returned, I entered private practice. Titus embarked on his military career. His father was in the army; his grandfather too. He saw it as carrying on the family tradition. He was fortunate in having the patronage of John Hunter to assist in his deployment. Mr Hunter had recently been appointed Surgeon-General. It was through Hunter’s help and family connections that Titus was able to purchase his commission.”
Hawkwood had wondered about Hyde’s rank. Army surgeons commonly held the rank of captain. Few, if any, held the rank of colonel. There was an old saying about rank having its privileges. In the army it was often the other way round.
“What was his regiment?”
“The 6th Regiment of Foot.” Carslow’s face softened. “It’s a sad fact, Officer Hawkwood, that the battlefield provides great opportunities for the surgeon. It offers him the chance to investigate all manner of injury. I think it was Larrey who said that war carries surgery to the highest pitch of perfection. He’s Bonaparte’s chief surgeon, so I’m more than content to take his word for it. Ironically, the vast number of casualties returning from Spain has allowed civilian surgeons like myself the chance to hone
Hawkwood thought back. From what he could remember of Hyde’s regiment, they’d been in the thick of it from the beginning. The 6th had probably seen as much action as the Rifles. As a regimental surgeon, Hyde would have had his work cut out, that much was certain.
“Titus and I continued to exchange letters, though our correspondence became more infrequent as time went by. A few months would pass, sometimes a year, and then a letter would arrive telling me of his travels in some distant land. I would write back about my life in London, and then another year or two would elapse. Then, just when I thought I would never hear from him again, a letter would turn up out of the blue. And so it went on.”
The surgeon hesitated. There were two chairs in the room. Carslow took one and indicated that Hawkwood should take the other. “It was in his letters from the Peninsula that I first began to notice the change. It had been a while since I’d received any correspondence from him, though he did send a brief note from Ireland – I remember he was not taken with the weather there. It rained so much, he thought he would rust. The next letter was from Spain. There’d been a battle, Rol … I forget the precise name. I –”
“Rolica,” Hawkwood said.
“Yes, that was it.” There was a questioning look in the surgeon’s eyes.
“I was there,” Hawkwood said, and wondered immediately why he’d felt the need to admit it.
The 95th had played a crucial role in the battle and the lead-up to it. Hawkwood had led raiding parties against the enemy’s rearguard, employing hit-and-run tactics that had infuriated the French general, Delaborde. The weather had been blisteringly hot, Hawkwood remembered. Hyde would have found it vastly different from rain- sodden Ireland.
Carslow stared at him. A shadow fell across the doorway. It was one of the dressers. “Time for rounds, Mr Carslow.”
Carslow turned. “Thank you, Mr Flynn, you may tell Mr Gibson to begin. I’ll join him presently.”
The dresser frowned, threw Hawkwood a curious glance, then left.
Carslow leaned forward. “So you were there?”
“I was a soldier,” said Hawkwood.
For a moment it looked as though the surgeon was waiting for Hawkwood to expand on his statement, but the dark shadow in Hawkwood’s eyes must have told Carslow that was not going to happen.
“Titus wrote that there were many wounded,” Carslow said.
Hawkwood nodded.
“His letter said that conditions in the aid posts were very bad.”
That was an understatement. Hawkwood glanced quickly at the surgeon’s blood-smeared trousers. Conditions in the forward dressing stations and battalion field hospitals hadn’t been bad, they’d been appalling.
“You said there was a change in him?” Hawkwood prompted.
The surgeon looked thoughtful. “Not then, but later, over the following year, as his letters became more frequent. He wrote of other battles. Vimeiro was another one I remember.”
Carslow’s expression grew solemn. “That was the first time his letters had shown real anger. They were very descriptive, too. He wrote of the men he worked with, the soldiers he tended, the type of wounds he had to treat; the lack of proper equipment, the dreadful food, and the filth. The list of diseases was endless: dysentery, typhus, pneumonia, cholera – you name it. More men were dying of infection than from their wounds. He described how the wounded were left on the field of battle, often for days, before they were retrieved. How local villagers would descend like wolves to steal personal belongings from the dead and dying. You could see in his words that he was becoming disillusioned by the knowledge that he could not save them all.”
Hawkwood listened to the litany without interruption. He’d seen it for himself. He didn’t need any embellishment. He’d known the treatment stations and the tents where patients lay two to a bed, where the overwhelmed staff had to light fir-log fires to try and conceal the stench of so many men packed together. He’d stood by the burial pits, too, and watched the orderlies torching the bodies to prevent contagion. The reality of war was never far from the minds of the men who had served and, more importantly, survived.
Carslow pursed his lips. “Titus felt that surgeons were too quick to intervene. He believed that meddling with wounds often resulted in a worse outcome than if the wounds were left to heal on their own. He’d learned that from Hunter. He worked among the French prisoners, sometimes with captured French surgeons. He said their methods were just as bad, that they preferred to amputate rather than let nature’s balm take its course. Though he and his French counterparts were in agreement that evacuation of the wounded from the battlefield should be much quicker. Were you at Corunna, Officer Hawkwood?”
Hawkwood nodded.
The winter retreat from Sahagun to the sea had taken nearly three weeks, over some of the most inhospitable terrain Hawkwood had ever encountered. There had been no mobile hospital facilities. The severely ill and injured had been left by the side of the road. Of the survivors who’d made it back to England on the transport ships, nearly a quarter had still required treatment.
Carslow’s mouth tightened. “When the troops arrived home, the government closed the hospitals in Gosport and Plymouth. There were not enough beds. They had to use barracks, storehouses, hospital ships, anything they could find. Some of the casualties were even placed in hulks. There weren’t enough surgeons, either. Local medical students offered their services and military surgeons were sent down from London. According to Titus, the conditions were bestial. That was the word he used: bestial.”
Hyde had returned to the Peninsula the following April with the rest of the army to begin the advance into Spain. Conditions hadn’t improved; still not enough transport or food. The commissariat hadn’t been able to cope. Many of the soldiers, fresh from English barracks and newcomers to the climate, fell victim to the heat and the hard marches. The vast bulk of the army had been on half-rations, some troops on even less. Hyde’s work had begun the moment he’d disembarked from the transport ship. It must have seemed as though he’d never been away.
Listening to Carslow’s account, Hawkwood had no trouble picturing the scene. He was also aware from the Bethlem hospital documents that it must have been around this time that Hyde’s “distraction” had begun to manifest itself.
“Titus’s next letter to me was written shortly after his arrival in Portugal. It was sent on a packet from Lisbon. Mostly it concerned details of the voyage and the conditions on board ship. That was the last letter I received. It was not until I was approached to cover his bond that I learned what had happened to him.”
The way Carslow described it, the colonel’s continuous remonstrations over the inadequacies of the medical facilities and what he had perceived to be gross dereliction on the part of the general staff, had begun to irk both his fellow surgeons and his superiors. According to the latter, the colonel’s manner had started to become increasingly erratic. In the end, he had been relieved of duty, examined, and admitted to one of the base hospitals. From there he was taken back to the coast and transported home.
“A part of him must have remained lucid for him to have mentioned our friendship. I was asked if I would co- sign his bond. How could I refuse?”
“Who was the other signatory?”
“James McGrigor.”
There was a pause. For one awful moment Hawkwood thought Carslow was referring to the coroner’s irascible surgeon. Then he realized, from the Christian name and the subtle difference in pronunciation, that it was someone else entirely, and yet a person with whom he was familiar.
