‘Number one!’ came the order. Number one cannon recoiled smartly with a deafening metallic boom. The ball whistled out over the heads of our men down below and flew across, but fell a long way short of the enemy. A puff of rising smoke showed where it had landed and exploded.
The faces of the soldiers and officers lit up at the sound. They all got to their feet and went to watch the movements of our troops down below, looking for all the world like tiny creatures in the palm of your hand, and the movements of the advancing enemy up ahead. At that moment the sun came fully out from behind the clouds and the wonderful bang of that single shot, melting into blazing sunlight, gave them all a feeling of fun and high spirits.
CHAPTER 7
Down on the bridge two enemy cannonballs had whistled over them, and the bridge itself was crammed with people. Half-way across stood Prince Nesvitsky, who had dismounted and was now leaning with his portly figure squashed heavily into the railings. He kept glancing back in amusement at his Cossack, who was standing a few paces behind him holding both horses by their bridles. Every time Nesvitsky tried to walk on, the crush of soldiers and wagons forced him to stop and squeezed him back against the railings. He simply had to smile.
‘Hey, you, my boy,’ said the Cossack to a driver who was forcing his wagon through the mass of walking soldiers flattened against his wheels and horses, ‘what do you think you’re doing? You’ll have to wait. Look, the general wants to get through.’
But the convoy driver, unimpressed by the mention of a general, just yelled at the soldiers who were blocking his way, ‘Come on, boys, get over to the left! Hang on a minute!’ But the boys themselves, shoulder to shoulder, bayonets clinking together, were surging across the bridge in one great mass. Looking down over the railing, Prince Nesvitsky could see the splashing low waves of the fast-moving Enns as they rippled and swirled, chasing each other and crashing against the bridge-supports. Then looking back along the bridge he saw the same kind of formless living tidal wave of soldiers, with their covered shakos,7 knapsacks, bayonets, long muskets, and beneath the shakos the broad faces and sunken cheeks of men reduced to an apathetic weariness, their legs tramping across the boards of the bridge through a thick layer of sticky mud. Sometimes amid the featureless waves of soldiers, like a fleck of white foam on the waves of the Enns, an officer in his cloak would wriggle through, his face looking quite different from those of the soldiers around him. Sometimes, like a splinter of wood borne on the current, an individual would be swirled across the bridge amid the waves of infantrymen – a hussar walking without his horse, an orderly or a civilian. Sometimes a baggage-wagon belonging to a company commander or some other officer would struggle across like a floating log, hemmed in on all sides, piled up high and draped with leather covers.
‘It’s like a dam-burst!’ said the Cossack, stopping helplessly. ‘Are there many more after you?’
‘Oh, must be a million!’ said a soldier in a torn coat, winking cheerfully as he disappeared from sight. Just behind him strode an old soldier.
‘If
‘Where the hell did you put the leg-rags?’ said an orderly, scrambling after the wagon and rummaging in the back. He and the wagon passed by.
Next came some high-spirited soldiers who had obviously been at the bottle.
‘Yes, up with the butt he went, and give him a smack in the teeth,’ said one soldier in a tucked-up greatcoat, gleefully punching upwards with his arm.
‘Nice bit of ham,’ laughed another one. And on they went. Nesvitsky never did find out who got smashed in the teeth and where the ham came into it.
‘Look at ’em running!
‘It went right over my ’ead, Sarge, that cannonball did,’ said a young soldier with a huge mouth, hardly able to stop himself laughing. ‘Nearly fainted, didn’t I? Put the fear of God in me, that did!’ said the soldier, making a kind of boast out of being scared.
