The guns fired again and this time a ball plucked through the South Essex’s number six Company, throwing two men sideways and down, spattering blood onto the wheat and poppies. The line stolidly closed up.
The Light Company had opened fire. The rifles cracked. The French cannon smashed back again, and once again the lines had to close and once again the meadow behind the attackers was littered with bodies and blood.
Leroy lit a cheroot with his tinder box. The men were doing well. They were not flinching from the artillery, they marched silently and in good order, but still he feared the village. It was too well barricaded, too thickly loopholed, and he knew that the muskets of Gamarra Mayor’s defenders could do far more damage than the six field guns on the far side of the river. Not a French musket had sounded yet. They waited for the British to get close. Leroy had begged for permission to attack in column/ but the Brigadier had refused. `We always attack in line, man! Don’t be a fool!’ The Brigadier, knowing Leroy to be an American, wondered if he was touched in the head. Attack in column, indeed!
Leroy put his tinder box away and spurred past the Colours. `Captain d’Alembord?’
`Sir?’
`Form on us!’
The South Essex was now protected from the field guns by the houses in the village. Still the French did not fire. The Light Company scrambled to their place on the left of the Battalion. They marched forward.
Leroy frowned. He knew what would happen when the defenders fired. He feared it. The South Essex was still under strength, and the next few moments could destroy his command. He muttered at the enemy under his breath, begging them to fire too soon, begging them to give his men a chance.
But the French waited. They waited till every shot could count, and when the fire order was given Leroy almost flinched from the sound and from the destruction.
The heavy musket bullets tore at the British line, jerking and twisting men, chopping them down, spinning them, and then new men took over at the loopholes and more bullets came tearing into the red-jacketed attack and it seemed to Leroy that the air was filled with the noise of muskets and bullets as he shouted into the wind of fire to keep his men going forward.
`Forward,’ the officers shouted, but they could not go forward. The musketry from the village had jarred the South Essex backwards. Men fired their muskets in reply and wasted the bullets against the stone walls and barricades. The Colours fell, the Ensigns shot by French marksmen.
`Forward! Come on!’ Leroy spurred ahead of the line. `Forward!’ His horse reared, screaming, was struck by another bullet, and Leroy cursed as his right boot would not leave the stirrup. His cigar fell, he flailed for balance, then his right foot was free and he slid clumsily over the rump of his falling, dying horse. He climbed to his feet, drew his sword, and shouted the men on.
The meadow was laced with smoke. Men crawled backwards, blood staining their tracks. Men cried for God or their mothers. Officers’ horses, wounded, died in the wheat or stampeded towards the rear. Some men, seeing a chance to escape the carnage, helped the wounded towards the bandsmen and the surgeons. Other men reloaded and aimed at the loopholes, and still the French fired at them and still the enemy bullets twitched the thickening musket smoke and made the meadow a place of death and screams and wounded.
`Forward!’ Leroy shouted. He wondered when new Battalions would be sent up to help his men, and he felt a rage that a Battalion under his command might need help. `Forward!’
The Colours were lifted up by new men. They went into the fire, and the King’s Colour fell again, was lifted again, and it twitched like a live thing as the bullets plucked at it.
The smoke was spoiling the French aim. From the village they could see a mist that surrounded their positions and, at the far side of the mist, the dim shapes of men who came forward, were -thrown back, and still the French fired, thickening flie mist, sending their bullets to pluck at the British line that had wrapped itself about the village but could not break in.