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Based on a painting by Adolphe Yvon (1817-1893)
Adventure, December 1911, with
"The Blooding of the Ninth Queen's Own"
THE officer commanding the Ninth Queen's Own Regiment was known to everybody except his own men as Colonel Payne. His men called him "Mother." He knew that, of course, for a man who has a nickname bestowed on him is bound to overhear it at some time or another; but if the truth is to be told he rather liked it.
If he had guessed that a certain meed of good-natured contempt had helped the rank and file to choose his nickname he would have been right; perhaps he knew it. But at least it proved that the men appreciated the loving care that he squandered on the regiment.
The other officers, who had come for the most part from other regiments and had ideas of their own on the coddling of fighting men, rather chafed under it; most officers refer to their colonel as the "old man;" they referred privately to Colonel Payne as the "old woman," a term including all the men's contempt without any of the genuine regard which the nickname "Mother" implied.
But common soldiers were treated rather worse than convicted felons, as a rule, in those days, so the rank and file of the Ninth Queen's Own considered themselves singularly fortunate in having a Colonel who troubled himself about them off parade. They were disposed to accept with a good grace all the coddling that would come their way and they repaid his kindness with a devotion that they spared their other officers. If they called him "Mother" and laughed at his protruding stomach, they loved him.
He remembered what the other officers of the regiment occasionally forgot—that the Ninth Queen's Own were not considered fighting men. In the whole history of the regiment they had not once been on active service. They had been christened the Queen's Own for services rendered, it is true, but the services were not of a kind to fill a throbbing page of history.
When a German princeling had succeeded to the throne of England, they had marched to the London docks to meet his German Consort and had escorted her with all pomp and circumstance to Buckingham Palace. She had been vastly taken with their crimson uniforms, the precision of their drill and the courtesy of their commanding officer and had begged a distinction for them; so blue facings were added to their crimson tunics and their title was changed from the Ninth Foot to the Ninth Queen's Own Light Infantry. After that, prettier and more plastered up with pipe-clay and better drilled than ever, the regiment had settled down to a life of case and luxury, mounting palace guards and performing other unwarlike duties.
But the Queen Consort lost favor with her lord and master, and with her declining influence, the glory of her particular regiment faded too. She retired into virtual seclusion and the Queen's Own went back to its depot in Lancashire to rust and be forgotten, while regiments with a fighting record were sent for to take its place.
KING succeeded king and colonel succeeded colonel; but a regiment never dies. The Ninth Queen's Own lived on in Lancashire, recruiting broad-shouldered, sturdy little men amid the clanging looms and grimy collieries, drilling them, keeping them five-and-twenty years and turning them adrift again to starve in due conformity with the written law of England.
Officers purchased their commissions in those days and, provided, of course, that there were vacancies, they had the purchaser's choice of regiments. As England is never out of war for more than thirty years or so, it became the fashion for officers who had no stomach for fighting to exchange into the Ninth; it had come to be regarded its a regiment of non-combatants, very suitable for officers of slender means and those whose wives and children caused them to look askance at the risks of war.
The County society was passable and the uniform was smart and becoming. It was a fine position for a gentleman of moderate means to hold a commission in the Ninth. So the regiment was never short of officers of a certain sort and, recruiting as it did amid the fluctuating ebb and flow of Lancashire prosperity, it was never short of men.
They flocked to the colors when trade was bad and when trade revived they had to stay with the colors, for there was no escaping from the twenty-five years' contract that they had made with their country. Once with the colors, they had to stay with them until their time was up.
BUT their colors meant nothing to that regiment. Men will fight to the death for a flag that has the names of battles on it; but the colors of the Ninth were blank. They were very pretty—crimson and gold and blue—and they had been presented to them by the Queen Consort whose name they bore; but they stood for no tradition of hard-won victory; nobody had ever rallied round them on a stricken field; they were baubles that looked pretty on parade, like the men's uniforms.
But the day came when England joined hands with her ancient enemy, France, and set out to humble the Czar of Russia. Regiment after regiment was sent to the Crimea to starve and freeze and rot and waste away to nothing before the ravages of disease and battle, until the whole of England's standing army, save only the Ninth Queen's Own was at the seat of war. Then somebody remembered the Ninth and they too were torn from a weeping depot and shipped over-sea as food for powder. It was thought a dark day for Merrie England when only the Ninth Queen's Own was left to send.
IT was a grilling day in summer when they landed on the shore of the Black Sea. The Alma and Inkerman and the Charge of Balaklava were already history, and they marched for the whole of a weary day past a trail of broken wagons and horses' skeletons and long six-foot trenches where the French and English dead lay buried.
They landed—Colonel and brand-new colors, bugles and bright uniforms—with accepted theories on the pomp and circumstance of war, and they saw war with the curtain raised and the horrors untoned-down by distance.
Most of the other regiments at the front had started square; they had landed on green fields and clean, rolling hill and valley; the countryside had grown into a shambles gradually and they had grown used to it in the process. But the Ninth marched straight into the shambles and, all green as they were, saw the last act first, and smelt it. From the Colonel downward they were out of love with war when they reached the camp before Sebastopol.
The General to whose brigade they were assigned inspected them the moment they arrived. He was a hard-bitten, level-headed veteran, who knew how to read the hearts of men and handle them and send them cheering in front of him to certain death; so he read the condition of the Ninth in half a minute. There was no mistaking the meaning of the white faces that were lined up in two long ranks in front of him; he determined to split up the men of this new regiment before sending them into the firing-line; he would draft them by half companies to other regiments and let them face the enemy with experienced men on either side of them. Then, when they were broken in, he could reassemble them and use them together as a fighting unit.
BUT war is war and an enemy with his back to the wall has no consideration for the feelings of green regiments or the intentions of Generals of brigade. The Russians were beleaguered in Sebastopol, but not surrounded. They were besieged on two sides at once, but their rear was open and they would come out when they wished and fight in the open when it pleased them. And the Russian General was a man who was very pleased to fight whenever the occasion offered, but particularly when the enemy least expected it.
On the night of the Ninth's arrival, before there was time to divide them by half-companies among the other regiments, the Russians moved out of Sebastopol in force and occupied a long, ragged hill that overlooked both the French and the English camps.
When morning broke, their guns could be seen in position on the hill-top, and long gray-clad lines of infantry were drawn up in readiness to hold the point of vantage they had seized. Their guns were in range of both camps and for the first time in the history of the campaign, the French and English generals were at one in their opinion. The Russians must be driven from that hill at any cost and without delay.
The French agreed to work round to the north side while the British artillery engaged the Russians from the south; then, when the French were in position, and at a given signal, there was to be a combined attack from both sides at once.
So the Ninth Queen's Own found themselves drawn up for battle within forty-eight hours of their arrival at the front.
THEY were posted on the left wing and held in reserve; though stationed a little in front of the brigade, there were two low hills between which they could shelter until they were wanted and where they could neither see the Russians nor be seen by them.
For twelve long hours the Queen's Own lay there and wondered what was happening, while shell and shrapnel shrieked and moaned and burst overhead and musketry rattled and volleyed on every side of them. They were at least getting accustomed to the noise of battle.
Of all the regiment, only Colonel Payne could see what was going on. He lay prone on the top of the lowest of the two small hills and what he saw appalled him. He watched his own brigade more than he watched the Russians, and the brigade's maneuvers resembled the writhing and twisting of a tortured animal. For the Russians had the range and the brigade had to wait and endure their cannonade so that the French might have time to march into position on the far side.
The British artillery replied with interest, but then, even less than now, could guns be left to their own devices in the open. Infantry were needed to protect them from the fire of infantry and to guard them against surprise, so for twelve long hours the shattered remnants of seven regiments that had fought at Inkerman writhed and squirmed under the hail of ordnance.
Unlike the Ninth Queen's Own, who were newly-landed, these regiments were worn by disease and hunger; they were skilled in the art of campaigning and steady from long experience under fire, but disease and hunger had left their unfailing mark.
Men who had stormed the heights of Inkerman in the cold gray morning, and were later to win immortal fame storming the Great Redan, were growing sulky and disheartened under a fire that they had to endure standing. At first their officers were hard put to it to hold them back; they wanted to rush through the zone of fire and storm the Russian position without waiting for the French. Then, under the awful punishment, they grew disheartened. When the time came for the combined attack and the bugles rang out for a general advance there were none to obey. The whole line stood still and hesitated and the officers got behind their men to stop them from stampeding.
Then Colonel Payne saw that his hour for action had arrived and he stood up where he had been lying on the hill-top. The men of a seasoned regiment would have stayed as they were, huddled between the hills, and waited for the word of command, but when a wounded officer reeled through the drifting smoke, reined up his panting charger and handed a crumpled piece of paper to the Colonel, they rose like one man, took their dressing by the right and came to attention.
"Your orders, sir!" said the galloper; then he sat on his horse and watched the movements of the inexperienced men with an expression on his face that was half contemptuous.
The Colonel read the despatch, slipped it in his pocket and nodded. He was right. His hour had come. He saw that his men were standing, lined up already in close order waiting for him, company by company, officers in front and sergeants behind, and his mind was made up on the instant.
He thought that the men who called him "Mother" would maybe follow him. The regiment was to be blooded at last and he would blood them to some purpose. All he had to do was to keep command of himself; if he flinched the men would flinch; if he marched forward bravely the men would march bravely behind him and there would be the name of a battle emblazoned on those virgin colors before the next campaign.
"Fix—bayonets!" he ordered.
Green they might be, but they had learned their drill. They fixed their wicked, gleaming, triangular-shaped spikes with a mechanical precision that would have put any modern regiment, in any country in the world, to shame; two or three years spent in learning manual drill were not considered wasted in the days when men were enlisted for twenty-five years' service.
"Slope—Arms! Move to the right in fours! Form—Fours! Right—Turn! By the left-Quick—March!"
With the steady tramp of well-drilled men the Ninth Queen's Own marched out from the shelter of the two hills, colors flying and their crimson tunics and burnished buttons glittering in the sun—like a regiment going on parade.
NOT one of them, except the Colonel, had seen a man killed yet. They had heard the shrapnel moaning and screaming for half a day and had grown used to it; but they were as green as on the day they landed in everything but that.
"I suppose it's all in the day's work," muttered the galloper who watched them, "but it looks like a shame!" Then he turned and looked again at the brigade that he had left,or rather, at the sulky, shattered half of it that remained.
The men were still refusing to advance. The roar and thunder of the French attack could be heard plainly above the din of musketry, and their officers were urging them to charge. As he watched them, one regiment broke into a half-hearted cheer and advanced at the double—slowed into a walk—halted one by one—looked round to see who followed them—turned round and ran, leaving their officers to face the music alone, but taking their colors with them.
Colonel Payne saw that. He saw it as his regiment filed out in column of fours on to the plain. If his men saw it, he feared they would run, too, for they were out alone now, three hundred yards or more in front of the brigade and headed in two long, thin columns for the Russian position. He did all he could to prevent them from looking round, nagging at them for marching carelessly and making the sergeants nag them.
He kept them so busy keeping their dressing between fours that they had no time to think of anything else. For the same reason he postponed altering his formation until the last possible minute; in fours they would look ahead of them, in company formation they would glance from right to left to keep their dressing; and a man who glances from right to left can often see what is happening behind him.
When his own courage failed him, he recalled his written orders word by word and thought of the honor that would be the regiment's if he could only hold his men together. He knew as well as the General who had written them and the galloper who had brought them that this was work for an army of veterans. There was not much skill needed—only nerve and unflinching courage, two qualities that a green regiment might be expected to lack.
"Advance," the Brigadier had written, "if you can get your men to do it. The whole brigade is utterly demoralized and I shall have to retire before I can pull the men together again. The retreat is likely to become a rout unless you can cover it, so advance as far as possible, engage the enemy and hold them in check as long as you can. Then fall back on the brigade. But remember, if your men break and run, the situation will be worse than ever, so hold their noses up to the enemy until the last possible minute and when you do retire, retire in good order."
It was rough on Colonel Payne, all things considered, for he knew and understood. It was obvious to him that his regiment was being sacrificed to save the rest, and for a man who has never in his life been under fire, it is no light ordeal to lead eight hundred other men on what is plainly a forlorn hope.
So, although he seemed to be marching very bravely at the head of his regiment, it was really a very sick and sorry little Colonel—that straight-backed, fatherly-looking, gray-haired little man, who strutted pompously and never once dared look behind him. He was afraid that if he did look behind him, his men would flinch.
Each time a shell shrieked overhead, he thought of his wife and children, certain in his own mind that he would never see them again. Each time he brought his mind back to the regiment with an effort.
The Russian gunners had been practising on the brigade all day and had got the range effectually. Those were the days of smooth bores and high trajectories and as the Ninth Queen's Own advanced, the shell and shrapnel described a high arc over their heads and left them untouched. As yet, they were out of range of musket-fire.
Over to the right, the Russian infantry had been pushed forward and were working their way round to enfilade the British; but the French attack on the far side kept most of the Russians busy and the advancing infantry were not strong enough to dare a struggle at close quarters. They were waiting for the artillery to advance the demoralization of the British brigade another stage before rushing in to finish matters.
BEFORE anybody in the Russian army realized that a British regiment, alone and unsupported, was advancing to the attack, the Ninth Queen's Own was already half-way across the intervening space—marching at the slope, keeping perfect step and unmolested.
Then four regiments of infantry deployed into line and moved down the hill to attend to it and a battery of artillery tried hastily to find the range. But haste was not conducive to range-finding in the days when muzzle-loading cannon used to jump back a yard or so each time that they were fired. Most of the shells continued screaming overhead.
Then one gunner got the range by accident and a dropping shell cut a swath corner-wise through the ranks of the left-hand column, felling nine men. The Russian infantry, still advancing, opened fire at about eight hundred yards. That was long-range work for those days, but it seemed to Colonel Payne that they meant coming closer. They were moving down the hill toward him, rushing forward, then halting to fire, then rushing forward again. Here was his place to stand, if he meant to cover the retreat of the brigade.
"By companies on number one!" he roared. "Front, form!"
The two columns swung round into one long, double line of red, colors flying in the middle; but as they swung round he saw that every single man took one good look behind him and he knew then that the regiment saw what had happened.
He decided on the instant to advance again. If he halted where he was, he felt certain they would fade away and run before the advancing Russians; advancing, he might hold them together a while yet, but he had no more faith in them than a nervous rider has in his horse.
"Forward, the Queen's Own!" he ordered, stepping out bravely in front of them; and they advanced with a ready swing all together that took him rather by surprise. He began to feel better with that solid tramp—tramp—tramp behind him.
Then some one blew the charge. He gave no orders for it, but a corporal snatched the bugle away from a company bugler and blew it with all his might. He glanced round angrily and saw that the whole regiment was grinning. A yell went up that shook the ground in front of him, bayonets came down to the charge without a word from any one and he found himself running for his life with a hedge of glistening bayonets behind him.
The Russian infantry opened fire now in real earnest and a volley swept through the ranks of the Ninth and left a dozen gaps in its wake.
"Close in on the center!" roared somebody—certainly not the Colonel.
"Forward, the Queen's Own!" roared a color-sergeant.
"Hurrah!" roared the men and "R-r-i-p" went a volley through the middle of them and "Rah! Hurrah!" they answered, as they swung forward and closed in to fill up gaps and charged like a regiment of devils.
They were right on the Russians now—at the foot of the hill, starting to charge up it, and volley after volley came smashing into them.
"Forward, the Queen's Own!" roared the color-sergeant again; "Come on, six of you, fend for Mother!"
Six of them, three on either hand, guarded him with a moving hedge of bayonets and the color-sergeant, with one arm pushing him behind but with his sword-arm free, helped him forward up the hill.
Then they met the Russians with a crash and a cheer and the sickening sound of steel on steel; and still they went forward, their colors bobbing and swaying on the hill-side, as they fought their way up it, closing in always on the center to fill up gaps.
A Russian officer picked out Colonel Vayne and engaged him. Swordsmanship was far from being the Colonel's strong point and the Russian made a pass or two and had his measure; then he swung for him with the old seventh cut, that is safe to use on a beginner. It cuts a man from skull to chin-bone. But one of Mother's inner-guard took the cut on the locking-ring of his bayonet and the color-sergeant's sword licked out past the Colonel's ear and split the Russian as a cook's knife splits a herring—lengthwise.
"Forward, the Queen's Own!" roared the color-sergeant.
THE Russians were eight or nine to one against them and had the hill in their favor. Weight was bound to tell in the end; but the Ninth closed in on the center again and pushed forward. They were at it with the butt now, swinging it round their heads and bringing it down with a crash that broke through guard and forearm and skull of the man in front of it.
The Lancashireman prefers the butt at close quarters, just as he prefers to use his feet before his fist. These green, unseasoned soldiers had forgotten most of their drill now; they were fighting in the way that came natural, and the Russians retired doggedly, but steadily, in front of them.
"Room in front, sir!" the color-sergeant yelled, lunging forward and skewering a Russian officer; then he pushed his Colonel into the gap he had made and the three soldiers on either side of him kicked and thrust and hacked until they were abreast of him again and their bayonets once more protected him from harm.
Not a shot was being fired on either side; they were at too close quarters and there was no time to load. It was shove and thrust and hack, crashing butts and flickering sword-thrusts and, above all, the cheers of the Ninth Queen's Own and the thunder of the ordnance that still pounded the brigade in their rear.
Nobody noticed that the colors were missing. The subaltern who carried them lay dead a hundred yards back down the hill and the colors lay underneath his body. They had forgotten all about them. They closed in on their Colonel, the little man that had petted them and spoilt them at the depot at home; he did mean something to them; they fought for him and rallied round him and guarded him as though he were holier than all the regimental colors in history.
"Get in front of him, you six!" roared the color-sergeant. They were not the same six, for four of them lay dying on the hillside, but others had replaced them on the instant and never for a minute were there less than three on either hand to parry every blow that was aimed at him. They obeyed the color-sergeant without question and presently the Colonel found a living wedge in front of him—a wedge that fought and swore and struggled and forced a passage for him up the hill and through the Russian ranks.
"Come on, four more of you!" roared the color-sergeant. "Up with him; lift him up; up the hill with him!"
Four sturdy little privates seized him on the word and hoisted him above their shoulders. The Colonel kicked and swore and ordered them to let him down again; but they held him tight. Then he missed the colors.
'The colors!" he screamed. "Where are the colors?"
"Dom the colors!" answered one of them. "Keep still, thee owd fool, or thy Missus'll never see thee back hoam again!" And the four of them grabbed him in a united grip that made him keep still whether he wanted to or not.
Then he screwed his head round and looked behind him and, where the brigade had been, was nothing. The brigade was half-way to the hill, racing in a long, red line. The sight of a green regiment showing them the way had been too much for even beaten men. They were coming on in silence—the most awful thing there is, an army bent on wiping out disgrace.
They kept no guard over their Colonels, but their colors were protected by the steadiest and best men they had, as they swept on and up the hill in front of them, silent as the sword of death.
"They're coming!" shouted the Colonel. "The brigade's coming! Forward, the Queen's Own!"
"They're cooming! The cowards are cooming!" roared the color-sergeant. "Forward, lads! Forward, the Queen's Own! Show 'em the way, lads!"
Then the roar of the French attack sounded plainer and Russian bugles blared above the turmoil. Suddenly the ranks in front of them broke and ran, for the French had stormed the hill behind them and the Russians were between two foes.
When they reached the top, the Frenchmen drove them down again, to perish on the bayonets of the oncoming brigade. A few laid down their arms, but most of them died on the hill-side. One-third of the Russian force that had occupied the hill broke away toward Sebastopol, leaving their guns behind them and, since neither French nor English had any cavalry to pursue them, they made good their retreat.
COLONEL PAYNE was on the hilltop before he knew it, surrounded by the shouting, cheering remnants of his regiment. They set him on his feet beside a Russian cannon and he sat down on the trunnion of it, bewildered and half-fainting.
"You dogs!" he mumbled; "you damned, good-for-nothing darlings! God! I'm proud of you!"
He dropped his sword and held his head between his two hands to keep it from going round. The color-sergeant seized the sword immediately. He was bleeding from a ghastly-looking wound in his left arm and he wet the sword-blade in the blood that flowed from it. Then he held it out in front of him, hilt first.
"Your sword, sir; you dropped it!"
The Colonel looked up and took it. Then he saw the blood on it and looked at it, half-puzzled.
"You got him finely, sir," said the color-sergeant respectfully.
But the Colonel still looked puzzled.
"Aye," said a private standing by, nudging the man next to him. "I seed un too! Cut uns yead oppen an' killed un dead, he did!"
In less than a minute the Colonel remembered what had never happened and believed that he had killed a man; and his regiment would have rather witnessed the feeling of pride it brought him than have received an increase of pay. It was all he could do to stop them from hoisting him shoulder-high again.
Then,suddenly, he remembered the colors, and a dozen men were sent running down the hill to look for them. They found them where they had fallen and brought them up the hill quite casually and clearly caring nothing for them; but when the General commanding the brigade reached the hilltop their colors were in their midst where they ought to be and the incident passed unnoticed amid the thousand and one incidents of that memorable day.
COLONEL PAYNE received a medal for that day's work and "Mother's medal" meant more to his regiment than even the word "Sebastopol" that was in due course emblazoned on their erstwhile virgin colors. But be retired when the war was over. The men who went home with him were barely sufficient to form a nucleus for fresh recruits, and when a year or two had passed Mother was little more than a legend.
That regiment has the names of so many battles on its colors to-day that they have had to add streamers that hang down on either side to take the overflow of names—each one a record of gallantry in action.
But that one name "Sebastopol" is the one that is shown most reverently and taught most carefully to newly-joined recruits. They are taught to remember the day when the Ninth Queen's Own were green, and how they stormed a hillside single-handed and made a whipped brigade come back again.
If the day ever does come when the Ninth Queen's Own are found to flinch in the presence of an enemy, human nature will nave so changed that tradition has no more value in training recruits, and men will no longer fight for the undying glory of their regiment. Until it does come, the Ninth are likely to be a pretty useful sort of stiffening to any army.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.