4 Under Siege by Edward Marston Page B

battlefield. After all these years, the pain of losing his men in such large numbers was still intense. It was even more intolerable if the deaths had been as a result of horrendous mistakes by a senior officer. He was scathing in his denunciation of those above him.
    After drilling his new recruits, he stood them in a line before him. It was a very hot day and they were dripping with sweat. Ben Plummer looked as if he was about to collapse from exhaustion.
    ‘I am your salvation,’ Welbeck told them. ‘Don’t look to the officers to act in your best interest. Many of them will not even be there. It’s soldiers like us who face enemy fire time and again. There are officers in every regiment who never even leave the comforts of their home in England. Once they’ve bought their commissions, they stay as far away from danger as possible. They leave that to us.’ He glared at Plummer. ‘What do they leave to us, Ben?’
    ‘Danger, Sergeant,’ said Plummer.
    ‘The only danger you ever met before, I daresay, was from a diseased whore.’ The other men sniggered. ‘Well, you’ll get more than a burning prick when French muskets start to aim at you. The first thing you’ll do is to fill your breeches in sheer terror. Unless,’ he emphasised, tapping his chest, ‘unless, that is, you listen to, learn from and obey your dear Sergeant Welbeck. In other words, I’m the only thing standing between you and a hideous death. I’m your true saviour. Now, do you have any questions?’
    ‘Are we dismissed, Sergeant?’ gasped Plummer.
    ‘No, you’re not. We’ve barely started.’
    ‘When do we eat?’ asked another man.
    ‘You eat when I say, you hungry little turd.’
    A third voice piped up. ‘When do we have muskets?’
    ‘Well done,’ said Welbeck without sarcasm. ‘Someone’s asked a sensible question at last. The answer is that you have muskets when I can trust you not to shoot me with them.’ They laughed. ‘Oh, it has happened in the past, believe me. I’ve had two people who tried to blow me to pieces and one who did his best to run me through with a bayonet. They lived to regret it. We flog people who show that kind of disrespect to a sergeant. We flay them alive.’ He walked along the line. ‘Is there anyone here who’d like to find out what two hundred lashes feel like on your bare back?’ There was long silence. ‘No? I thought not. We’ve got no idiots here. We’ve got no heroes either, by the look of you. It’s up to me to put some heroism into you. I’ll not take cowards into battle under my command. I only want men with backbone. Be warned. I have a reputation to keep.’
    They were all too aware of it. Having talked to other soldiers in the regiment, they’d learnt about Sergeant Welbeck’s reputation as a merciless taskmaster. Everyone had suffered under him. At the same time, however, there were those who spoke up for him. He might be hard, they conceded, but he was scrupulously fair. There was no favouritism shown. He was also courageous under fire, leading his men into battle with exemplary commitment and risking his life along with theirs. Even among those who hated him, most had a grudging admiration for Henry Welbeck.
    He drilled them for another two blistering hours before he dismissed them. Ben Plummer was detained for a final word.
    ‘How do you like army life, Benjamin?’ he asked.
    Plummer grimaced. ‘I’d sooner have gone to prison.’
    ‘You’ll learn to love it in time.’
    ‘Do you love it, Sergeant?’
    ‘I do my duty, lad.’
    ‘That’s not the same thing,’ said Plummer. ‘Do you like being a soldier and having someone trying to kill you all the time?’
    Welbeck grinned. ‘The trick is to kill them first.’
    ‘Is that what you enjoy doing, Sergeant?’
    ‘I enjoy staying alive, Plummer, and meeting people like you.’
    ‘This is a living hell to me.’
    ‘Wait until the firing starts. What’s happened so far will seem like heaven then.’
    ‘How