Rifles - Mark Urban [100]
The stormers moved up, with a couple of hundred riflemen of Right Wing who would provide a covering fire. O’Hare caught sight of George Simmons, the subaltern he had tutored, now one of the battalion’s most experienced officers. The men shook hands, and as he turned to part, the major told Simmons: ‘A lieutenant colonel or cold meat in a few hours.’
Shortly before 10 p.m., the four companies of the 95th’s Right Wing, under the commandof Major Alexander Cameron, began trotting forward. They were going to line the protective slope around the walls, to provide a covering fire for the stormers. Some British cannon had kept up a fire of blanks in order to deceive the garrison, but as the riflemen crawled into position on top of the escarpment, many felt sure they could see the defenders watching them and doing nothing. Both sides were holding their fire.
The rope party and Forlorn Hope came forward too now, dozens of men trotting up the incline, many carrying ladders or haybags in order to break the fall into the ditch ahead. As they came to the top of the slope, silhouetted against the sky, a couple of carcasses were thrown down by the defenders, burning with a furious intensity and illuminating walls and men alike with an unearthly flickering pink light.
‘Instantly a volley of grape-shot, canister, and small arms poured in among us as we stood on the glacis about thirty yards from the walls,’ one officer recalled. Men dropped all around as Cameron’s riflemen tried to answer the French fire. ‘What a sight! The enemy crowding the ramparts, with the French soldiers standing on the parapets … a tremendous firing now opened on us and for a moment we were stationary.’
‘I was in the act of throwing my bag when a ball went through the thick part of my thigh, and having my bugle in my left hand, it entered my left wrist and I dropped,’ wrote William Green. ‘When it entered my wrist, it was more like a six-pounder than a musket ball! It smashed the bone and cut the guides, and the blood was pouring from both wounds, I began to feel very faint.’
Sergeant Fairfoot heard Green’s cries and asked him, ‘Bill, are you wounded?’ He gave Green his flask, which still held some rum, and bid him, ‘Drink it, but I cannot assist to carry you out of the reach of shot.’ Fairfoot knew the attack would instantly falter if they stopped to help the wounded.
Some men endured the first moments of this hail of fire lying flat, and as it slackened a little, the first ladders were tipped down into the ditch where some intrepid stormers, including Ned Costello, climbed onto them. Almost as soon as he was down, Costello was flattened by the body of another who’d been shot on the ladder behind him. The group in the ditch built to a few score. They were floundering about, discovering the water, several feet deep in places they had not expected, treading on rusty nails, flinching with the impact of splinters and mines that lacerated their flesh.
Many men were falling among the covering party and reserves gathered on the rampart, even though they had not been designated for the initial assault. Second Lieutenant James Gairdner fell on this slope, pierced in a breath by musket or canister balls in his right leg, left arm and through his chin.
Those in the ditch were looking about, confused, unable to gain their bearings or see the way ahead clearly. The Forlorn Hope commander, Lieutenant Harvest, was dead. Willie Johnston, the rope party commander, had fallen seriously wounded. It was down to the NCOs or anyone with a commanding manner to try to organise the men. Sergeant Fairfoot went forward and there was a sickening crack as the musket ball hit the peak of his cap, going through it into his left temple.