TEARS OF THE FOOT GUARDS

RONDO - STAVE LLXXII

S T A V E

LXXII

A Hell. Comets of Fire. They streak like messengers. If only to watch, one might think them pretty. They whistle and pop and burst like flowers, each with their shape, soft and puffy. Where's the Hell, you say? On the ground, raked. In the trenches. Every bloody inch. The Dead in the open like so much debris. Indeed, debris, as soup bones, kettles, empty barrels, a broken wheel; no one moved them. Try and you might join them. One must constantly dash. Little good it do – One must try. Both Fool and Brave stand erect. Neither last . . . No more than those who hunker, just Conspicuous . . .

"Have you the range, sergeant?" Geordie heard the artillery officer in the battery down the row; he and Elliot against the Hornwork wall, knowing what will come.

"I do, sir," the artillery sergeant replied.

"Give them a live one," the lieutenant said.

Geordie flinched and pressed tighter. Better here than their place in town; their Lights and Grenadiers pulled to different stations. This night, the Hornwork, to support a battalion of light infantry desperately thinned.

The gunner trimmed the shot's fuse, estimating burn time and distance – that it explode over the ditch where the Americans were digging. That it blow off their fucking heads – the Allies had seized the outer works as predicted. The Royal Artillery harried them, but they scattered at the muzzle blasts and the shot arrived with little effect. The British took to flashing powder, and when the Americans got used to it, they'd give them a live round. The Allies would

hit back and hard. Damn the French gunners.

The young lieutenant peered into the dark, sounds of digging across the field. "Fire when ready." The gunner touched the powder. A hiss. A flash. Explosion. The eighteen pounder rocked.

Geordie poked up his head to watch the glow of shot. A flash over the outer works and the concussion that followed.

The digging stopped . . . for a while. Then out of the blackness, their big guns.

"Here it comes!" the gunner shouted and dove to the ground.

Geordie and Elliot bunched up. The barrage whistled. The Hornwork convulsed, shot fore and aft. Geordie, like a ragdoll on a table shaking. His ears bled. Elliot on his stomach knocked topsy-turvy. A clang and concussion. A British gun shot into the air, rocketing end over end, its carriage shattered. Another hit behind the wall, its fuse hissing. A burst. The lieutenant lifted off the ground in pieces. What was once his head bounced.

Then the cannonade stopped.

Ghastly quiet. Geordie on all fours like a dog, his snotty nose streaming, his body slick. The smell of guts and shit. He sat himself down and shook. Then a voice from beyond – "I'm hit. I'm hit." Quiet again.

A bouncing light coming up the way. Geordie saw it double, triple.

"You men all right?" asked Lt. Col. Lake, a Guards replacement officer. He held up the lamp and saw the lieutenant's scattered remains. "Get up," he ordered that they might not have seen it. Geordie and Elliot stared at him dumb. "Get up now, I say." And pointed down the line. "Sergeant, take your squad over there. Try to sleep." Elliot took Geordie's arm, the sleeve of his coat soaking wet from the lieutenant.

Some distance, from Redoubt #6, another British cannon fired.

They flopped on a ground no different, their breaths heaving, eleven exhausted men.