1821 - The Battle for Palembang

19: Inferno (Gombora Island, 1821)

Redoubt No. 2, Gombora Island, 1821

The fighting had stopped at sundown, the business of the day now done, and the bodies removed and lined up before being thrown down into recently-dug mass graves. The Light Company, or what was left of it, gathered in the normative three ranks. Blood still ran hot even that the killing had ended and as the sky turned orange and grey, Sergeant de Zeeuw made the roll-call, the only officer present was Ensign Kollewijn, who stood, arms folded, upon his head a bent, broken shako and a dressed gash upon the left side of his head.

The wound dressings made the shako fit terribly on his head and aside from the fact that the leather was crooked and ruined, the shako itself did not sit straight. The bandage that dressed his wound went wide across, covering his left eyebrow up to around his young head. His jacket was bloodied and no matter how much he wiped it off, the smell of iron still persisted. Kollewijn was not even eighteen then, but he had now looked much older than his age; the unshaved stubble, his wounds, stiff lips, and manners a man of greater means... a man who had gone through unbearable pains. His breath smelt like alcohol even now, but none of the men smelt it due to the distance. He realised that slowly he, too, was turning into a James Simpson.

The state of their temporary second-in-command reflected the grim and sorry state the Thirteenth's Light Company was in. They departed from Batavia with ninety-two rankers, NCOs, and officers. By this morning, their numbers had been reduced to 61 men, having had 31 casualties amongst them one officer, three corporals, and twenty-seven rankers from operations since the engagements at Brabant's Ford, Muntinghe's Town and sickness; though mostly the latter.

Now, after the assault, they were further reduced. The ferocious fighting had taken a heavy toll on Raimbaud's men. One of the two sergeants were nowhere in sight, two corporals gone, and a further thirteen men lost or too severely wounded to continue fighting and had to be brought to the field hospital.

They were all wounded in a way, just like Ensign Kollewijn. Both body and soul. These few, these happy few: forty-five young men from all over the world; those who had fought amongst the ferocity of Napoleon's guards and the dexterity of Wellington's lines. They were all that remained.

But there was one loss that made the company sulk in tears. Captain Raimbaud was nowhere to be seen, though death or wounds of war were not the thing that had taken him. It was rank. And the reason: Major Lemaire, that Walloon major who was Brabant's second, and personally led the Thirteenth against the Redoubts.

Only the upper half of Major Lemaire's body had been found, the rest shredded by grapeshot. His personal effects were taken but his remains had been too 'sparse' to be returned to his wife and family and Batavia, thus he was buried alongside the men he led. To the regiment's disdain, Captain Pieterszoon, the commander of the Grenadier Company and thus senior captain of the regiment, was taken by three sword stabs in the abdomen during the charge and had not survived surgery. Thus, as second-in-line and commander of the Light Company, Raimbaud was appointed interim commander of the regiment. With Simpson gone, Kollewijn was the only officer and remaining, and thus, became de facto commander of the light company.

Young Kollewijn was now put a burden far beyond his age and the pressure made him wish that Simpson was back, but he too, was gone. And as the sun set, Kollewijn braved himself and turned to address his men.

"Gentlemen," his voice was exhausted, and he tried to thicken it to make him sound more like a man. "We have fought well today, though despite the price we have paid, victory remain ours. We are only one step away from taking this godforsaken island; there... there... there... the walls of Gombora..." But his speech was abruptly halted. For some reason, the sky, which had now turned into a deep, dark blue, was lined with fiery red. Having spent the most part of the last two weeks besieging the fortress, Kollewijn and his men knew better than to think the sky's sudden change in tone was a natural occurrence. Additionally, it would also be impossible that it was caused by the exchange of guns, for even the most epic of bombardments could not change the sky into such a colour...