Inferno

Chapter 65

Dear David … A wistful memory of his brother, so hard and tall in his stern naval uniform, floated into Ensign Maynard’s mind. He’d never written to him before: at home there hadn’t seemed to be anything to talk about that could stand next to the sea adventures his brother must be having. But now he desperately needed to share the titanic events of the day with someone who understood.

His young fellow officers were not the sort to explore feelings or reflect on deep affairs. They laughed off even the worst with some offhand understatement and treated the whole thing like schoolboys on a prank.

Most certainly his mother and father must never know what he’d seen that day.

I do hope you are well and … Just what did you write to someone who might recently have been in a great sea-fight, valiantly defending the expedition?

This is to tell you the news. We landed successfully at Vedb?k against no opposition, a great show in which I played my part in taking the colours to-But would David want to know how it had felt to be the one charged with such an honour, to be looked on by the whole regiment from the colonel down? Probably not. The navy’s flags were much vaster in size and were flown by the ship, not an individual.

I spent the night at the Crown Prince’s winter palace! Not as you might say an entertainment. The bed was very indifferent, it smelt of horse dung. That is, as we made bivouac in the sand of the riding stables, he added hastily, to explain to one who knew only a hammock. He scratched his head in irritation. This was not going right. It was sounding like one of the subalterns at mess. Better to get on to the real matter.

Next day we marched through a pretty enough country until we found our place in the line, where we set up camp, the Danes still shy of a mill. It was only hours ago but the time that separated the Ensign Maynard of then and now was a chasm. So ardent, proud and unsure, to now … In the afternoon, however, I went forward on picquet duty. All was quiet, but then … His first hearing of a shot fired in anger. The heart-freezing sight of an enemy whose sworn duty was to kill him…. we took fire from Danish light forces on the loose. When he’d had to find within himself the stature of an officer and beat down his anxieties to take life-and-death decisions that affected all around him.

As it turned out, they were scouts for the main force coming up on us. That lurching moment of dread when half a thousand men burst into view to form line of advance, and what were his orders? Thank God he’d given the right ones. We had a pretty time of it peppering their flanks. The sight of a human body with the life torn out of it, the questioning of his own humanity when he had gone on to kill a man, a stranger, a living being.

I fancy it would have gone hard for us if our regiment had not turned out to see off the Danes in fine style. Never would he forget the stab of stark terror as realisation dawned that they would be trapped in full view against an open field because he’d failed in his duty to establish a firm line of retreat when deploying. Or the intoxicating relief at the vision of his comrades-in-arms in warlike array joining battle – such a magnificent sight!

Then to camp and a welcome for a hero! There. Finished. It was so much more grateful to the feelings to let it all out, and now David would know how it had been for him in the fires of combat.

Perhaps the last bit was not quite as it had been. To be truthful, no one had seemed interested in where he’d been or what he’d endured. And far from a massive counter-attack to drive them back to the sea, the regimental diary would describe it as an armed reconnaissance in some numbers that had driven in the picquets, but which had then been beaten off by reinforcements for trifling loss.

Crestfallen, he had ambled about camp until Sergeant Heyer had seen him and gruffly suggested that, as the field kitchens and officers’ conveniences had not yet been set up, he was welcome to join them at the light company’s stirabout.

And there he entered into the fellowship of the soldier on campaign, ladling out the pieces of boiled beef, thickened by peas and lentils, crushed army biscuits and greasy flour dumplings, and in the comradely darkness by the fire hearing tales of other times and places where British soldiers had fought and endured for the honour of their king and country and a shilling a day – less deductions.

As he took his leave Ensign Maynard knew that there was nowhere else in this earthly existence he would rather be.