Henry Gooch was on his knees, struggling to get up. Macdonell reached down and pulled him to his feet, wincing when the wound in his arm protested. The ensign’s face was a bloody mask, his mouth absurdly swollen, his eyes almost closed and one cheek sliced to the bone. He could scarcely breathe. ‘To the barn with you, Mister Gooch,’ ordered Macdonell in a rasping voice. Gooch shook his head. ‘Do as I say, sir, or you will be disobeying an order.’ Gooch tried to speak, but his mouth was too dry. Instead, he gestured with an arm to the dead and wounded lying in the yard. ‘I know, Mister Gooch, we need every man we have but you are in no state to fight. Go now. Tell the surgeon I want you back sharpish.’
Macdonell’s head was throbbing and his throat on fire from the smoke and powder. He craved water but there was none. His canteen was dry, the well was dry. Their casualties were mounting with every French attack. Harry Wyndham in the garden was under ferocious pressure. Alexander Saltoun can only have been hanging on to the orchard by his fingertips. And Hougoumont was burning.
From beyond the chateau an arrow of flame shot skywards. He ran back to the north yard. The barn was alight. The fire had leapt from the cowshed across the yard to the barn. As he watched, the roof collapsed and burning timbers fell inside. Many of the wounded inside could not walk and would be trapped in the inferno. Their terrified screams could be heard over the crackling of timber and straw.
The barn door had disappeared and the entrance was a wall of flame. The fire had taken so quickly that very few had got out. Sellers and his assistants emerged, coughing and retching and each carrying a wounded man. They set them down in the yard and went back into the barn. A tiny, filthy figure followed them out. At least the drummer boy had escaped. A voice at Macdonell’s side spoke. ‘Permission to fall out, Colonel, if you please.’ It was James Graham.
‘Why, Corporal? You are needed at the gate.’ It was a surprising request from a soldier as dutiful as Graham.
‘My brother is in the barn, Colonel. He took a bullet in the leg.’
Macdonell remembered seeing him inside. He clapped Graham on the shoulder. ‘Then be quick, for his sake and ours.’ Graham ran straight through the flames at the entrance and disappeared into the blazing barn.
The surgeon staggered out again. He was carrying no one and his jacket was on fire. Macdonell leapt at him, pushed him to the ground and rolled him in the mud. The fire died and the surgeon rose unsteadily to his feet. ‘Your assistants?’ asked Macdonell. Sellers shook his head. The barn was collapsing and James and Joseph Graham were in there and so was Henry Gooch.
The stench of burning flesh was overpowering. Macdonell ripped off his jacket, held it over his face and crashed through the flames into the barn. Even without a roof it was full of smoke. He could see almost nothing. He blundered blindly forward. God willing, there was someone still alive whom he might be able to carry to safety. A huge figure loomed out of the smoke and stumbled past him. The figure seemed to be carrying a body over his shoulder. Macdonell groped his way forward. A spark caught his hair, making it crackle. He managed to smother it with his jacket and pressed on. A blazing timber fell from the roof. He tripped over it and landed on the stone floor. The heat of the stone scorched his hands, forcing him back to his feet. He fell again. This time his hands met not stone but flesh. A body, and one that was alive. It grunted and moved. Macdonell hoisted it onto his shoulder and made for the entrance. At least he hoped he was making for the entrance. In the heat and smoke he had lost his sense of direction. He took a dozen unsteady steps, saw a glimmer of daylight, threw himself and his burden through the entrance and fell into the yard.
His eyes opened when earth was thrown over him. A stab of pain shot through them and he quickly closed them again. He lay in the yard trying to breathe. Someone pulled off his boots. Someone else tipped a few drops of water down his throat. Gradually his mind cleared and he could open his eyes. The crash of musket fire and the screams of wounded men and burning horses filled his head. The north gate was again under threat. He pushed himself to his knees and looked about. The barn was a smouldering heap of wood and flesh and bone.
Henry Gooch was sitting with his back to the draw well, bare-chested and bootless. Joseph Graham sat beside him, his leg twisted and bloody. Both were the colour of tar. ‘Corporal Graham, so your brother found you?’ growled Macdonell.
‘He did, Colonel. I am a lucky man, though the surgeon thinks my leg beyond saving.’
‘And you, Mister Gooch, how did you get out?’
Gooch could only whisper. ‘I believe you carried me, Colonel.’
‘Then I am glad of it. Help Corporal Graham to the chateau. Take the boy. There are wounded there.’
‘Should you not be there yourself, Colonel?’ asked Graham.
‘Later, Corporal.’ Another tower of flame shot into the sky. The roof of the chateau was alight. ‘On second thoughts, stay here. It’s as safe a place as any.’
The barn, the stables and cowshed and now the chateau. All burnt or burning. If the fire reached the gardener’s house or the shed beside it, the south gate would burn too. There was no water with which to fight the fire and nowhere to hide from the round shot still thundering over the wood and into the farm. Macdonell looked at his pocket watch. It was just after three o’clock. They had held Hougoumont for four hours. If General Blücher and his Prussians did not arrive very soon, the next hour would be their last.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
On the hill behind them, General Byng and Major Bull were doing their best to keep the French artillery quiet. Cannon blasted ten-pound shot over the wood while the howitzers sent a stream of their deadly shells into it. For the attackers, just as for the defenders, there was little respite. Yet the French guns were far from silenced. The Gunners in the valley were loading canister as well as round shot, battering the chateau and the farm and raining death and mutilation onto the Guards in the yards and in the garden.
Macdonell made a decision. He would hold the chateau and defend the gates for as long as possible. Only when he had to, he would withdraw all his troops into the garden from where they would fire on the French entering the farm. Alexander Saltoun would hold the orchard behind them. He would move the wounded from the chateau to the garden immediately. They would be safer there and the surgeon would just have to do what he could for them. He had lost his bandsmen but the women, hopefully, were unharmed.
Almost without a break, the French infantry attacked the south gate and the walls. Wave after wave charged forward, screaming for their emperor, ignoring the losses they were taking, and forcing the Guards to expose themselves to French fire. The best soldiers could fire three or four shots a minute. The Guards were firing at least that.
But the pressure was beginning to tell. Shaking hands spilt powder. Barrels overheated. Flints failed to spark. Muskets misfired. Lungs craving air filled with smoke. Mouths craving water struggled to bite off the end of yet another cartridge. Stomachs heaved and threw out what little contents they had. Sharpshooters in the woods and the clearing picked off heads that appeared over the wall. Men screamed and died. By force of numbers alone, the French would eventually break down the gate or destroy the wall. The Guards could not resist for ever.
It was the same in the garden. Harry Wyndham’s troops, supported by Charles Woodford’s two companies, were on the fire steps, at the loopholes, and even sitting astride the walls, in their efforts to keep the French at a distance. Macdonell could not see either of them through the smoke. One blackened uniform was much like another.