EIGHT
Eve of Inkermann
‘Right, together now, lift.’ All four men grunted as they took the weight of the stretcher and its corpse.
The early November morning was crisp, just cold enough to nip the men’s bare hands on the wooden stretcher and to leave their breath hanging in the air. The grey blanket that covered the dead man had been tied off with coarse, straw-coloured string at ankles, waist and head, the whole bundle now sparkling with frost in the weak sunlight. The body and those of two other men had lain outside the regimental hospital tents overnight—the cold only adding to the stiffness of rigor mortis—all three victims of a combination of exhaustion and cholera which was never far away. As the carrying party lifted Private Thompson onto the stretcher he was unbending, rigid in h
