One

Zachary

Waterloo, 18 June 1815

“Boom!” The explosion rattled me. My head throbbed from the vibration and though it might have been further away than I believed, the resulting effect was nearly the same. might think I’d be used to it with my years in the field, but each tremor generated new fears.

Even now, after a full night of constant barrage upon our troops from Napoleon’s frontmen, the repetitive sounds should blend like background noise. Instead, hunkered down southeast of Mont Saint Jean, each additional blast of a cannon and every explosive pop of gunfire emphasized the fine line we tottered. The one between life and death.

The whirl of another cannonball sailing overhead before it struck its mark instinctively forced my arms upward in a faint attempt to protect my head. Crushing the trunk of a nearby tree, the blast sent soldiers scrambling in all directions as the majestic sycamore toppled over.

Curling my body sideways, I opened my eyes to the silent form of a comrade. If it weren’t for the dried blood that covered his ghastly wounds, I would not have known he met his demise from the stench alone. We all carried the noxious scent of death upon our skin.

The French fought with an unrelentless fortitude to seize the escarpment, increasing their assault throughout the night despite the rain. Our hope relied on Wellington’s men and the promised support of the Prussian troops. Each hour that passed without additional assistance, our men faced imminent destruction.

Since Napoleon’s escape from Elba in March, he has pressed forward with a desire to annihilate anyone and anything that stood in his way to victory. And, while I had witnessed brutal battles before on the Iberian Peninsula, I wondered every day if the savagery of this bloody conflict might hasten my extinction.

“Captain Collins!” a messenger hollered as he crawled along the ground near my boots. Reaching my side, he kept low to the ground as bullet fire threatened each effort he made to stand. My promotion from lieutenant to captain came upon my willingness to return to fight the French four months ago. “Lieutenant-General Picton thanks you and your men for persevering and keeping the French at bay.”

“And what of the reserves?”

“Rallying now, sir. Blücher is marching his troops in from the east.”

“Are the Prussians here yet?”

He shook his head. “No, but we have word they are close. They will attack from the left flank.”

“How many?”

“Tens of thousands.” He smiled. White lines appeared through his dirt-covered face. “They had significant losses at Ligny but are coming back stronger.”

“Good.”

Another boom forced us both to cower further behind our manmade rampart.

“Wellington wants a count of the wounded and dead by nightfall.”

I glanced around, most of the men I led suffered from some form of injury, but I knew he insinuated the most severe. The ones that could not walk out by themselves. I, myself, sported a torn uniform jacket stained with blood, entirely unsure if the discoloration belonged to me or another. Though my torso ached fiercely, I refused to take the time to investigate. If a gaping hole didn’t appear, it could be momentarily ignored.

The messenger continued, “Medical tents are set up two kilometers to the north of Waterloo. We have arranged for wagons from the locals to transport the men who cannot walk.”

“Very well.” I let the welcomed news sink in, then added, “We will assess the wounded and the very moment the reserves have turned the eyes of the French, we will get them to safety. Can you get the wagons close to that cluster of trees behind us?” I lifted my head long enough to point behind me.

“We will do our best, sir.”

“Send my sincere gratitude to your commanders.”

He acquiesced and crawled to the next commander manning a different portion of the hill. I marveled at the tasks of scouts and messengers, they were brave, wily, and resourceful. Though his means of portability might work for one, it would hardly work for the one hundred and seventy men in my command, or the several thousand attempting to hold this ground.

Amongst the continued blasts, I went to work alongside the remaining four of my six lieutenants. We maneuvered around the men, evaluating the needs of those who would require the wagons first, organizing everyone into teams of four. Unfortunately, there were few who could walk out on their own.

“Sargeant Powell,” I waved a hand at one foot soldier with a history of medical training. The young man of twenty abandoned a prodigious education at St. Bartholemew’s medical school when he elected to enlist and had already turned to treating a handful of men with what little supplies he could access.

Leaning in, I whispered, “I need you and the other medical assistants to identify these men by who is the most severe and still has the greatest chance to live.” A morbid request but necessary.

I handed him a piece of charcoal. “Mark their foreheads and hands with a number, beginning with number one as the most serious though savable. I will have a group of men capable of carrying them out the moment we receive the signal.” I turned to leave, then added, “Leave no mark on the ones who won’t make it to the tents in time.”

He nodded grimly.

I reached for his sleeve and tugged. “We cannot save them all.” I took a deep inhale. “We can only save the ones who have a chance.”

The choices we had to make regarding mortality embodied the worst part of being a commander in the war. And, while I didn’t have time to contemplate the many families across the channel who would suffer from my decisions, one particular person never failed to haunt my every idle thought.

Eveline.

My dearest friend since our nursery days.

Many lonely nights here were spent in reflection. Even now, while the clouds gathered above us and another onslaught of rain began, I fought my urge to chuckle as a fond memory emerged. in which the audacious brunette ended up drenched from head to foot after our rowboat tipped on the pond that merged our properties. I blamed it solely on the third musketeer , Lucas, and his intent to orate an entire passage from Shakespeare’s Henry VIII while balancing on the bow of the boat. The concluding result? A completely overturned sloop and an eleven-year-old Evie stuffing a frog down the back of Lucas’ waistcoat in retaliation.

Fearless. That is how I would describe Eveline Brown in one word.

“Captain!” Sergeant Powell called for me. When I reached his side, he bent over a fellow soldier who, after the rainy night, was found shivering uncontrollably in a foxhole.

“If you can assign a man to Peters here, I think he has a chance.”

“Chance to survive?” I questioned skeptically. The obvious wounds on the man appeared only flesh deep. “He appears to have no life-threatening injury.”

“His peril is internal, I’ve seen this before. An absence of reasoning power, violent shakes, faint pulse, and he’s rambling incoherently.” I studied the man while Powell continued. “It’s the result of exposure to elements and a drop in one’s body’s temperature. But I believe he could make it. I wish to try before I mark a number on him.”

“Alright, instruct me on what to do.”

“Thank you,” Powell said. “We are friends, well, as best you can be from different classes.”

He was speaking to the younger son of an earl. I understood rank and order quite exhaustively.

Then he mumbled, “His father would oblige our marked efforts for the gentry.”

“What did you say?” I thought I may have heard him wrong.

“His father is Lord Sinclair,” the sergeant whispered. Though I was familiar with the name from my own father’s associations, I did not know the family personally.

Powell continued, “Sinclair is an earl and administrator at C. Hoare & Co… the bank.”

“Why should it matter who his father is?” I scowled. “I would make the same effort to save the son of a tradesman as I would a son of a peer.” The very notion that one man held more worth in battle over another vexed me. “Now, can we save him or not?”

Powell shrunk back and reached for a haversack and opened it to reveal a stack of dry linens. “We have to warm him up.”

The reality of such a feat might not seem so daunting if we weren’t outside with little protection from the rain. “Let’s move him under these boardings,” I suggested. The wooden panels were the remnants of a chicken coop roof.

He assisted me in propping the boards up enough for the three of us to fit within the significantly drier setting. “Since it’s unlikely we can strip him of his wet clothing, we need to place these dry towels against his bare chest and neck, then alternate rubbing his limbs.” He demonstrated how. “If you can work on his feet, I will rub his hands. We must get his blood circulating.”

Removing Peters’ boots proved to be problematic with how attached they seemed, but once accomplished, along with his discarded wet socks, I understood why Powell suggested this. The man’s feet were bone cold to the touch. After a quarter of an hour of consistently rubbing the soldier’s limbs, the sergeant confirmed a significant increase in Peters’ pulse, followed by improved awareness. Content the immediate threat had passed, I waved over an additional soldier to continue the care with Powell as I moved on to the next.

With a piece of charcoal of my own, I seized a deep breath as I passed over a young private with a gaping hole in his side. He could not have been older than eighteen. Seven years his senior, I mourned the future he will never experience and gestured for the assistant to ease his pain with a swallow of laudanum. Though the use of such remedies was reserved for amputations, I did not wish the young man to suffer so greatly. “You will be alright,” I said, patting him on the shoulder. A justifiable lie for the last moments of a man’s life.

Thank goodness for the pleasant memories. Even the slightest trace of wistfulness while persistently immersed in darkness can lift the spirit. I relished often in the thin threads of fate. How Eveline Brown, the daughter of a baron, Lucas Walsh, the son of a marquess, and me, Zachary Collins, the son of an earl, all found friendship on the patch of land centering a rather substantial pond and the old oak that pinpointed our properties’ boundary lines. Evie titled the majestic edifice Cornelius . I could not count high enough how frequently I received a message that stated, “Cornelius has summoned you.” And within minutes I’d have mounted my 15-hand Turkmen stallion, Thunder, and led him in the direction of the pond to see my friends.

Between losing my mother as a child, my father’s cerebral ailment, and my older brother’s determined belief he’s an only child, Heaven knows I might’ve believed nothing good existed in this world if it weren’t for Evie and Luke.

Writing the number ‘2’ on the forehead of a soldier with a bullet wound in his upper thigh and shrapnel wounds to his arm, I obliged a smile. “We will have you out of here shortly,” I assured, waiting impatiently for the signal we’d been promised.

As I stopped to help dress a soldier’s head wounds, I spied the rifle at his side, and I slipped back into another amusing memory as a means of coping with the sorrow that surrounded me. Luke and I had taught Evie how to shoot. A task I was certain that if her mother ever discovered, I’d be lashed for days over our disregard for propriety.

While target shooting one day, we made a contest out of it. Whoever shot the knot of the second limb of Cornelius first would win all the fairy cakes from our picnic lunch. Luke shot first and hit an entirely wrong branch, I shot second and hit the branch, though missed the knot, and Evie shot a squirrel sitting at the base of the tree. Though she never intended harm, the squirrel happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and she wept over it for days. Her little stunt, however, provided humorous relief for Luke and me for many years thereafter.

Yet, amongst all the favorable memories, there was one particularly painful addendum worth extinguishing. The day I learned of Evie’s marriage to Sir Colin Turner over two years ago while I battled Napoleon’s troops on the Iberian Peninsula.

I did not learn of this news until my return and, despite the truth of her changed status, I could not free her from my mind. Or didn’t want to. Part of this torment came from feeling tremendous guilt over deserting her and going to war. The other part, though I never outwardly confessed it… I lost my whole heart to Eveline years ago.

Within the hour, the cannon fire ceased in our direction and, as hoped for, the advancing Prussians pulled the attention of the French off us and redirected the fight. The signal we had been waiting for arrived.

“Now, now, move!” I hollered as men raced to their assignments and a volley of activity erupted in the trenches. Able-bodied men carried the wounded found in all the recesses of the ditch, but only those who bore the numbers 1-3 on their foreheads. Anyone beyond those numbers would be taken as time and help permitted. Also, as promised, the wagons were lined up and ready to go the moment we reached the cluster of trees.

Villagers from Waterloo and the surrounding area, both men and women, did what they could to make the injured comfortable on beds of hay. Once situated, they drove their teams of horses, oxen, and donkeys diligently, clambering toward the medical tents several kilometers away from Mont Saint Jean and the battlefield.

My lieutenants and I made the return trip six times before nightfall. Sadly, the numbers of survivors dwindled as time wore on. And with each passing hour, the fight between the French against Wellington and the Prussians grew ruthless in the background.

With the addition of the Prussian veterans and militia to Wellington’s troops, they outmanned the French and, midway through the night, word reached us that this could very well be the beginning of the end.

I, however, did not take much stock in probabilities. As a seasoned soldier, I’d witnessed many battles turn in a split second, and we had already believed once before that we defeated Napoleon.

As the night progressed, ghastly battle sounds continued, and of my men, only the bodies of those who offered the greatest sacrifice remained in Mont Saint Jean. By morning, my lieutenants joined me as we took a final sweep of the area. Calculating our losses from the initial numbers, I mourned as our unit’s dead numbered fifty-three. Fifty-three men under my charge would never again reach British soil. The very thought humbled and saddened me.

Why on earth was I spared?