Rifles - Mark Urban [114]
With rumbling stomachs and bleeding feet they marched on that day, towards the familiar post of Ciudad Rodrigo. By that evening the quartermasters managed finally to bring some stale biscuits up to the regiment. The soldiers were desperate by this point, having gone seventy-two hours without any real food, and the officers, fearing a riot, posted ‘sentries with fixed bayonets placed around the piles while commissaries and Quarter Masters of regiments divided the biscuit’. Each man got to fill his blackjack with a ration of rum, too, and this most basic meal ‘soon appeared to set everything right again’, according to Leach. Viewed from the ranks, the experience of the retreat had been a bitter one – the kind that rendered many soldiers miserable enough to resign themselves to death. Private Costello commented, ‘Some men, from the privations they endured, wished to be shot, and exposed themselves in action for that purpose.’
The following day, the Light Division marched into the pasture that surrounded Ciudad Rodrigo. The Army’s crisis, like the campaign of 1812, was over. Three days’ ration of biscuit was issued to every man. Wellington’s Army was about to enter its winter quarters yet again. It should have been a time of peaceful reflection, but for many officers of the 95th it was to be a winter of intrigue and bad feeling.
NINETEEN
The Regimental Mess
December 1812–May 1813
A banging of hammers, sawing of wood and hallooing of names filled the crisp air of Alemada. The little border village had become home once more to the 1st Battalion, 95th, and a barn had been commandeered as an officers’ mess. For the first time since landing in 1809, these gentlemen would be dining together instead of in the twos, threes or fours of their respective company arrangements. Hands were clapped, that 1 December, on some riflemen carpenters, and two great brick chimneys were built in the improvised dining hall: ‘Fire places of no small dimensions were made by our soldiers of the most uncouth and gigantic description, into which we heaped an abundance of ilex or Spanish oak.’ Each company mess pooled its cutlery, pots and pans and great dining tables were knocked together too. ‘Having ransacked the canteens of each company for knives, forks, spoons, &c., and purchased wine glasses and tumblers nearby, nothing was now wanting but a mess room and some good Douro wine.’
Settling down to a few months without constant marching and fighting would afford the officers a chance to get to know one another, for many serving in different wings of the battalion were on little more than nodding acquaintance and plenty of new men had arrived during the preceding campaign. Faces were windburned and uniforms tattered, leaving them looking ‘a most ruffian-like class of fellows’. But the optimists among the company, like Leach, believed an atmosphere of brotherly companionship would soon be cemented by some communal singing around the supper table.
Lieutenant Gairdner, who had carried on happily enough in Leach’s company mess, was not so sure. He would have preferred to keep out of Colonel Cameron’s way. Several days before, near Rodrigo, Gairdner had had an altercation with his colonel which showed how easily such proud gentlemen could fall out – and all over apparent trifles. Gairdner had just received a £27 bill from his family and was keen to go into town to cash it so that he might replace the personal belongings he had lost with the baggage at Munoz. It was a matter of some urgency, since he did not even have a razor or a spare shirt with which