She quickly re-tied her apron and fluffed her collar and kissed him softly on the mouth.
“Good-bye, now Darling Dan. Please, keep yourself safe for me.”
“I will Rose, I promise.” She smiled once more and slid through the narrow door then latched it firmly as it closed.
Six days later the city of Portsmouth was plastered at every corner with all the attributes of martial splendour. It was a strongly held tradition that His Worship, the Lord Mayor, would proclaim for every military parade since the victories of the Elizabethan fleets. The Royal West Kent Regiment was “marching out for the Empire” with all the pomp and regalia preserved for the very best of British military tradition.
The massive flags of the regimental colour party pulled them all steadily forward followed closely by a thirty-piece brass band that blared away, prompting the huge crowd into deafening rendition of “A British Grenadier.” The band was trailed at ten paces by their commanding officer, Major General Sir Edward Parks. He sat defiantly mounted on a shining black stallion, followed by a pair of pretentious colonels mounted on parallel snorting steeds, whose every stride seemed to prance to the music note for note. The senior officers were followed in turn by a single corporal leading the regimental mascot, a large, full horned white male goat draped in a bright crimson mantle fringed in gold and proudly emblazoned with the regimental shield.
The entire regiment followed, all sharply divided into their various companies led by an officer and three NCO’s. They marched in tight formation, eyes front and every step in precise cadence, their Remington rifles pressed tightly into their shoulders. Danny and Jack moved as one, shoulder-to-shoulder in the middle of the second row of the third company, with young Terry tucked neatly into the column precisely one step in front of Jack.
Rose and her mother waited anxiously at a curbside among the cheering crowds packed along the high street. It was Lily who spotted him first, “There he is!” she called cautiously, pointing her hand toward a face buried in a line of men now cresting in a wave over a knoll in the road. For a moment Rose searched desperately to follow her mother’s hand. She finally spotted him and began to wave her handkerchief in nervous despair.
Danny looked to be lost in a blur, rows and rows of men all cramped together tightly in a measured gait. An occasional fading cheer spiked the clatter of hundreds of steel-toed boots that stamped across the cobblestones. The moment had begun to overwhelm him. His eyes darted across the crowd searching desperately for the solitary face that defined his world. He was absolutely thunderstruck when for barely a heartbeat he spotted her just off to his right. She stood beside her mother at the curb, wearing that same lovely yellow dress from the day they met, wide-eyed and dreamlike, waving her tiny hanky and mouthing his name.
“Was it really her?” his inner voice begged to know, “Rosie” he called aloud.
Then he gulped hard, swallowing his tears, as his feet kept moving in stride. He braced himself, ready to run to her, to take her in his arms and race away into the crowd. He only needed to break ranks and cross the road to her. His felt knees begin to buckle, one step more and then another as the line kept propelling him steadily onward now just beyond her view.
“Steady boy,” Jack muttered beside him, “steady on.” Danny jolted back, closed his eyes and swallowed hard, finally surrendering into the surging wave that dragged him onward.
Rose had glimpsed the single tear rolling down his cheek and the halting bit of his smile intended just for her. She thought she’d heard him call out to her but the voice was so faint that she could not be sure. As he pressed steadily on, further and further away from her, Lily whispered, “Good God, he’s so young. They’re all so very young.”
Rose stepped back just in time to witness Danny become fully enveloped in a blaze of red tunics and then he was suddenly lost, disappearing somewhere further down the road. She strained again to try to see him and then rolled into her mother’s shoulder and wept.
* * *
A Holy War
High in the Himalayan Mountains in the Kashmir, the Khyber Pass stretched across India’s long border with Afghanistan. No place for shirkers or cowards, Sergeant Crom had insisted that only “true soldiers” were the order of the day. Ten days of rough winter sailing, a brief stopover in Cairo and two more weeks at sea followed by another two of steady marching had brought the Third Regiment of Her Majesty’s Royal West Kent Rifles here, to the “Edge of the World”. They were stationed on the frontier to guard India, “the great bastion of the Empire,” against an invasion of maniacal warlords and bands of enraged jihadist clerics and their defiant Muslim warriors.
In late November, the weather began to dictate its own scope of fear and misery and the wind had made a mockery of their thin cotton shirts and light woolen uniforms. Every man in the regiment knew that to survive this command would require a good deal more than courage and marksmanship. A steady run of letters from Rose had quietly kept Danny focused on their future together, rejuvenating his hope and refueling his passion to return home on time. But by early spring the Royal Kents were failing badly. Their losses were horrific. Thirty-six dead and forty-seven wounded from enemy fire and nearly twice that lost to pneumonia and dysentery. Worse still was the despair, every man in the regiment knew that any prayer of relief had long since past. The last orders from headquarters had been firm and unrelenting, “the regiment will hold until relieved.”
Many of the non-coms had confirmed long ago what the senior officers dreaded most to hear, it was the night attacks from ‘these mad Muslims’ that proved most devastating. The coldest nights brought the heaviest attacks and it was always in the pre-dawn when most of the sick and exhausted succumbed. After one particularly desperate engagement, Danny and Jack stood with their backs together staring down at the newest layers of victims stacked like kindling at their feet.
Word had begun to spread throughout the company that Sergeant Crom was dead, killed by the first shot fired that night by a sniper’s round. The reaction amongst the troops was a slow paralysis. Men stood about in small clusters, muttering and shaking their heads. Somehow the passion for keeping things square and tight had quietly begun to evaporate. Danny was still dazed from a blow to the head from an enemy war club and Jack’s face bled from a small knife wound to his left cheek. Both were ragged and torn. They stood silent together for a long while barely able to hold on to their rifles.
“Lucky he got you on the head,” Jack muttered, “otherwise you might’a got hurt.”
Danny smiled and snickered softly, “Guess you’re gonna tell world you got that nick in a duel for some lady’s honour. Only problem is you ain’t ever met a lady.”
He waited several long deep breaths then continued. “We’re drowning here in a bucket of blood and guts Jack. Those crazy Mohamedens ain’t never gonna quit. It’ll never end. Now with Crom gone the boys will fold like a bad hand.”
“Yer damn right and them stinkin’ officers ain’t gonna save us either, Danny boy. They’re keep us right here til we’re all dead. We gotta get out here and soon,” Jack lamented, “or one of these nights it’s gonna be our blood.”
Danny stared down at his feet then muttered quietly, “Let’s go see Terry.”
Supporting each other arm in arm the boys struggled back inside the barricades to find a bandaging station run by the company medical corporal. After cursory treatment, they ambled across the camp to the hospital. They ducked around the lines of open cots plugged full with moaning men and weaved their way back to the furthest tent - the last stop for the fatally ill. Six men lay alone under canvass but all the medical attention was now with the victims of the attack. The boys could only stare down glumly as their younger pal who now appeared to be overwhelmed by dysentery, slipping closer to death.
“Poor kid,” Jack muttered barely above a whisper. “He only ever joined up to send his pay to