Chapter One, The First Last Stand

Gilgamesh, they called me.  The King, the one who would never fall.  Like Achilles, they said.  But Achilles wasn’t invulnerable; even he suffered that single, ultimately fatal weakness.  And as we all do, I too have my own vice- old age.  With the ceaseless passing of the days, my strength has waned and my legend has become just that, a legend.  Once I was a proud public hero, standing tall before the cheering crowd.  Now, my creased skin and feeble body stand tribute to who I was, to who I will be remembered as.

I remember so many terrible, treacherous things that my eyes, now milky with age, once took in with a crystal clarity.  The men still fall, gurgling and screaming, the widows still cry out pitifully, the children still cling to their mother’s dress hems, not understanding but feeling a pain that is not really theirs.  In my dreams, men, comrades, dear, dear friends laugh and joke together, bowling spin-balls then grinning in triumph as their opponents lose a wicket, then later retiring to share a warming brandy in the comfort of such-and-such a clubhouse on countless wintry nights.  Then the scene shifts, and I see them, not much older, lying bloody and lifeless, corpses before their time.  Their smiles are replaced by limp, open jaws, their creased eyes wide with pain, fear and shock.  Each setting contains a friend, dead or dying, their lives pouring from so many wounds, knowing it is the end, their eyes betraying them as they make their final jokes with blood at their lips, or seeping from between their clutching fingers.  I crouch beside each one, hunched shoulders shaking as raw sobs escape my lips.  I sit beside them calling out their names and knowing that they cannot hear, that they never will again.  I wake up in a cold sweat, shouting out their names, crying for ‘help, someone, please!’, every night the same.

But there are good times in there too, hidden at the back of the drawer of memories.  Shared secrets before battles, joking about them afterwards.  Furtive glances conveying mirth in a new commander or member of our team of soldiers.  Kissing my Victoria, whose gentle lips have not graced mine for fifteen years now, beneath the tinkling chandelier at the ball where I asked her for her hand, but above all the countless awakenings to find myself battered and bruised, sometimes with injuries so severe that I never fully recovered from them, but nonetheless alive, if not always wholly well.

One of the clearest of all the memories left is the morning of the Charge, the Battle of Balaklava; one I’d be glad to lose, in truth.  It was my first real experience of military action, the same year I signed on.  That one battle taught me all I know- of how men just twenty years of age can become ninety overnight, how the commander can make or break a battle, the feeling of losing a dear friend, or even just an acquaintance, seeing them die before your eyes, or at your feet, and most of all how it feels when your heart beats so hard that you hear every thump, and your lungs feel as if they will explode, and you can feel the seconds of your life running out, like the last grains of sand in an hourglass.

We were waiting, restless, the 4^th Light Dragoons- my second family.  We were eager to see the action, fools that we were.  To look upon the scene at close range, we seemed to all the world like just another a group of friends, playing catch with an old cricket ball someone found, chewing on tobacco, a spot of gambling on the side, a round of cards here and there, sitting outside our haphazard tents on crates and knapsacks.

I can still see the hand of cards I held, playing vingt-et-un with Harry, a veteran of countless conflicts at just thirty-two years old.  Between the calloused fingers of my left hand hung a foul cheroot, a recommendation of Colonel Paget’s to calm the nerves before the inevitably approaching battle.  In my other hand I held two cards; the ten of hearts and the six of spades.  Harry was chivvying me impatiently to ‘make a damn’d decision, boy!’ when the sudden arrival of a panting, wild-eyed messenger put our game to an effective end.  He swung down from his sweating mount, and gasped: "Lord Raglan wishes the Cavalry to advance rapidly to the front, follow the enemy, and try to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns. Troop Horse Artillery may accompany. French Cavalry is on your left. Immediate."  The messenger was Captain Nolan, looking more flustered than I’d ever seen him before.  He spoke as clearly as he could, considering his breathless state, but though his voice was steady, he could not entirely conceal the worry that clouded his eyes.

Of course, the other men and I cheered and toasted our luck, ‘At last!  Now we shall show the Russians what it means to fight!’, but secretly our innards were quaking with fear, and we had to struggle to steady the quavering hands that held our drinks as we toasted.  At least, I know that’s how I felt.  In that instant, I looked to the far end of the valley and almost broke down, as my wide eyes took in the hordes of blue-coated Russians standing in wait, a pale sea of Death.  I felt physically sickened at the prospect.

Heart fluttering, I turned to Harry.  His steel-grey eyes were hard, his lips set in a thin, determined line.  He noticed my gaze on him and smiled wanly.  “Come, lad, share a drink with me?  It isn’t often you go into battle so forewarned.”  He held out a dead-steady hand holding an embossed hip-flask.  I took a sip and almost choked, coughing as my throat burned.  Harry gave me a crooked grin.  “Vodka, lad.  Ruski brew, but capital for false courage and foolhardiness.  It’s my guess we’ll not be ungrateful for either before long.”  He sighed then, and headed off to ready his horse and check his arsenal.  I took his lead, checking the edge of my sabre was keen and re-tightening the straps around my horse’s belly.

We mounted up, eventually, and whether it was the Russian drink or the agonising wait that did it I don’t know, but I was all too pleased to be in action at last.  With George Paget at our head, we awaited the readiness of the other brigades and then, sabres held high in the icy sun, we were away!

As we charged, I looked across at our band of maybe six hundred desperate men, all told.  The ‘thin red line’, we were called, and a more apt description I have never yet found.  We were a tiny force, compared with the Russians, charging pell-mell ‘into the jaws of Death’, as Tennyson has since written.  What hope had we of victory, even of survival?

Yet we rode on, the guns on either side and ahead pounding at us, men falling and being trampled by the friends they called out to for help.  The horses reared and whinnied, terror clear in the rolling whites of their eyes.  Blood sprayed as men were shot at, bodies carpetting the valley floor.  And still on we rode.  The noise, of cannon-fire and screams and cries, and final breaths and hopeless prayers, the smell of gunpowder almost overwhelmed by the stink of Death; it was unbearable, and that doomed charge still haunts me, to this day.

I saw men fall from their horses greivously wounded, yet rise to face their opponents, even exchange blows, before collapsing in a lifeless heap of blood, bones and indignity.

At the front of the charge rode Lord Cardigan, already at the enemy.  He swung his sabre majestically, bellowing oaths until red in the face, opponents falling as he cut left and right.  I was just thinking ‘What a fine fellow, to so bravely fight the Cossacks, his fury the embodiment of the outrage of all Englishmen!’, or something on that tack, when he swung about his horse and rode in the reverse direction, through our advancing line.  At first, I thought he was going to charge them at the guns, getting a run-up at the embankments, but as the distance between Lord Haw-Haw and the action grew, it dawned on me that he was  fleeing, leaving us to battle on without a commander.  The swine, that villainous cad, what kind of a man was he?  How could he even consider retreat, with the honour of England herself at stake?

I turned red with anger at this barbarous behaviour, our own commander as good as helping the enemy with his blind betrayal, and spurred on my own mount toward the gun batteries.  ‘By George,’ thought I, ‘let’s see if this young blood can’t recover some of old England’s glory!’  I charged on, breaking rank and swiping madly at the Russians on either side as I broke through the first line of gunners.

Swinging about to survey the rest of the battle, I was dismayed to see nothing but death and disarray, our noble few scattered to the four winds and fighting with hopeless determination the seemingly limitless foes, as blue figures enclosed each pocket of faltering resistance.  I urged my steed back down the embankment, and galloped into the thick of the fray, roaring “God save the Queen!”

I ducked as a sabre flashed toward me, and swung around my right arm to parry the blow.  The rocking motion unsteadied my already hysterical mount, which stumbled and fell head-along over a bloody corpse, the head stoved in and half the face a mass of burnt flesh and congealing blood.  I was catapulted from my seat and landed with an agonising crash near to where a couple of British soldiers, not of my regiment, were desperately battling the Cossacks, back-to-back and greatly outnumbered.

I pulled myself up, or at least tried to.  To my absolute horror, my left leg would not take my weight; I couldn’t walk!  But the battlefield is no place for a quiet sit down, not alive at any rate, so I gritted my teeth against the torrent of curses that threatened to escape my cracked lips, and used the still-warm body of my fallen horse to pull myself upright.  Standing, barely, I pushed off from the corpse, propelling myself toward the faltering duo.  I fell into a Cossack, worst luck, but managed to escape his grasp by flailing wildly at him with my sabre, the pain in my leg overruling all martial training.  One of the two men darted forward and dragged me to his companion, supporting me on his shoulder as we three battled on.  I could tell by our sluggish reactions that we would not last much longer in this manner, and felt sure we were done for, and though I confided none of this burden to the two men either side of me, they too must have known.

Suddenly, a mounted figure spurred towards us- it was one of the 11^th!  We were saved!  But even as relief blossomed in my heart it began to wither and die away, as I realised that he could not take us all; there was only room for one more on his approaching horse.

A sharp shot cracked nearby, echoing through my skull even still, when I dream of the soldier’s face contorting, bloody patches flowering across his chest, his life pumping out of the hole in his torso, dead even before he hit the ground.  His horse kept coming toward us a awhile, before slowing and stamping nervously amid the slaughter, searching for an authority figure amongst the mayhem of human carnage.

Thinking quickly, I took charge of my two companions, both of whom were my senior, as I recall, ordering them to back up to a close-by mound of bodies, and once there I grasped for a handhold, steadying myself to free up the man supporting me.  I learned his name after that battle, not by his own lips, and it is one of the great regrets of my life that we were never friends, although I mourn for him every day.  “Take the horse!”  I yelled over the hellish clangour.  “Go now!  Flee, together!”  I cried frantically.  Why did they not go?  “Save yourselves, I’ll hold off this lot until you can get away!”  It was a brave speech, and it costs me little to admit that it was nought but a string of pretty, hollow words; we all three of us knew that I was in no state to survive a lone stand, even for a few seconds let alone long enough to give them a head start.  My comrades shook their heads grimly, and they must have known that they were condemning themselves with the simple gesture.  They were true heroes.  Getting impatient, I snapped “Listen.  Like as not, I’ll not make it through this anyhow.  I couldn’t mount the horse, much less ride it with this leg, whatever the devil I’ve done to it.  Even if I did survive, through some miracle, what then?  A lame soldier’s no use to anyone.  Better I go out here, under my own terms and doing some good.  You two take that horse, quick afore it’s shot by some Ruski gunner.  Take it and ride for the end of the valley, where the fighting and guns don’t reach.  Alright?”  I hissed as a fresh wave of pain rushed up my calf, and bit down on my tongue to maintain control.  The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth.  They looked about to object, so I waved my arm toward the horse, and turned my back on them, facing up to the Russians who we’d been battling the all while, throughout our argument.  I felt a hasty pat on my shoulder, then I was alone, one leg beyond use and my strength rapidly evaporating.  I grinned at the Cossacks as I fought them manically, my teeth painted a vivid red by the blood from my tongue.  I must have looked a rare sight; the demonic Englishman, whose mouth shone red with blood.

I believe I slew maybe two men before succumbing, a feat in itself in my condition.  The third man was a muscle-bound machine, raining blow upon blow down on me until I faltered, missing a swing for my midriff.  The solid blade drove deep into my flesh, the burning agony overwhelming, comparable to no other experience.  I still have the scar of that particular encounter- a long slender curve that runs from my chest to my waist, from my back round to near my navel.  It is one of which I am especially proud, and show it off frequently in the steam rooms at the multitude of clubs of which I now call myself a member.

Black blotches spattered across my vision, and I swung my sabre weakly, as another stroke jabbed in below my ribs, narrowly missing a lung, as I was informed after the battle.

I had no real comprehension then, of events unfolding outside of that ring of Russians, or even of what my various injuries had done, the damage I had sustained.  I just knew that when I came to, head thick and ringing with the sound of a thousand cannon, I was on an uncomfortable cot, a scratchy blanket thrown over my prone figure.  I could hear the sounds of a busy world continuing without me and felt very small, the shouting voices with angry words and urgent pleas for assistance, the clatter of metal on metal, and in the background the perpetual cracks of gunshot.