Chapter 4 - South From Brussels
Leaving Brussels with an army cured me of every romantic idea I had ever possessed about military movement.
Nothing was clean.
Nothing was orderly for long.
The road south was crowded beyond reason.
Infantry marched in columns.
Artillery wagons forced everyone aside.
Cavalry passed in bursts.
Supply carts broke wheels.
Horses refused instructions.
Officers shouted.
Civilians tried to move in the opposite direction.
Children cried.
Dogs barked.
Rain threatened.
Dust rose.
Then rain fell and turned the dust into mud.
Mercer’s medical wagon traveled slowly.
I walked beside it.
He had allowed me to ride.
I discovered that sitting on boxes of medical equipment while a wagon struck every hole in Belgium was worse than walking.
So I walked.
“You look unhappy,” Mercer said.
“I’m enjoying the scenery.”
We passed fields of rye and wheat.
Small farms.
Orchards.
Whitewashed buildings.
Church spires in the distance.
If you ignored the soldiers, Belgium was beautiful.
The problem was ignoring thirty thousand soldiers.
I sketched when we stopped.
Men resting in ditches.
Horses drinking.
Artillery crews checking wheels.
A drummer boy asleep against a pack.
An officer shaving using water in a helmet.
Mercer looked over my shoulder.
“You’re drawing their uniforms again.”
“They’re colorful.”
“Draw faces.”
I looked up.
“Why?”
“Uniforms tell people what army fought.”
“And faces?”
“They tell them who.”
So I began drawing faces.
A Hanoverian soldier with a mustache too large for him.
A Dutch-Belgian corporal repairing a strap.
An English infantryman asleep with his mouth open.
A German rifleman staring silently toward the south.
Nobody looked legendary.
That mattered.
Near a village, we passed wounded men being carried north.
The battle had begun somewhere ahead.
I heard distant cannon.
The sound surprised me.
I expected a sharp crack.
At that distance it was a deep rolling thump.
Like thunder that repeated too regularly to be weather.
The men marching south heard it too.
Conversation faded.
One soldier crossed himself.
Another said, “About time.”
The road divided.
Orders changed.
Units moved.
Rumors returned.
The Prussians were fighting Napoleon.
Wellington was at Quatre Bras.
The French had broken through.
The French had been defeated.
Nobody knew.
The cannon continued.
By afternoon, wounded arrived in greater numbers.
Mercer stopped pretending I was merely a guest.
“Hold this.”
I held bandages.
“Water.”
I brought water.
“Keep him still.”
I kept a man still while Mercer examined a wound in his shoulder.
The soldier screamed.
My stomach tightened.
I looked away.
“Look at him,” Mercer said.
“I’m not a doctor.”
“No. You’re the man holding him.”
So I looked.
He was maybe thirty.
Freckled.
Missing a front tooth.
Terrified.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Samuel.”
“Where are you from?”
“Leeds.”
“Good.”
“What?”
“Keep talking.”
I knew nothing about Leeds.
For the next ten minutes I invented questions.
Did he like football?
Did he have brothers?
What work had he done?
The answers mattered less than the sound of his own voice.
When Mercer finished, Samuel was still alive.
I stepped outside.
My hands shook.
Mercer followed later.
“You all right?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“Why good?”
“If this ever stops bothering you, go home.”
We continued south.
Toward evening the cannon became louder.
The countryside ahead disappeared beneath patches of smoke.
The road filled with men returning from battle.
Some walked.
Some were carried.
Some supported friends.
One officer rode a horse with blood covering one sleeve.
Another man had no hat and no musket.
He stared through everyone.
I stopped sketching.
There are moments when a notebook feels obscene.
At sunset we reached a crossroads choked with troops.
Someone shouted that the fighting at Quatre Bras had ended.
“Who won?” I asked.
The soldier laughed bitterly.
“Ask tomorrow.”
That was my introduction to battle.
Not victory.
May you like
Not defeat.
A road full of wounded men and nobody certain what had happened.
