Rifles - Mark Urban [10]
Craufurd’s system was designed to govern the troops’ behaviour from their first waking moment to their last. Reveille, the blowing of a bugle horn, would sound an hour and a half before any intended march got under way. The Standing Orders set out what had to happen before a second horn blast an hour after the first, noting, for example, ‘the baggage must be loaded at least ten minutes before the second horn sounds’. A quarter of an hour later, at the third horn, companies were to form, ready to set up. On the fourth blast, the head of the column would begin its march.
At the other end of the day, everything was prescribed, from the posting of a guard to catch stragglers who’d fallen behind without leave, to the choice of correct sites for cooking and measures to stop ‘the men easing themselves in improper places’. In order to prevent the excrement piling up, ditches would have to be dug, ‘covered over daily and fresh ones made as often as expedient’. Craufurd, it could truly be said, intended to regulate his brigade’s every motion.
Standing Orders reached their most pedantic extreme when describing arrangements for what was usually the day’s main business: marching. Article 3 No. 4 stipulated that ‘any man who, for the sake of avoiding water or other bad places, or for any other reason, presumes to step on one side, or quit his proper place in the Ranks, must be confined.’
The reasoning for this last injunction was contained in Article 3 No. 7: ‘the defiling of one Regiment on the march … will cause a delay of ten minutes; one such obstacle, if not passed without defiling, would, therefore, delay a Brigade consisting of three Regiments, half an hour, and in the winter, when obstacles of this kind are frequent, and the days short, a column, which is constantly defiling without cause will arrive at its quarters in the dark.’
Craufurd’s orders ran to many pages, which officers were expected to learn by rote. While they were the product of much careful reflection on military science by their author, they were tainted by obsessions such as his conviction that small deviations on the line of march ruined all calculations. Furthermore, his ideas would be enforced with such harshness that they excited the unbridled hatred of almost every officer in the 95th, who had been infused in the newest and most liberal notions of disciplining and motivating soldiers.
If the Rifle officers found Craufurd especially insufferable, then he seems to have regarded them and their ideas with similar disdain. There was something so different about the 95th – its appearance, its weaponry, its conduct – that offended Craufurd’s sense of order. He tried to use fear to change their ways. During the Corunna campaign, the whole brigade had often been paraded to witness floggings. He’d struck his soldiers with his own hand, too, for what he saw as insolence. The veterans of that campaign knew well that at one point, after beating a man of the 95th to the ground, Craufurd had shouted at the soldiers around him: ‘You think, because you are riflemen, you may do whatever you think proper, but I’ll teach you the difference before I have done with you!’
In July, many riflemen regarded the prospect of serving under Craufurd for the foreseeable future with dread. One captain in the 95th, who knew him from the previous campaign, wrote home, ‘You have heard how universally General Craufurd was detested in the retreat to Corunna. If possible he is still more abhorred now and has been so ever since we landed in Portugal.’
For the next fortnight they fell into a daily routine of marching. Reveille was usually sounded in the early hours of the morning and the troops would trudge along until about 11 a.m. As the July heat reached its peak, they would be resting and cooking up their main meal of the day.
Craufurd had to reconcile his desire gradually to build up the marching powers of his Light Brigade (so that he did not leave too many stragglers behind or kill off soldiers with heatstroke) with his determination to catch up with the main army