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they could find. A dead Frenchman’s trousers were as good as any if they were intact. Wives and daughters were keptbusy darning and sewing and making up whatever they could from bits and pieces into shirts and jackets.
    The three hundred men of the Coldstream and Third Guards Light Companies, however, had done no fighting for over a year and new uniforms had not long arrived from London. In their red jackets, white trousers, stovepipe shakos and good leather shoes, they had been formed up in four lines and looked as fine as if they were in Horse Guards Parade. The shoes, especially, were a godsend. The flimsy things they had worn in the Peninsula had lasted no time on rough Spanish roads. Each man held a musket and carried a bayonet, a pouch of cartridges, another of balls, a wooden canteen and an oilskin knapsack. Only the pattern of buttons on their jackets told the two companies apart.
    These were the skirmishers, the ghosts and spirits who would work their way close to the enemy by hiding in fields and behind trees, and would pick off as many Frenchmen as they could before withdrawing quietly whence they came. Macdonell was proud of them and, in the expectation that they would march that morning, had prepared a few words of encouragement. Nothing grand, nothing Agincourt-like, just a quiet reminder of the great traditions of their regiment. But all he could tell them was that they were going nowhere until further orders arrived from Brussels. As he spoke, faces dropped and shoulders slumped. Another day hanging about with little to do, they were thinking, and he could hardly blame them. Three months in Enghien, not a Frenchman in sight and fingers itching to pull triggers. Last night, the news that the frogswere at the Sambre would have been around the camp like the plague. Why were they not being sent to meet their advance? Would they have to wait until the frogs were hopping around the gates of Brussels before attacking?
    James Macdonell, their colonel, who had fought in Spain, France and Italy, who wore the Gold Medal for Maida, could not tell them. He could only instruct Captain Wyndham to dismiss the parade and to find what work he could to keep them busy. It was not what he or they had expected.
    Nor was it what the two young ensigns attached to the Coldstream Light Company had expected. Superficially alike – smart, ambitious, hard-working sons of well-to-do families – in temperament they were as far apart as beef and mutton. Henry Gooch, seldom lost for a word, boasted of being impatient to ‘make widows of a hundred French madames’. Thoughtful, devout James Hervey, when pressed, would say only that he prayed he would let neither his regiment nor his family down. Very different, yet perhaps no more than two sides of the same coin. A coin minted in fear of what was to come – one side braggadocio, the other prayer.
    The two of them had been standing with Captain Wyndham during the parade. ‘Why are we not marching, Colonel?’ asked Gooch, as the men dispersed.
    ‘It is not for me to say, Mister Gooch,’ replied Macdonell, ‘nor for you to ask. We shall await orders.’
    ‘But, Colonel, if the French—’
    ‘Enough, sir. Your leadership skills will be tested today.’
    ‘I daresay the order to march will come soon enough,’ ventured Hervey, ‘It sounds like Buonaparte means to fight andI wonder that the Duke did not receive earlier warning from his agents in Paris. Surely they would have known?’
    ‘An interesting point, Mister Hervey, and another to which I have no answer. Now, kindly be about your business, gentlemen. Find work for your companies and for yourselves. Muskets, drill, packs. Check and check again. Keep them busy.’
    The ensigns saluted smartly and marched off towards the camp. Macdonell watched them go. Neither had seen battle and he doubted they had much inkling of what it was like to see the head of the man next to you blown to splinters of bone, or to face ranks of cheering