‘Lice?’The quartermaster snorted.‘Lice never hurt anyone, sir. That’s a perfectly serviceable bedroll. I demand you stop this wanton destruction of Company property at once!’
‘You’re right.’ Arthur nodded, with a slight smile. ‘There’s nothing wrong with it.You men!’ He called over to two soldiers standing by the pile of bedrolls. ‘Bring that one over here!’
They dragged the bedroll over and laid it on the bare ground between the two officers.The quartermaster’s nose wrinkled as a waft of old sweat and decay rose up. The material of the bedroll was stained, worn and torn in places, and over it all scurried the numerous tiny slivers of lice.
‘Perfectly serviceable, eh?’ Arthur looked at the quartermaster, and his expression hardened.‘Let’s see, shall we? Lie down on it.’
‘What?’ The quartermaster looked surprised, then horrified.
‘I said lie down on that bedroll,’ Arthur replied harshly. ‘You say it’s serviceable. I want you to demonstrate that to these men.’
The two soldiers watched the exchange in amusement, thoroughly enjoying the quartermaster’s discomfort.
‘You can’t be serious, sir.’ The quartermaster looked down at the bedroll and winced. ‘It’s practically alive with lice. I’m not going near it.’
‘I see.Then I take it you’re saying that it’s not serviceable after all?’>
The quartermaster squirmed miserably.
‘Well?’ Arthur pressed him. ‘Speak up, man.’
‘Perhaps not, sir.’
‘Good. Now I want you to get back to your desk and make sure that my men are issued with new bedrolls. Before the end of the day, understand?’
The quartermaster looked round at the soldiers cleaning the barracks and those still carrying out more bedrolls for the fire.‘All of them, sir?’
‘Every single man.’
‘Who’s going to pay for it?’
Arthur pointed at the bedroll. In the corner was a stenciclass="underline" Property of the East India Company. ‘Since they belong to the Company the Company can pay for the replacements. See to it. Now, please.’
The quartermaster puffed out his cheeks and shook his head, but Arthur glared at him, daring him to make any further protest, and the man turned away and walked stiffly back towards headquarters.Arthur smiled as he watched him leave, then turned and saw that the two soldiers were grinning at him.
He frowned. ‘What are you standing there for? Get that bedroll up and burn the damned thing before anyone catches anything from it.’
‘Yes, sir!’ The soldiers bent to their task at once, lifting the spoiled bedroll by the ends and carrying it over to the blaze before tossing it on to the pyre. There was a faint pop and crack as the lice started to burst in the flames.
The next day, Arthur began to drill his men in earnest. The Governor General’s hint that the regiment would soon be seeing action was at the front of Arthur’s mind as he watched the sergeants and officers putting the 33rd through its paces over the following weeks.
Sir John made sure that the newly arrived colonel was introduced to Calcutta society, such as it was, as soon as possible. Calcutta was as wild a town as Dublin; the officers drank and gambled to even greater excess than any of the young swells that Arthur had known at the castle. He did his best to partake of the social life of the small European community of Calcutta, and drank with the officers in moderation, but he tended to withdraw from their company once the high jinks began, as befitted a man with his senior rank.
The officers were not accommodated in the barracks and had to look to their own resources to find accommodation in the better housing that had grown up close to the fort, on raised ground overlooking the teeming ramshackle sprawl of Calcutta. While the junior officers shared chummeries, Arthur rented a one-storey building with a wide veranda running around it: what the locals referred to as a bungalow. It was far finer than anything he could have hired in Dublin for the same price, and it overlooked a neat garden planted with mango trees and enclosed in a white-washed wall. Often, when the day’s duties were complete, Arthur sat on his veranda and wrote letters to Kitty describing his new life in India, and his longing to return to her as soon as he could. Even though it might be in several years’ time, he assured her of his undying love and urged her to write to him as often as possible.
As his men trained, Arthur studied the campaigns of Cornwallis, in particular the failed attempt to reduce Seringapatam and end the threat from Tipoo Sahib. Cornwallis had been defeated by the monsoon season, and the failure to secure a steady supply of food for his army. He had been forced to spike his guns, abandon the siege and retreat, occasioning a serious decline of faith in the iqbalof the English. The difficulties of campaigning in India were immense: the terrible heat of the dry seasons and the torrential rains of the monsoons that turned tracks into glutinous mud and could transform dry river beds into raging torrents in a matter of hours. Then there was the lack of any roads worth the name, just a series of tracks that linked the fortified villages that dotted the landscape. Any modern army desiring to cross the subcontinent was further handicapped by the sheer distance it would be obliged to maintain its lines of communication. It was difficult to find horses strong enough to pull the guns and wagons of a baggage train. The mounts favoured by the Mahratta and other warrior nations were small and nimble and of little use as beasts of burden.
These were matters he took up with Harry Ball when the two officers were attending one of the numerous dinner parties that were held in the houses of Calcutta’s tiny European population. When the meal was over, officers and Company officials retired to the veranda outside the house to drink in the light draught of the punkahs swaying overhead. Arthur sat himself down on the chair next to Ball with a brief exchange of pleasantries.
‘So how are you finding life in Calcutta, sir?’
‘It’s pleasant enough provided one doesn’t get too hot.’ Arthur smiled. ‘Not that there’s any chance of avoiding the heat.’
‘You think this is bad?’ Ball looked amused. ‘Just wait until you encounter the climate further inland. Sometimes it gets so hot that a man will lie under his camp bed covered with a wet sheet just to stop his brains from boiling and sending him insane. It’s not good country for proper soldiers like yourself, sir.’
‘Nevertheless, we are required to fight here. Especially if we are to protect our interests from the French. So we are obliged to find some means of waging war effectively in India. From what I’ve read so far, we’ve not had much success.’
‘It is a problem,’ Ball agreed. ‘That is why our interests in India are confined to the lands immediately surrounding the three presidencies. That is the limit of our operations. Most attempts to campaign further afield have failed to achieve anything worthwhile, or ended in disaster.’
‘Perhaps we are wrong to think of conducting war as we would in Europe,’ Arthur suggested. ‘As you say, the distances are too great. The only way an army could stay in the field for long enough to cover the necessary ground is to be resupplied on the march.’
Ball nodded.‘It would make sense, sir, but the supplies of grain that we would need could not be met by the villages in the mofussil- sorry, the hinterland.’
Arthur smiled politely. ‘I understand the word, Major. But I wasn’t thinking of gleaning what little the natives had grown for themselves. I was thinking that our columns could be supplied by the brinjarris.’
Ball raised an eyebrow at the suggestion, then considered it carefully for a moment. The brinjarriswere almost a separate nation in India, raising huge herds of bullocks which they contracted out, or used to carry excess grain and rice across the subcontinent in search of a decent profit. Ball nodded. ‘It might work, provided they could be assured that they would make money. Certainly it would relieve our commanding officers and their staffs of the burden of arranging supplies.’