ON the first day of the Battle of Custozza, the 24th of July, 1848, about sixty soldiers belonging to one of the Italian infantry regiments, having been sent to occupy an isolated house on a height, were unexpectedly attacked by two companies of Austrians, who, firing on them from different points, barely gave them time to take refuge in the house and hastily barricade the doors, leaving several dead and wounded in the fields. After barricading the doors, the Italian soldiers hastily ran to the windows on the first floor and began to pour a steady fire into the assailants, who were gradually advancing in a semicircle and replying vigorously.
The sixty Italians were commanded by two subalterns and a captain, a tall old fellow, lean and severe, with white hair and mustaches. With them, there was a Sardinian drummer boy, a boy not much more than fourteen years old, and who scarcely appeared to be twelve. He was small, with an olive-brown face, and two sparkling little deep black eyes. The captain was directing the defense from a window on the first floor, shouting his orders like pistol shots, and with no sign of emotion on his hard face. The drummer boy, who was a little pale, but firm on his legs, got up on a table and was stretching out his neck to see out of the windows and leaning against the wall. Through the smoke, he saw the white uniforms of the Austrians, who were slowly advancing through the fields. The house was situated on the summit of a steep slope, and on the side toward the slope had but one small window, high up, which looked out from the garret. Therefore, the Austrians did not threaten the house from that side, and the slope was clear: their fire was directed only toward the front and the two sides.
But it was an infernal fire, a hail of leaden bullets, which on the outside cracked the walls and crumbled the tiles, and on the inside smashed ceilings, furniture, window frames, and doorposts, filling the air with splinters, clouds of plaster, and bits of pottery and glass, hissing, rebounding, crashing into everything with a noise fit to drive one mad. From time to time, one of the soldiers who were firing from the windows fell back on the floor and was dragged to one side. Some tottered from room to room, pressing their hands on their wounds. In the kitchen, there was already one dead man with a ball through his forehead. The semicircle of the enemy kept closing up.
All at once, the captain, who until then had been impassible, was seen to show signs of uneasiness and to stride out of the room, followed by a sergeant. About three minutes afterward, the sergeant came running back and called the drummer boy, beckoning him to follow. The boy ran after him up a wooden staircase and went with him into an empty garret, where he saw the captain, who was writing with a pencil on a sheet of paper, leaning against the window, with a well rope on the floor at his feet.
The captain folded the paper, and, looking with his cold grayish eyes, before which all the soldiers trembled, into the eyes of the boy, said abruptly:
“Drummer boy!”
The drummer boy saluted. The captain said, “You’ve got grit.”
The boy’s eyes lighted up. “Yes, captain,” he answered.
“Look down there,” said the captain, pushing him to the window, “in the plain, near the houses of Villafranca, where there is a glittering of bayonets. Those are our friends, standing idle. Take this note, catch hold of the rope, slide down from the window, run down the hill, go through the fields, reach our friends, and give the note to the first officer you see. Chuck away your belt and knapsack.”
The boy took off his belt and knapsack, and put the note into his breast pocket. The sergeant threw out the rope and grasped one end of it with both hands. The captain helped the boy pass backward through the little window. “Take care,” he said to him, “the safety of the detachment depends on your courage and on your legs.”
“Trust me, captain,” replied the drummer boy, swinging himself out.
“Stoop as you go down,” said the captain again, helping the sergeant to hold the rope.
“Never fear.”
“God help you.”
In a few moments, the boy was on the ground; the sergeant drew up the rope and disappeared. The captain sprang to the window and saw the boy flying down the hill. He was already hoping that he had succeeded in escaping unobserved when five or six little clouds of dust, which rose from the ground both before and behind the boy, warned him that he had been seen by the Austrians, who were firing at him from the top of the hill. Those little clouds were earth thrown up by the bullets. But the boy continued to run at a break-neck pace.
All at once, he fell.
“Killed!” roared the captain, biting his fist. But he had scarcely said the word when he saw the boy get up. “Ah! only a fall!” he said to himself, and breathed again. In fact, the boy began to run again as fast as he could; but he limped. “A sprained ankle,” thought the captain.
A few more little clouds of dust rose here and there around the boy, but they were always further off. He was safe. The captain gave an exclamation of triumph. But he continued to follow him anxiously with his eyes because it was a question of minutes. If he did not get down there as quickly as possible with the note which requested immediate relief, either all his soldiers would be killed, or he would have to surrender and become prisoners with them. The boy ran swiftly for a while, then limped and slackened his pace, and then broke into a run again, but he seemed to become more and more fatigued, and every little while stumbled and paused for a moment.
“Perhaps he has been hit by a glancing bullet,” thought the captain, and he shudderingly watched all his movements, and encouraged him, and spoke to him, as if the boy could hear him. He measured incessantly, with keen eyes, the distance interposing between the running boy and the glittering of arms which he saw down there in the plain in the midst of the wheat fields, gilded by the sun. And meanwhile, he heard the whistling and the noise of the bullets in the rooms below, the imperious and angry cries of the officers and sergeants, the groans of the wounded, and the crashing of the furniture and plaster. “Up! Courage!” he cried, following with his gaze the distant boy. “Forward! Run! He has stopped, curse him! Ah! he is running again.”
An officer came, out of breath, to say that the enemy, without ceasing their fire, were waving a white rag as a summons to surrender.
“Don’t answer!” he cried, without removing his eyes from the boy, who was already in the plain, but who was no longer running, and who appeared to be dragging himself along with difficulty.
“But get on! Run!” said the captain, grinding his teeth and clenching his fists. “Kill yourself, die, scoundrel, but go on!” Then a horrible oath burst from him. “Ah! the infamous coward, he has sat down!” In fact, the boy, whose head, till now, he had seen projecting above a wheat field, had disappeared, as if he had fallen. But in a moment, his head came into view again; finally, he was lost behind the hedges, and the captain saw him no more.
He then flew downstairs. It was raining bullets; the rooms were encumbered with the wounded, some of whom reeled about like drunken men, catching at the furniture; walls and floor were spattered with blood; corpses were lying across the doors; the lieutenant’s arm had been broken by a ball; everything was in a whirl of smoke and dust.
“Courage!” yelled the captain. “Stick to your posts! Relief is coming! Courage for a little while longer!” The Austrians had drawn nearer yet, their contorted faces loomed through the smoke; above the rattle of the firing rose their savage cries, insulting, demanding surrender, threatening slaughter. Occasionally a soldier, terror-stricken, retreated from the window; the sergeant drove him back. But the defenders’ fire was slackening; their faces showed discouragement; it was impossible to prolong the resistance. Suddenly, the firing of the Austrians slackened, and a thundering voice shouted, first in German, then in Italian:
“Surrender!”
“No!” howled the captain from a window. And the firing began again steadier and fiercer on both sides. More soldiers fell. Already more than one window was without defenders. The fatal moment was close at hand. The captain was muttering between his teeth in a broken voice, “They’re not coming! They’re not coming!” and he ran furiously about, twisting his saber in his clenched hand, resolved to die, when a sergeant, coming down from the garret, cried in a loud voice, “They’re coming!”
“They’re coming!” the captain repeated with a shout of joy. At this shout all, unhurt, wounded, sergeants, and officers, rushed to the windows, and once more the resistance grew fierce. A few moments after, a sort of uncertainty and beginning of disorder were remarked in the enemy. Immediately, in great haste, the captain formed a small company downstairs, with fixed bayonets, ready to make a sally. Then he flew upstairs again. He had scarcely gotten up there, when they heard a hurried tread, accompanied by a formidable hurrah, and from the windows, they saw advancing through the smoke the two-cornered hats of the Italian carabineers, a squadron dashing along at full speed, and the flashing of sword blades brandished in the air, descending on the heads, shoulders, and backs of the enemy. Then the little troop rushed out of the door with lowered bayonets. The enemy wavered, became disordered, and took flight. The ground remained clear, the house was free, and a short time after the height was occupied by two battalions of infantry and two cannon.
The captain, with his remaining soldiers, rejoined his regiment, fought again, and was slightly wounded in the left hand by a glancing ball in the last bayonet charge. The day ended in victory for us.
But the day after, the fight having begun again, the Italians were overwhelmed, in spite of a brave resistance, by the superior numbers of the Austrians, and on the morning of the 26th, they were compelled to retreat sorrowfully toward the Mincio.
The captain, although wounded, marched on foot with his soldiers, who were tired and silent, and toward sunset reached Goito on the Mincio, and immediately sought out his lieutenant, who had been picked up, with a broken arm, by our ambulance, and who had arrived there first. He was directed to a church, where a field hospital had hastily been installed. He went there. The church was full of wounded, reclining on two rows of beds and mattresses stretched on the floor. Two doctors and various assistants were anxiously going and coming, and stifled cries and groans were heard.
On entering, the captain stopped and looked about him, in search of his officer. Just then he heard a faint voice close by, calling to him:
“Captain!”
He turned around. It was the drummer boy. He was stretched on a trestle bed, covered up to the chest by a coarse window curtain with little red and white squares, with his arms out. He was pale and thin, but with his eyes still sparkling, like two black gems.
“Are you here?” the captain asked him, in an astonished but stern manner. “Bravo! You did your duty.”
“I did what I could,” answered the drummer boy.
“Have you been wounded?” said the captain, looking around for his officer in the beds near by.
“What would you have?” said the boy, who took courage to speak from the proud pleasure of being wounded for the first time, and without which he would not have dared to open his mouth in the presence of his captain. “I had to run like a hunchback; they saw me immediately. I should have arrived twenty minutes sooner if they hadn’t hit me. Fortunately, I found a staff captain directly to whom to give the note. But it was hard coming down after that lick! I was dying of thirst, kept thinking that I shouldn’t get there, and was crying with rage to think that with every minute’s delay, someone was going to the other world, up there at the house. Bah! I did what I could. I am contented. But, allow me, captain. Look at yourself, you are bleeding.”
In fact, from the captain’s badly bandaged palm a few drops of blood were trickling down his fingers.
“Do you want me to tighten the bandage, captain? Hold it out a moment.”
The captain held out his left hand and put out his right to help the boy to undo and retie the knot. But no sooner had the boy raised himself from the pillow than he grew pale, and was compelled to rest his head again.
“Enough, enough,” said the captain, looking at him and drawing away his bandaged hand, which the boy wished to keep ; “take care of yourself instead of thinking of others, because even slight things can become serious when they are neglected.”
The drummer boy shook his head.
“But you,” said the captain, looking at him attentively, “you must have lost a good deal of blood, to be as weak as that.”
“Lost much blood?” answered the boy, with a smile. “More than blood. Look!”
And with a jerk, he pulled off the covering.
The captain stepped back, horrified.
The boy had but one leg. His left leg had been amputated above the knee and the stump was bandaged with rags which were covered with blood.
Just then, a fat little army surgeon passed in his shirt-sleeves.
“Ah! captain,” he said quickly, nodding at the drummer boy, “that is an unfortunate case; a leg which could have been saved easily if he had not forced it in that mad way; a cursed inflammation; it had to be cut off at once. Oh, but a brave boy, I assure you; he didn’t shed a tear nor utter a cry! On my word of honor, I was proud that he was an Italian boy, while I was operating. He comes of a good stock, by Jove!”
And he hurried away.
The captain frowned and looked intently at the drummer boy while drawing the covering over him again. Then, slowly, almost without knowing it, and still looking at him, he raised his hand to his head and lifted his cap.
“Captain!” exclaimed the boy in surprise, “What are you doing, captain? To me!”
And then that rough soldier, who had never said a gentle word to an inferior, replied in an inexpressibly soft and affectionate voice:
“I am but a captain; you are a hero.”
Then he threw himself with open arms on the little drummer boy and kissed him three times on the heart.
