Tales From The Sergeant's Pack: A Charity Anthology For St Luke's Hospice by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Rosemary Tree Press
Published: 2016-07-17T16:00:00+00:00

AUGUST 27th

Jacqueline Reiter

Middelburg, on the island of Walcheren

September 1809

The guard was changing as Rear-Admiral Sir Richard Keats entered the Abbey courtyard. Uncertain on his land-legs after several days on board the Superb, and reluctant to enter the red-brick building, Keats leaned against the weathered paint of the portico to watch them. The new guard and his escort moved with precision. Their feet struck the uneven brick paving in unison, but something was wrong with the way they held themselves. In the shadow of the Abbey's tall, pointed towers, many of the men shivered as though it were a winter's day, their faces as yellow as their woollen coat facings.

One of the men in the second row teetered and dropped his musket. The sound of metal on brick rebounded off the surrounding walls. The soldier turned and walked, hunch-backed, towards Keats. He made it about halfway before dropping to one knee, then the other, lowering his head onto the bricks beneath his feet, like one of the Abbey's medieval monks bowing to the altar at mass. Behind him, the escort closed ranks with the silence of despair.

As Keats walked past the stricken man, he heard him mutter, “Help me.”

“The regimental surgeon will see to you,” Keats said. “I can do nothing.”

In truth, he thought, as he entered the Abbey, this man, if he survived, was one of the lucky ones. He would be sent home to England with the rest of the sick. He, Keats, had to remain. He wanted nothing more than to leave, for anywhere was better than this hell-hole: but, until he received orders to leave his station, the only way to escape from Walcheren was to fall ill.

Inside the Abbey, the same sense of futility hung about the Commander-in-Chief's headquarters like smoke on the gundeck. Officers ran from room to room in bright scarlet, clutching packets of gold-edged foolscap as though keeping busy might take their minds off their situation. They all looked determined, as though their business were of paramount importance, as though the forty thousand men and six hundred ships of the expedition were just leaving England and not on the point of inglorious return.

The eyes of the orderly in Lord Chatham's anteroom who took Keats' name and business were full of scorn. Keats fought his concern with the aplomb of the quarterdeck. The contents of the 3 September Gazette were clearly known to all, and what else could he expect, after the publication of Strachan's wretched letter of August 27th? The flatboats being assembled, and every necessary arrangement made … I had already, in the most unqualified manner, offered every naval assistance in aid of every other operation of the army. The words burned in Keats' mind like the glow of priming a moment before emptying a broadside into the enemy. No wonder the military men were angry.

Not for the first time, Keats wished his superior had agreed to come to headquarters himself to report. As, indeed, he ought to have done, but Strachan

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