Sharpe could not believe it. He took the letter, fearing it, to find that it was a long list, sent by the War Office via the Horse Guards, of the replacements that could be expected in the next few weeks. At the end of the list was the South Essex, against whose name was written; ‘2nd Batt now Hold’g Batt. No Draft available.’ That was all and, if it was true, it meant that the South Essex’s Second Battalion had become a mere Holding Battalion; a place where boys of thirteen and fourteen, too young to fight, waited for their birthdays, or where men in transit or wounded men were put to wait for new postings. A rag-tag Battalion, without pride and of small purpose.
‘It can’t be true! There are recruits! We had eight recruiting parties!’
Nairn grunted. ‘In a covering letter, Sharpe, dictated by his bloody Lordship himself, but which I won’t offend you by showing to you, he recommends that your Battalion be broken up.’
For a few seconds Sharpe thought he had misheard Nairn. A Spanish muleteer shouted outside the window, from the harbour came the cranking sound of a windlass, and in Sharpe’s head echoed the words ‘broken up’.
‘Broken up, sir?’ Sharpe felt a chill in this warm room.
‘Lord Fenner suggests, Sharpe, that your men be given to other Battalions, that your Colours be sent home, that your officers either exchange into other regiments, sell their commissions, or make themselves available for our disposal.’
Sharpe was incredulous. ‘They can’t do it!’
Nairn gave a sour laugh. ‘Sharpe! They’re politicians! You can’t expect sense from the bastards!’ He leaned forward. ‘We’re going to need all the experienced units we can scrape together; all of them, but don’t expect Lord Fenner to understand that! He’s the Secretary of State at War and he wouldn’t know a bayonet from a ram-rod. He’s a civilian! He controls the army’s money, which is why there isn’t any.’
Sharpe said nothing. He was thinking of the Battalion’s Colours laid up in some English church, hanging high in a dusty chancel while the men who had fought for them were scattered in penny-packets around the army. He was feeling anger, bitter anger, that his men, who had fought for those flags, who had suffered, whose comrades were in unmarked graves on a dozen battlefields would be broken up, disbanded. He was thinking of a Battalion that, like a family, had its quarrels and laughter, its warmth and pride, all to be sacrificed!
‘Breaking you up.’ Nairn said it brutally. ‘Bloody shame. Busaco, Talavera, Fuentes d’Onoro, Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz, Salamanca, Vitoria, hell of a way to finish! Like sending a pack of hounds to the shambles, eh?’
‘But we had eight recruiting sergeants out!’
‘It’s no good telling me, Sharpe, I’m just a dogsbody.’ Nairn sniffed. ‘And even if we make you into a provisional Battalion you’ll go on losing men. You need a draft of replacements!’ It was true. If the South Essex was joined to another Battalion they would still take casualties, until the joint Battalion was shrunken and diluted again. Instead of being broken up, the South Essex would simply wither and die, its Colours forgotten, its morale wasted.
‘No!’ Sharpe almost howled the word in agonised protest. ‘They can’t do it!’
‘Let us hope not,’ Nairn smiled. ‘The Peer is not happy. He is damned crusty about it, Sharpe.’ Nairn spoke of Wellington. ‘He has this strange idea that the South Essex could be useful to him in France.’ The compliment was truthful. A veteran Battalion like the South Essex, even if its ranks were half-filled with raw replacements, had a morale and knowledge that doubled its fighting value. The South Essex had become a killing machine that could be guaranteed to face anything the French threw against it, while a fresh Battalion, however well trained in England, could take months to reach the same efficiency. Nairn splashed more brandy into the two glasses. ‘The Peer, Sharpe, does not trust those bastards in London. War Office! Horse Guards! Foreign Office! Ordnance Department! We’ve got more damned offices running this damned war than we’ve got Battalions! They’ve made a mess of it, they’ve lost their paperwork, they’ve got their breeches round their ankles and they can’t find mother to pull them up. Who’s in charge at Chelmsford?’