Rifles - Mark Urban [148]
As for the financial rewards for all those years of bitter fighting, many of the men felt hard done by. Marching into Bordeaux on 14 June, most had nothing more than the coloured clothes they stood up in. It was true that some, like Costello, had secreted away some treasure from Vitoria or some other place of plunder. The great majority had not, though, and all their pay had been spent maintaining a supply of rum and tobacco during countless freezing wet nights on the Beira frontier.
The only medals carried by the rank and file of the 95th were the odd Légions d’honneur taken from Frenchmen during their campaigns. This they resented bitterly. For many of the riflemen even a distinction like the little badge bearing the letters ‘V. S.’ inside a laurel would have been something. These were run up by the 52nd’s tailor for men who had survived Badajoz and Rodrigo, the initials standing for ‘Valiant Stormer’. For some reason the 43rd and 95th did not get even these distinctions.
In trying to reward these veterans, the hands of Wellington and other officers were tied by the Horse Guards’ bureaucracy. Napoleon had proved far better at establishing a scheme of payments and marks of distinction for outstanding soldiers. The Peninsular Army did manage to copy one such French measure: the appointment of deserving men to guard the regimental colours. The British rank of colour sergeant had been introduced to reward distinguished NCOs with an extra nine pennies a day. Robert Fairfoot was an early recipient of this bounty, having been appointed colour sergeant in September 1813.
Among the officers, many had spent rather more than they earned in the Peninsula. One subaltern of the 43rd calculated his net loss at £70, a sum made good in bills dispatched by his parents. For the likes of George Simmons, sending £40 or £50 each year in the other direction, only the most careful husbandry of his resources prevented him from ending his campaign in debt. Simmons and many of the other officers had profited from the fortunes of war, too, having unburdened a good many dead or captured French of medals, trinkets, horses and cash. The wheel of fortune had turned quite a few times during those long years, of course, and most of the old campaigners had also lost horses and mules during their marches, bearing the expense out of their own pockets.
For the real veterans, the group who had sailed out in May 1809, the moment was coming to cash in the pay arrears. Pay parades had been cancelled or deferred so often that many had received considerably less than their due during the five years they had been away. The money owing – hundreds of pounds for a subaltern – would be payable when they got home. There was also the blood money due to many of them for their wounds. Simmons had been seriously wounded twice, Costello twice and Sergeant Fairfoot five times, most severely at Badajoz.
How many, though, had soldiered through like them? The battalion, along with the 2nd Rifles, was carried home on a huge three-decker battleship, the Ville de Paris, arriving off Portsmouth on 22 July 1814. They came back as they had left, to three cheers – not from their loved ones, for they had no idea when the battalion would dock or where, but from the yardarms and tops of the Ville de Paris, a tribute from the tars to the toughest soldiers of Wellington’s army.
Of the forty-seven officers who sailed with the battalion in May 1809, only six were still serving with the Peninsular Army at the end of the campaigns in southern France. Of these, Captain Harry Smith was away on the staff (and sailed at the last minute for America) and his brother Lieutenant Tom Smith was serving in the 2nd Battalion. That left four 1st Battalion officers – Lieutenant Colonel Dugald Gilmour, Major Jonathan Leach, Captain Willie Johnston and Lieutenant George Simmons – of whom two had been back in Britain for leave during the years of fighting. So just two officers returning in July 1814 – Leach and Simmons