Rifles - Mark Urban [128]
One other rifleman was rumoured to have taken £3,000 in coin. He had the added good fortune of a wife following with the regimental baggage. They sewed their gains into a mule saddle, which she kept closely under her supervision, the couple later depositing their money at a bank in Dover. Costello knew there was nobody he could trust in this way. Instead he signed over £300 to the regimental paymaster, who was happy to acquire the coin in order to settle his many accounts and issue a receipt in return. Some the private also loaned to officers. The remainder he and Tom Bandle, a messmate whom he had taken into his confidence, guarded. Bandle had sailed with Costello in the 3rd Company, back in 1809, and upon its demise had also been transferred into Leach’s – they had a long history of fighting and drinking together. He was a little weasel of a man who, in return for a small cut, helped Costello guard the cash. Most of it was to go on ensuring he and his company lived well and were adequately lubricated during the coming months.
Most soldiers did not of course reap quite such rewards, but that did not stop them searching hard. Costello himself put it charmingly: ‘Even if our fellows had been inclined to be honest, their good fortune would not allow them.’
The 95th’s officers did not benefit in quite the same way. Simmons recorded, ‘I lay down by the fire in a French officer’s cloak, which one of the men gave me; he had that day shot its wearer.’ Leach dropped down in his company’s bivouac, exhausted. ‘The soldiers of my company brought me a large loaf of excellent French bread, some Swiss cheese, cognac brandy and excellent wine they had found in some French general’s covered wagon.’ The men, in sharing their bounty with delicacies for their officers, ensured that they remained free to roam that night. Leach jotted in his journal, ‘Our soldiers did nothing the whole night but eat, drink and smoke, talk over our glorious successes and occassionally steal away from camp to look for plunder which it must be allowed was very excusable.’
Around the 2nd Company campfires there was much discussion about what had happened to them that day and who had been absent from roll-call. Private Dan Kelly piped up, ‘Don’t drink all the wine boys, until we hear something about our absent messmates. Do any of you know where Jack Connor is?’
‘He was shot through the body when we took the first gun in the little village near the main road,’ was the reply.
Bob Roberts spoke next, asking, ‘Where is Will John?’
‘A ball passed through his head,’ said another. ‘I saw him fall.’
Tom Treacy then joined in: ‘Musha, boys! Is there any hope of poor Jemmy Copely getting over his wounds?’
‘Poor Copely, both his legs were knocked off by a round shot.’
Treacy looked down bitterly. ‘By Jasus, they have kilt half our mess. But never mind boys, fill a tot, fill a tot. May I be damned but here’s luck … Poor Jemmy Copely! Poor Jemmy! They have drilled him well with balls before, damn them, now they have finished him. The best comrade I ever had, or ever will have.’ As Treacy said these last words, a tear streaked down his blackened face.
In the days following Vitoria, the Rifles fell in with the French rearguard several times. After the great affair of 21 June, these fights piqued their superstitions, one officer summing it up: ‘After surviving a great day, I always felt I had a right to live to tell the story; and I, therefore did not find the ensuing three