Rifles - Mark Urban [137]
Some 4,300 French had been killed, wounded or taken prisoner. The officer commanding the French division struck by the Light Division reported that ‘a swarm of skirmishers’ had made the attack. Wellington’s casualties, combined with those of his Portuguese and Spanish allies, came to just below three thousand.
Simmons was asked to stay with Barnard, as the crisis of his wound passed. There had not been too many strokes of good fortune in Simmons’s life, and he was quite sure he had to take advantage of fate. He wrote to his parents, telling them that he would not be coming home on leave: ‘To gain the friendship of a man of Colonel Barnard’s ability, who will next year be a General Officer, will always be of use.’ Perhaps, at this late stage, Simmons believed his commanding officer might make him the prize of an ADC’s job.
Fate was unkind, however, to Sergeant Robert Fairfoot. He had survived the Pyrenean battles, along with most of his comrades, and was considered such a trusty fellow that he was made the company pay sergeant. Since this job involved collecting large amounts of cash from the paymaster and doling it out to the men, it was a weighty responsibility.
Not long after he received this new duty, Fairfoot awoke, having – if truth be told – drunk a little too much the night before, to discover that he had been robbed of £31. It disgusted him to think that one of his own company was probably the culprit. The sergeant knew he was liable and was soon in a high pitch of anxiety about what to do. He went to Ned Costello and told him what had happened. Costello recorded that his sergeant ‘said his credit would be for ever destroyed in the regiment, and he could not endure remaining in the battalion afterwards’. Sergeant Fairfoot had made up his mind to desert.
TWENTY-TWO
The Nive
November–December 1813
It would perhaps have been better if Captain Hobkirk of the 43rd had confined his flamboyance to the stage. But on 23 November the Mrs Malaprop of February’s Light Division theatricals opened his mouth and well and truly said the wrong thing. The result this time was not farce but tragedy.
They were skirmishing up towards a little French village called Arcangues in the foothills north of the Pyrenees. It was handsomely made, with a chateau, a tall church spire and woods to both sides. The Light Division’s Right Brigade was advancing to take the village and the French were falling back through it. Behind Arcangues the ground rose up to a feature called the Bassussarry ridge where the French had dug some trenches.
Brigadier Kempt sent Hobkirk with two companies of the 43rd into the trees on the left of Arcangues, with the words ‘Now mind, you are not to go beyond the wood.’ The redcoats moved gingerly forward, ‘to the front of the wood, each man to his tree, and kept up a fire upon their trenches. They did not forget to return it but they did little mischief as we were all covered by the trees. The boughs dropped fast around us and the leaves were knocked up by our sides.’
The 43rd could maintain this position for as long as was necessary, for they were in cover and far enough (120 to 150 yards) from the French positions for their fire to be poorly aimed. But then Hobkirk’s bugler sounded the advance. The soldiers looked at one another for a moment and then the first men began running out of cover and into the open ground. The banging of French muskets suddenly increased, and the redcoats started dropping. Lieutenant Hennell, running forward, saw Baillie, another subaltern in his company, felled with an almighty crack as a bullet smacked into the centre of his forehead.
Having covered about twenty yards, just to a low hedge that offered