Rifles - Mark Urban [178]
82 ‘enormous loss of officers’: Fririon.
– ‘Our heavy losses at Busaco had chilled the ardour of Masséna’s lieutenants’: Marbot.
82 ‘In his official Busaco dispatch, Wellington praised Craufurd’: Wellington’s letter to the Earl of Liverpool, 30 September 1810, in Wellington’s Dispatches.
83 ‘the 26th, 66th and 82nd are Bridge of Lodi boys, but of the heights of Busaco I daresay they will be less proud’: Leach MS Journal.
EIGHT The Corporal’s Stripes
84 ‘This day’s march was about as miserable as I wish to see’: Leach MS Journal.
– ‘lines of fortifications stretching twenty-nine miles from the Atlantic coast in the west’: details of Torres Vedras, Oman.
85 ‘After such a miserable march, Captain O’Hare’s pleasure’: Simmons.
– ‘Never was a town more completely deserted than Arruda’: Leach, Rough Sketches.
– ‘This was the only instance during the war in which the light division had reason to blush for their conduct’: John Kincaid, Adventures in the Rifle Brigade.
– ‘the rifleman, who celebrated his twenty-seventh birthday in Arruda, had become something of a friend and a personal project’: Fairfoot is mentioned in Simmons’s letters and journals, which is highly unusual for officers in this period. In a later memorandum about the Waterloo campaign, dated 15 October 1850 (Sir William Cope’s letter book, National Army Museum MSS 6804-2 Vol. I), Simmons pays Fairfoot many compliments. My own suspicion is that Simmons may even have taught Fairfoot to read and write, for Fairfoot’s promotions in the militia were only to the rank of drummer – i.e. to a station not requiring literacy.
86 ‘as great a tyrant as ever disgraced the Army’: this is Wheeler’s description in Liddell Hart, as is the following quotation about volunteering and the general description of life in the Royal Surreys.
– ‘frequent opportunities are afforded for the display of personal courage’: Sergeant William Weddeburne, Observations on the Exercise of Riflemen and the Movements of Light Troops in General, Norwich, 1804. This text is very rare, and I am grateful to Ron Cassidy for copying the one in the RGJ Museum for me.
87 ‘His company had set sail in May 1809 with six sergeants and six corp orals’: this comes from my own work, and that of Eileen Hathaway, on the regimental muster molls.
– ‘Esau Jackson … got himself appointed to a comfy sinecure in charge of stores at Belem’: this is borne out by both Costello and the muster rolls.
87 ‘the “Green Book” written by Colonel Coote Manningham’: a copy survives in the RGJ Museum.
88 ‘the non-commissioned officer will make the most minute inspection of the men’: this quotation comes not from the Green Book but from Manningham’s Military Lectures Delivered to the 95th (Rifle) Regiment 1803, first published in the Rifle Brigade Chronicle, 1896, and republished by Ken Trotman, 2002, under the same covers as Light Cavalry Outposts by F. de Brack.
– ‘But while bright enough, and no skulker on the battlefield, Almond’s company commander had taken against him’: Costello.
89 ‘If I ever have any occasion to observe any man of the Brigade pick his road’: these notes survived in Leach’s papers and were reproduced in Verner.
90 ‘in time enough to save us from total annihilation’: Leach MS Journal, ditto the preceding quotation.
– ‘Are you aware, General, that the whole of Junot’s corps is close’: Simmons, who clearly loved seeing Craufurd humiliated by Wellington as much as Leach did.
– ‘Craufurd had been making representations to Horse Guards for some time about the need for more troops’: Spurrier.
– ‘The company with which I had just arrived were much distressed