Rifles - Mark Urban [136]
Just after 6 a.m. the report of three cannon shots from a British battery echoed around the peaks: it was the signal for a general attack to commence. Within fifteen or twenty minutes all of the trenchworks in front of the Mouiz fort had been taken at the point of the bayonet. ‘We moved forward under a heavy fire from the enemy’s works without ever exchanging a shot until we got up to them and scaled the walls,’ wrote Simmons, ‘then the work of death commenced.’
While younger officers in the 95th usually carried rifles in battle, it was unusual for them to use the blades fixed to their barrels. Although shooting could just about be reconciled with the status of a gentleman, bayoneting was another matter entirely. Lieutenant FitzMaurice, seeing a Frenchman impaled by Second Lieutenant James Church, one of the rougher Irish soldiers of fortune who had recently joined the 95th, asked him something along the lines of ‘How could you?’ Church looked around, the crackle of gunfire echoing about him, and replied: ‘Eh, but Fitz, just see how easy it slips in!’
Storming into the positions, the riflemen found the French tents were still up and food on the boil in some of the positions. Leach looked around from this vantage point: ‘It is impossible to picture oneself anything finer than the general advance of the Army … as far as the eye could reach almost soon became one sheet of fire and smoke and of an infernal fire of light troops with frequent volleys of musquetry as the lines approached one another.’
Across on the main part of La Petite Rhune, the 43rd’s assault was beginning. Six of the regiments’ companies went forward in extended order, four remaining formed in reserve. The redcoats ploughed through the first French defensive position before coming up against more serious resistance. It turned into a vicious close-range fight. ‘One of our officers gallantly jumped into the second fort,’ according to an officer of the 43rd. ‘A French soldier thrust a bayonet through his neckerchief, transfixed him to the wall, and fired his piece. This blew away the officer’s collar, but he jumped away unhurt.’
Barnard led the 1st Battalion of Rifles across to support the 43rd at this point, and could be seen by its officers urging his men on, and firing a rifle at the French defenders himself. Soult’s officers, for their part, did everything they could to incite their companies to continue their resistance. Simmons ‘saw some French officers trying every means in their power to make their men remain. One officer was doing prodigies of valour and would not leave the wall; he was shot and came tumbling down.’
At length, the 43rd, supported by Barnard’s riflemen, cleared La Petite Rhune and began pursuing the fleeing French down the back side of the mountain towards the sea. Barnard, who was following on horseback with his men, was at this moment shot in the chest, falling back off his horse, onto the rocky ground where several of his officers quickly attended him.
Simmons, not for the first time, put his surgeon’s training to use. He unbuttoned Barnard’s tunic and examined the wound. Foaming blood was coming from the colonel’s mouth and the gaping hole in his chest made a sucking sound – neither augured well. Barnard, fully conscious, looked up at Simmons and asked, ‘Simmons, you know my situation. Am I mortally wounded?’ The young lieutenant put a couple of fingers into the wound and probed, feeling the bottom lobe of Barnard’s left lung.
‘Colonel, it is useless to mince the matter; you are dangerously wounded, but not immediately mortally.’
‘Be candid,’ Barnard answered. ‘I am not afraid to die.’
‘I am candid.’
Barnard looked away, saying, ‘Then I am satisfied.’
The colonel was carried off in a blanket by several riflemen, attended by Simmons as they went.
Elsewhere, Colborne’s 52nd had reached the Mouiz fortress, the toughest objective by far. Attempts to rush the walls met with failure, a hail of bullets and grapeshot cutting down dozens of men. They crouched in