Rifles - Mark Urban [149]
What became, then, of the forty-five officers who were no longer with the 1st Battalion? Fourteen of them had fallen in battle or died of wounds received there, with two more perishing of sickness. Eighteen had been wounded at some stage. These and the other unscathed officers had all gone home at some point during the long conflict. Leach was doubly exceptional in both being there at the end and having escaped wounding in his many fights.
The picture among the disembarking rankers was a little different, because almost none of them had had the option of taking leave in England during the long wars. The 1st Battalion had 1,095 NCOs and soldiers at the time it sailed in May 1809, but the vagaries of Army record-keeping do not allow every single man’s fate to be precisely determined. The fact that the Army itself did not know the exact numbers is clear from a note on the monthly returns for March 1814. The acting paymaster had listed twenty-one men as having died on 1 March, a day on which the battalion had no combat losses. That this was a book-keeping exercise becomes clear with the symbol beside each name, one which was explained at the bottom of the ledger with the words, ‘those for whom no satisfactory account could be given’. This squaring of the regimental books was a writing off of men last seen in hospitals or disappearing from camp at night; in short, those whose fate was unknown. When multiplied by all the corps in the Peninsular Army, the 95th’s twenty-one lost soldiers became an extraordinary 1,837. Wellington’s Adjutant General, reporting this vast writing-off of lives to Horse Guards in London, opined that ‘it is to be presumed that nearly the whole of these men have died in hospitals’. Given the skill of some soldiers at sloping off after they were discharged from hospital, it is difficult to share his confidence, and it is likely that a significant minority of these men deserted. To return to the riflemen, though, it is possible – leaving aside these twenty-one – to determine pretty much what happened to the rest of the original battalion.
Of the 1,095 who originally went out, about 180 were sent home during the course of the war, with something like 125 of them invalided by a medical board for being too injured or broken down to continue and the others sent home ‘to recruit’ as the battalion dissolved four of its companies in the field. The 1st/95th had lost seventy-nine prisoners of war and at least twenty-three men had deserted. It is likely that a good few of the men written off on 1 March 1814 had also deserted, which is why the ‘at least twenty-three’ lost to the battalion in this way was probably more like thirty. The largest portion of the original group, 421, were those who had died in Iberia – about two-thirds in battle and the remainder through sickness. All of this meant that only about a third of those who had sailed with the battalion – roughly 350 – also returned with it.
Having formed the men up on the quayside, Barnard led his battalion to Hilsea Barracks. Many officers took immediate leave. One captain who disappeared off to the capital recorded, ‘Here we enjoyed the luxuries of London life for a short time, having three years’ pay to receive – one for arrears and two for wounds received.’ The men took a sort of communal holiday, marching up the coast to Hythe and Sandgate, ‘for seabathing’. Those who had been wounded received in many cases not just the official blood money but also extra grants of anything up to £50 from the Patriotic Fund, set up by citizens grateful to the men who had vanquished the Corsican ogre.
George Simmons, who had sailed home on another ship, made his way immediately to London, where he settled down on the morning of his arrival at Old Slaughter’s Coffee House to drink a pot of the fine stuff, have a smoke and peruse the newspapers. Whether the people looked upon the weathered Green Jacket like a ‘dancing bear’, he did not record.