with gabions, and obtained a thickness varying from seven to nine feet. Receiving no little access of spirit from the joyous exertions of the happy sailors, the men worked hard and excellently, but at the period of relief they left the battery jaded and exhausted. Sergeant Jarvis, and lance-corporals Hanson, J. T. Collins, and Jenkins of the sappers, acquired the credit of having laboured splendidly, which was recorded to their honour in the orders of Major-General Jones. A constant and irritating fire was directed against the workmen the greater part of the night, but the result when summed up, was one slight wound, and the smashing of six stands of arms.
A few nights later Captain Armit gave orders for the earth of the battery to be thrown well to the front. With a manner less absolute than persuasive, Sergeant Drew, who was in charge, requested the workmen to go on the parapet for the purpose, but they refused, alleging, “it was sappers’ work.” The moon was shining bright in the rear, baring the battery to Russian fire and rendering the duty anything but inviting. Taking Rowland Hill’s plan of doing the work himself when his servants quarrelled about their legitimate portions, the sergeant laid aside his jacket and pushing on the merlon toiled away like a navvy. Distributed to various details of the battery, the sappers hearing that the working party had declined to assist, left their several tasks and joined the sergeant. This was more than a brave rifleman could well bear, and with an example that none of the workmen cared to imitate, he attempted to take his place with the shovellers; but a sapper who happened to be below, altogether averse to accepting any services which seemed to spring from other considerations than duty, pulled the rifleman down, observing, in tones of sarcastic resentment, “that, as the work was, according to the opinions of the party, purely sappers’ work, none but sappers ought to share in the credit of its execution.” The strengthening of the merlon, therefore, that night, with heavy discharges of shot and some shell directed against it, was wholly carried out by sergeant Drew and his sappers.
Before the end of April, a few men of the corps assisted by working parties completed a hut for the general officer of the trenches on the right attack with stout timbers and sheeting and gave it as much proof with sand-bags and earth as practicable. A similar chamber was reared soon after for the general on the left. Considering its position it was a cozy quarter in the storm, and its social character was enhanced by the introduction of an old door and a glazed window screened from fire by a traverse. All that it wanted was a stove and the wreathing smoke from a chimney-pot to make it a palace for a peasant.
The engineer hovel of the left attack—used as an office by each succeeding engineer as he took possession of the trenches—exhibited some points of needy refinement; for it not only possessed a door and a glazed sash, but a stove with a pipe leading through the splinter proof roof which boasted a covering of asphalted felt! From a sunken foundation the hut rose up under a broad parapet in the first parallel between Nos. 1 and 2 batteries, and was built chiefly of sand-bags with an interior nearly ten feet square fitted with the bare conveniences of seats and a desk—all, however, sufficiently rough to identify the structure with the rigours of a stern siege. In the area in front of the hut was a sort of engineer depôt from whence the tools and materials were distributed to the working parties.
Meanwhile the sappers in small batches or in ones and twos were lost among the military operatives, distinguished by the badge of a piece of tracing tape around their caps. Usually in the 21-gun battery were found the greatest number and half a brigade or so of selected men could be counted in each of the new batteries on the right attack. These run from 10 to 14. On Greenhill the works also claimed a share of sapper labour, but in the batteries numbered 10 and 11 on the left, the parties, as far as strength was concerned, were more ostentatious.
To be a little precise, let a survey of their engagements be undertaken. Look first among the embrasures, and there, ant-like, is seen an isolated red-coat coolly pegging up hides or fixing gabions, while two or three carpenters, with upturned sleeves, are discovered crouching low, fixing platforms or renewing sleepers and fighting bolts. Go next to the caves and call—“Sapper?” One immediately emerges from its murkiness, spade in hand, with begrimed face and dishevelled beard, to show the quality of his exertions. Step to the saps right and left, and in each on bended knee with whirling pick and cap well down is traced the sapper. To his sturdy efforts the earth yields and the gabion soon is filled. Watch him as he goes ahead with cautious crawl and daringly places another basket on the line. How many rifle balls, how many shots fly past, few can tell; but on he urges as if nothing had occurred, and perhaps the next discharge kills him. Steal now along the trench to its advanced limit, and there is seen a group of busy miners black with gunpowder in shallow depths, blasting the rock to deepen the approach and strengthen the cover. How well they know their art. Not a head is seen above the young parapet and scarcely that of a hammer; but when a strong blow is required, up it goes and the sun sparkling on the burnished steel gives a mark to the enemy. Bullets from the screens are quickly fired and an occasional shot trundles in among them, but undauntedly they proceed, watchful as dogs, till at last the mine explodes. A volume of vapour affords another indication of their activity to the enemy. Shot and shell plunge on and tear up the ground, but the miners have flown to a distance and quietly await the cessation of the fire to resume their tasks. Walk over to the sailors’ battery where surely none but seamen may be seen. There, in truth, the blue jackets are in droves with their droll sayings and unsteady gait; but press forward. “Is that a marine?” “No, it’s a sapper trimming the parapet.” There, too, is another tricing up the flaccid cheeks of an embrasure; and beyond is a third giving position to platforms for sea-service mortars or naval guns. Go round that traverse: the universal man is there completing it; another is strengthening the parapet; another repairing the merlon; a fourth is in the right epaulment; a fifth in the left; a sixth is elsewhere constructing loopholes with barrels; others are revetting the works with tubs, casks, gabions, and hide-bags, while a couple of broad-backed miners are burrowing underground and driving a tunnel into the jaws of some convenient cavern. The tour is incomplete without a visit to the pits. Come with the night relief and see them. Jump into that screen; there again is the sapper enlarging loopholes or picking the rock to sink the pit. Plunge into the next one: there too is the military Tonson improving the cover with stones while the eager riflemen jostle him as they press forward to get a chance shot at some unwary Russian. Enter now the 21-gun battery where four magazines are rebuilding. The sappers are quite at home raising the frames by the sickly beams of a feeble siege lamp; but look, a flying stone has just broken the horn and the wind has extinguished the flame. Yet, undiscouraged, the sappers work away by feeling the points and bases of their timbers. Go where you will, in battery, trench, or mine, a sapper is the centre of each party toiling at his hazardous vocation through the long dark night. Daylight has returned. “What can that moaning noise be?” A 13-inch shell has dashed against a magazine and blown it up! The gunners are maimed, suffocated, or killed! and the timbers are either carried away or left charred and tottering on the rock. Run and see the effect. The magazine is a ruin, the ground smokes and burns, and the dead and mutilated are being borne away; but there again are the sappers tearing through the smouldering frames and fallen planks, examining the extent of the disaster and preparing for the restoration. “These men tho’ few in number seem everywhere and in everything. What can be their motto?” “Ubique quo fas et gloria ducunt!” “That accounts for it.”
At midnight on the 2nd May, a sapper was putting a new face to the embrasure of the flank gun in No. 8 battery, on the left attack, when a round shot ploughed the crest of the parapet on its right flank and struck down Lieutenant Carter of the engineers, killing at the same moment Lieutenant Curtis of the 46th regiment. The flying sand bespattered the workman but he was else unhurt. Quitting the embrasure, he sought by his attention to lighten, if possible, the mortal throes of his officer. In a few moments all was over, and the sapper, with grave sympathy, bore away the body of that brave young man to the camp.