The heat was astonishing.
Long minutes later that gale subsided, and I staggered to my feet. Men, burned and weeping—weapons— the remains of tents—terrified horses—all lay scattered over the ground like the toys of some capricious child- giant. Father, within less than a quarter-hour our camp had been devastated to a far greater extent than either the Russians, Dame Cholera, or Generals January and February had managed hitherto.
Meanwhile, over Sebastopol, a cloud shaped like a black hammer rose into the air.
A fellow beside me lay weeping, his eyes pools of cloudy liquid—horribly like the eyes of a boiled trout. For the next minutes I crouched by him and grasped his hand, mutely offering what comfort I could. Then an Officer came by—his uniform was scorched and unrecognizable, but the remains of a sword still swung at his hip—and I called up to him. “What have they done to us, your honor? Is this some devilish new weapon of the Cossacks?”
He paused and looked down at me. He was a young man, but that infernal light had blasted lines of age into his face; and he said: “No, lad, not the Cossacks; that was one of our own.”
At first I could not understand him, but he pointed to the dispersing cloud over Sebastopol, and I came to see the astonishing truth: that the engineer’s single shell, impacting Sebastopol, had caused an explosion of such severity that even we—at a distance of three miles—had been incapacitated.
Clearly the power of the novel projectile had been grossly underestimated; otherwise surely we would have been confined to our trenches and foxholes.
Slowly I became aware that the Russian guns, a constant chorus since my arrival on the Peninsula, were stilled at last. Had we then achieved our main objective? With this one, single, devastating blow, was Sebastopol laid low?
A trace of exultation, of victory, coursed through my veins; but my own pain, the devastation around me, and that looming thunderhead over Sebastopol, all worked rapidly to subdue me; and from those left standing near me I heard not a word of rejoicing.
It was still only seven-thirty.
The Officers organized us quickly. Those of us reasonably able-bodied—which included me, Father, once my poor hand was salved, bandaged up and wrapped in a thick mitten—were put to work aiding the rest. We erected our tents once more and restored the camp into something resembling a British military operation.
Then the lines of hospital carts began to form.
So we were occupied until noon, by which time the sun was high overhead. I sat in the shade, salt sweat coursing into my burns, and ate Bully Beef and sipped water through cracked lips.
Though the thunderhead was cleared now, there was still not a sound from the Russian guns in Sebastopol.
At about two of the afternoon we were ordered to form up for the final assault. But, Father, a strange assault it was going to be: we carried our Minies and ammo, yes; but also we hauled trench shovels, picks and other tools, and we loaded up carts with all the blankets, bandages, medication, water we could spare.
And so we set off over the last three miles to Sebastopol.
It took two hours, I would guess. After ten months of artillery bombardment and siege warfare the land was an ocean of churned, crusty mud; continually I slipped into shell pits, and before long all of us were soaked by foul-smelling, brackish water. And everywhere I came across the rubble of warfare: cracked shell casings, abandoned kit, the wreckage of artillery pieces… and one or two ornaments of a more grisly nature which, with respect, Father, I will forbear to describe.
But at last we reached Sebastopol; and I stood for some minutes on a rise overlooking the town.
Father, you will recall my earlier description of that town as it lay intact within its walls, which had bristled with weaponry. Well, now it was as if a great boot had stamped—I can think of no other way to describe it. A crater perhaps a quarter-mile wide lay plumb in the center of the city, close to the docks; and I could see how the gouged earth continued to steam, the rocks and slag glowing red hot. And around this crater was a great circle, where the houses and other buildings had been razed, quite neatly; one could see the outlines of their foundations, as if one were staring at a giant architect’s plan—although here and there a chimney stack or fragment of wall, scorched to blackness, clung defiantly to the vertical. Beyond that region of devastation the buildings appeared to have remained largely intact—but of windows and roof slates there was scarcely an example. And in several quarters of the town we saw great fires raging, apparently uncontrolled.
The stout defensive walls of the town were trails of rubble now, toppled outwards by the blast; the muzzles of wrecked artillery pieces pointed at random to the sky. And the redoubts lay shattered; Russians in their shapeless uniforms sprawled over the ruins of their guns.
Beyond this infernal landscape the bay lay glimmering blue, quite unperturbed; but the corpses of several vessels lay adrift in the water, their masts snapped.
For some minutes we stared slack-mouthed. Then the Captain said, “Come on, lads; we have our duty to perform.”
We formed up once more. A bugle and drum struck up, their rousing sounds sharply misplaced, and we marched across the wreckage of the walls.
So, at last, at about four in the afternoon, the British Army entered Sebastopol.
At first we carried our weapons at battle ready and moved in good military order, with scouts and lookouts; but the only sound was the crunch of glass and smashed masonry under our boots, and it was as if we marched across the surface of the Moon. Even on the outskirts of town the buildings were uniformly scorched and blackened, and I was reminded of that terrible heat which had blazed from the heart of the city. We came across one house which looked as if it had been sliced open, so that we could see within to the furnishings and decorations of its unfortunate occupants. Smashed vehicles of all sizes littered the streets, dead or injured horses trapped in their harnesses still.
And the people:
Father, they lay everywhere as they had fallen, men, women and children alike, their bodies twisted and cast down like dolls, their dumpy Russian clothing torn, bloodied and smouldering. Somehow the attitudes of these unfortunate corpses made them seem less than human, and I felt only a sickened numbness.
Then we met our first living Russian.
He came limping through a doorway which no longer led anywhere. He was a soldier—an Officer, for all I could tell—and around me I could hear chaps murmuring and fingering their arms. But this poor fellow had lost his cap, carried no weapon of any kind, and, one foot dangling behind him, was managing to walk only by supporting himself on a crutch improvised from a piece of timber. The Captain ordered us to shoulder arms. The fellow began to jabber in that guttural tongue of theirs, and gradually the Captain worked out that there were several people, perhaps a dozen, trapped in the wreckage of a schoolhouse, some hundreds of yards away.
A detail of chaps was issued with shovels and other gear and sent with the Russian.
And so it went, for the next several days. Father, as far as I know not a shot was fired in anger in Sebastopol after the falling of the anti-ice shell; instead we worked side by side with the Russian survivors—and with the French and Turks—in the guts of that felled port.
I remember a child, lying on her back, a red scarf wrapped around her head. She held one hand up to the sky which had betrayed her, and her fingers burned like candles. One chap came out of the wreckage of a sailmaking factory, hauling himself by his arms only; he left a red, glistening trail as he moved, like some ghastly slug…
Father, I have chosen to relate these things to you; but I know that you will not allow Mother or young Ned to become distressed by a repetition of this account.
The greatest single labor was clearing the corpses; but this we could not achieve fast enough. After a few days under the hot Crimean sun the stink of the place was impossible to bear; and across our mouths we all wore kerchiefs soaked in “raki.”
The strangest sight I saw came after a few days, when I was sent into that crater at the heart of the town. We had to wrap soaked rags around our boots as, even then, the masonry was still hot enough to burn the skin. Here I found a slab of wall which poked like a large, irregular tombstone out of the shattered earth. This wall was uniformly blackened—save for an oddly shaped patch close to ground level; and this patch, I realized after some time, was in the shape of an old woman, making her painful way along the street.
Father, the wall bore the shadow cast by that poor lady in the light of the anti-ice shell. Of the lady herself
