This brutal little piece is from my on-going (but infrequently updated) Victoria AAR,
Kiltartan's Cross. It involves an ambush of a British regiment by Irish irregulars. A lot of blood, not much glory.
***
October 16, 1874
The Third Company of the Royal Highland Regiment marched with a swinging gait down the beaten dirt path toward Killarney. As they went, they sang in time with their steps:
What is right and what is wrong by the law, by the law
What is right and what is wrong by the law
What is right and what is wrong, a short sword and a long
A weak arm and a strong for to draw.
At their head marched Captain Lloyd McPherson and the company piper, whose skirling notes seemed to pull the Black Watch along. Behind the piper, at the head of Second Platoon, strode Lieutenant Barclay Drummond. He cast a wary eye at the low green hills all around. It had been a dry summer, and the heat had carried over into the fall. Dust arose around the troops as they marched.
Dust which will show our path to any watcher, thought Drummond,
but the old man acts like this is a parade. Drummond hurried forward.
He marched up alongside the Captain. "Sir!" McPherson cast a glance over at him.
"What is it, Lieutenant?" McPherson had never liked the young Drummond.
Too anxious, too eager. Not really command material.
Drummond, ahead of the dust for a moment, took a deep breath. "Sir, this area has been full of Fenians and rebels. Perhaps we should order the troops out of march formation?"
"What, what? Surely, Lieutenant, you don't think some armed rabble will attack the pride of the Black Watch!" McPherson shook his head sadly. "I'm sorry, Lieutenant, that you have such a low opinion of our men. We'll march on to Killarney, take the town, hang anyone involved in the attack on the RIC barracks there, and be back in Ulster by November." McPherson fixed Drummond with a steely gaze. "Am I clear?"
Clear as coal, sir, Drummond wanted to say. "Sir, the RIC has suffered major losses in this area. We may be attacked. We should be ready, sir." McPherson showed no sign of listening any further. Drummond sighed, saluted, and silently fell back to his own men. He turned to Sergeant Shaw. "Sergeant. Tell the men to load. Just in case, eh? And do it quietly, Shaw."
Shaw looked puzzled for a moment.
Ah, well, who am I to question the children that command us? He saluted, and began to move back among the Second Platoon, quietly ordering weapons loaded. When he was finished, he came forward to Drummond. "What's the matter, sir?"
Drummond grimaced. "Can't shake the feeling that Captain is leading us into an ambush, Sergeant. What d'you think?"
Shaw looked at the Lieutenant with a small amount of respect. "I think you're learning, sir." Drummond, surprised, looked over at Shaw. "No insult intended, Lieutenant Drummond, sir," Shaw continued, "but a lot of officers don't think at all. Nice to see you're not one of them, sir."
Drummond chewed his lip. "I suppose I'm honored, Sergeant. Let's just keep our eyes opened."
***
What makes heroic strife famed afar, famed afar?
What makes heroic strife famed afar?
What makes heroic strife, to whet the assassin's knife
Or hunt a parent's life with bloody war.
At the front of the column, from a small bend in the road, came a sight: a class of school-boys, maybe twelve of them, led by a nun, approaching the troops. Captain McPherson smiled at this quaint sight, and at the nun, for bride of Christ or not, her face was comely enough after a week on the march. When the boys saw the troops, they let out a ragged cheer and ran forward, laughing.
Wish that nag Drummond could see this, thought McPherson.
Show him the people down here love us.
The boys flowed around McPherson, and he let out a hearty laugh as they did. The nun was coming forward, a pretty smile on her face.
What wonderful green eyes, McPherson marveled. He held up a hand, and the piper slowed. The column began to pause.
***
Drummond heard with curiosity the silencing of the piper, and was shocked to see a ragged group of boys running through the ranks. Some of the peeled off here and there to talk to the troops, to ask for candies, to gaze at their weapons. Two were coming his way. One ran over to Sergeant Shaw, the other up to him.
"You're the Black Watch, ain't you?," said the boy.
"Aye, we are, lad," said Drummond, his eyes darting around nervously. Shaw had bent over to talk to the boy next to him. Up ahead, he could see another boy had stopped Lieutenant Logan of First Platoon, and one was with Logan's Sergeant.
***
McPherson stopped the column for a moment. He swept his hat off to the nun. "Good day, madam, good day."
The nun's smile widened. "What unit is this, Captain?" Her voice was almost musical, and even one as tone-deaf at McPherson could tell she was happy to see them.
"We're the Royal Highlanders, madam. We're here to put a stop to the Fenians that have been terrorizing you." He bowed deeply, in what he thought was a most gallant manner. When he looked up he was staring down the barrel of a revolver.
The nun's green eyes had turned to ice, but the pretty little smile was still there. "You're the Black Watch," she said, "and we're not Fenians. We’re the Irish Revolutionary Army."
***
Alarms were just beginning to sound in Drummond's mind when the pistol shot sounded. Suddenly, the boy in front of him reached under his shirt and pulled out a pistol. "Christ!," shouted Drummond, as he fumbled for his own pistol. He heard a shot, close behind him, and Shaw's screaming, and then the boy's pistol went off, close but high. A chorus of shots erupted, and Drummond's pistol was out and he fired twice into the boy's face, then turned. There was the boy that had shot Shaw, preparing to shoot the Sergeant again. Drummond fired once, catching the boy in the back. Louder shots now, rifles, and one of his men dropped into the dust.
Drummond looked around wildly. He saw the company colors stagger and fall near the front, and Lieutenant Logan writhing in the dust as a small red-haired boy fired round after round into his body.
***
From a low hill overlooking the bend in the road, Sean Doyle smiled. The British troops were in chaos already, most of their officers down. He watched as Megan shot the piper, then the flag-bearer, and the colors of the Black Watch fell into the dust.
He raised his rifle to his eye, focused on an officer trying to rally his troops near the middle of the disintegrating British line, and shouted, “Let them have it, boys! Kill every last one of them!”
Doyle fired.
***
The round smashed into Drummond’s shoulder, spinning him around and throwing him into the dust. He could hear his men shouting, panic growing quickly. Bullets were pocking the dust all around him. One slammed into the road right in front of him, and for a moment he was lost in the exquisite tiny dust devil it threw up.
We’re all going to die out here.
Drummond stood, ran over toward Shaw. The Sergeant had a hole in his belly, and black blood was flowing. “Shaw! Shaw!” The wounded man’s eyes opened slowly.
“Lieutenant. Get the men off the road. Charge one of the hills.” Shaw coughed, spewing blood between his fingers.
Drummond nodded, looked around quickly.
Fall back, back to that hill over there, he thought.
It’s a bit higher, better ground to fight on. To die on.
He leaned down and picked up Shaw. The pain in his shoulder was massive, and he almost stumbled. “No, sir, leave me here,” Shaw moaned, “get everyone out.”
Drummond started to run the best he could. “Shut up, Sergeant, that’s an order,” he said. Then he shouted: “Black Watch! Fall back! We’re ambushed! Fall back to that hill!”
Eager for command, men began to follow him, up and off of the road of death.
***
Megan McKeena whipped off her nun’s habit and strode down the center of the road. She had McPherson’s pistol in one hand, her own in the other. The British were running now, back down the road, and the fire from the hills was whittling them down one at a time. But Megan didn’t care.
Ahead, she could see her boys, those that still stood, firing shot after shot into the wounded English. And she walked among them, an angel in black, finishing off anyone else that moved.
***
“Damn it all!”, Doyle shouted. “They’re getting away! After them, charge them, attack!” Doyle and the rifleman charged down the hillside. But already what had been a mass of panicked men was turning back into the Black Watch, and as the British gained the hilltop they were forming a line.
The tactical situation was shifting too quickly for Doyle, the street brawler. Some of the English were going further up the hill, to kill of his men at the top. And one British officer, heedless of the shots raining around him, started walking down the line of soldiers with his sword, ordering some to kneel, some to stand.
***
There were still shots coming from the top of the hill, but they were slowing as the men he sent up finished off the Fenians. “Steady, boys, steady, form the line, right here.” He had maybe thirty men on the line, and ten of them were wounded. But they were in their element now.
“Wait for it.”
The Fenians were closing now, firing as they ran.
An undisciplined rabble, the Captain would call them. Deadly enough on their field, true enough. But this ground is ours.
“Wait for it!”
Someone fired near the end of the line. Drummond cursed, and shouted again. “Wait for it!” The Fenians were close now, close enough. Drummond roared. “Volley fire!”
It was a ragged volley, but was enough to serve.
***
It seemed like a whirlwind of bullets to the untrained, but Doyle had lived through Manhattan, and Providence, and saw it for what it was.
A last gasp. But his men, farmboys mostly, were already falling back. He watched in helpless rage as they started streaming past him. He shot wildly at one of his retreating men, and shouted: “Keep at them, my lads! They’ll break!” From ahead, he could see the English officer steadying his tiny line. He heard him shout again: “Volley fire!” Doyle dove to the grass.
***
When Megan McKeena reached the end of the trail of the dead and dying, she finally looked up and around. At the top of a nearby hill, the surviving British had now formed a small defensive circle. She could see Doyle, further off, sending men to surround them.
At her feet was a British private, grasping his thigh with all his strength. She could see the bright arterial blood welling out between his fingers. He looked up at her with hope and fear in his fading eyes. She lowered the pistol at his head, and whispered in a lilting voice. “Go back to hell, English.”
And night fell.
***
Then leave your schemes alone in the state, in the state
Then leave your schemes alone in the state
Then leave your schemes alone, adore the rising sun
And leave a man alone to his fate.
In the darkness, Drummond tried to take stock of his situation. Twenty-three men of the Black Watch still alive, but seven of those would never make it out. He could hear in the darkness the enemy moving toward an encirclement. The moon as a curved dagger low in the sky, mocking him by providing no light.
He walked up to the top of the hill, where the wounded were, and found Sergeant Shaw. He knelt down beside him. “Well, Sergeant, how are you, then?”
Shaw managed a small, weak smile. “Dying, sir, with your permission. Funny, though, I always thought’d be in the Punjab. Never in Ireland.”
“Permission to die denied, Shaw. I need you.” Drummond gave Shaw a nip from his flask. “Any ideas, Sergeant?”
“They’re getting us surrounded quickly, sir. They’ll kill us all in the morning. We haven’t the ammo to fight for long, and I’m damn sure they outnumber us.” Shaw coughed wetly.
“Those aren’t ideas, Sergeant, they’re facts. How do I get us out of here?”
I’m supposed to be in command, Drummond thought blackly,
and I’m asking a dying man how to live?
Using his last strength, Shaw stood. His face was white bone under the shallow moonlight. “Right, then,” he said with effort as he hobbled over to the other dying wounded. “Addison, Hannay, Hendry. You lads can still shoot straight, right?” Some nods. “And if we give pistols to Lyon, Jameson, and Ingram, well, you lads can make some noise as you die, right?” Shaw turned to Drummond. “Sir! Lead out everyone who can walk, lead them north. Far as you can before dawn. We’ll make some noise, hold them off.”
Drummond went cold.
So this is command. Deciding who dies. He saluted Shaw, then shook his hand. “I’ll send reinforcements as soon as I can.”
Shaw smiled grimly. “No, you won’t, sir, but it’s nice of you to say so. Get them going, sir.” The Sergeant took a rifle and propped himself up on a rock.
Drummond gathered those that could walk. When they were ready, Shaw suddenly shouted to the night and the moon: “Come on, you cowards, don’t take too long! We’re getting bored up here!” He started to fire at distant moving shadows. A desultory firing started from the hillside, was answered from below, and in the noise Drummond quietly led the rest of the men away into the darkness.
***
Of the Third Company of the Black Watch, thirteen men returned to barracks. When they returned to the hillside near Killarney with the rest of the Regiment, at the beginning of a bleak November, they found a pile of their dead left to rot. The Fenians had taken their rifles, their uniforms, and their boots. The crows had taken their eyes. At the top of the hill flew a great green flag, with a gold harp in the center.
The flag came down and was burned, and the dead of the Black Watch were buried. Then, with a sad tune skirling from the pipes, they marched on down into Killarney, where they killed every man of fighting age, and every boy over the age of twelve, and burned down the convent, for nuns and children had been seen shooting British troops.
And when they came to town two days after the British troops had left, Sean Doyle watched the line of slowly swaying corpses with a smile.
For every man they kill, two join me. Every loss is a victory. He gave Megan a hug and a kiss, there in the orchard of dead men the British had planted.
You've heard about the B-men the cruel RIC
You've heard about the Black and Tans in bygone history
But there’s another regiment the devil calls his own
They’re known as the Black Watch commissioned by the throne
These soldiers come from Scotland a place you all know well
From the hardest part of Glasgow the teddy boys do dwell
They're given a British uniform they're given a British gun
They joined a British regiment to have themselves some fun