Rifles - Mark Urban [151]
Leach’s 2nd Company was the least altered. It was under the same chief that had embarked it in 1809, and its lieutenants, John Cox, FitzMaurice and Gairdner, were all veterans. The more senior subalterns had pulled rank on the lowly ones when Colonel Barnard had begun to prepare the battalion for its new campaign. Costello and many of the other 2nd Company soldiers remained under Leach too. Sergeant Fairfoot, meanwhile, had gone to the 8th Company, and George Simmons to the 10th. Simmons’s brother Joseph had been left behind in the general trampling over the junior men. The Smith family, always able to pull a stroke, had managed to attach Charles, younger brother of Tom and Harry, to make his military debut in Simmons’s company as an uncommissioned gentleman volunteer.
That the battalion included many Johnny Raws was simply one of those features of military life that would have to be overcome, just as it had five years before – and never mind that the old sweats were calling them ‘recruits’ in a derisive tone of voice. The more subtle difference from 1809 was that now, many of the regiment’s veterans felt a certain tiredness and even resentment at having all their hopes for a peaceful life thrown over for a new campaign. James Gairdner wrote to his father:
This cursed war has knocked all my plans in the head; I thought a month ago that by this time I should be on my way to see you, but this scoundrel Bonaparte to the astonishment of the world has, as it were, by magic reseated himself without spilling a drop of blood on that throne which cost Europe just twelve months ago so much blood and treasure to pull him down from.
As for those who had hoped to get on with the business of raising a family, their dilemmas were personified by Corporal George Pitt, who brought his wife to Dover docks. Lieutenant Colonel Barnard was determined to stick with Beckwith’s 1809 ban on embarking women, and soon found himself in a heated argument with the corporal. ‘Sir’, cried Corporal Pitt, ‘my wife was separated from me when I went to the Peninsular War, I had rather die than be parted from her again.’ Barnard was not used to being confronted in such an insolent way and he gave Pitt the choice of leaving his wife behind or embarking her and facing court martial. The corporal chose the latter, for he and Mrs Pitt had no way of knowing whether he would be away for six months or six years, or indeed whether he would ever come home.
The Wensley Dale docked in Ostend on 27 April, after a wretched voyage in which many men had been helplessly seasick. Their feelings were further upset when they were paraded on the quay to witness George Pitt’s punishment. Barnard had ordered him broken to the ranks and awarded three hundred lashes. The flaying of his back duly began, the buglers laying on their cats nearly a hundred times before George Simmons called out, testifying to Pitt’s qualities as a soldier and asking Barnard to spare him further punishment. The colonel agreed to stop it, telling Simmons afterwards that he ‘disliked flogging as much as any man’, but had been left with no choice because of the flouting of his orders.
The Pitt affair meant the campaign began in poor humour. Among the veterans, there were many who doubted whether they had the fortitude to endure years more suffering. Even Simmons himself, a real fire-eater, wrote home that he must buy a riding horse, for ‘my legs will never carry me through a long campaign. After a day’s march I am lame. If I get hit again they must promote me or recommend me for Chelsea.’
The surliness of the Belgians did not help matters either. Simmons had noted that on entering Brussels on 12 May, there were ‘crowds of natives who were gaping and staring at us. I heard no Vivas, they appeared to treat the whole concern very coolly indeed.’ There was