Rifles - Mark Urban [19]
While Craufurd frequently applied the lash to stragglers, the 95th had developed its own approach. As they fell out, riflemen were told to hand their weapon and haversack to their marching comrades. One 95th officer described why it worked so admirably: ‘first, the soldier was enabled, not being encumbered with either knapsack or musket, more speedily to overtake the column on its march; and secondly, if he loitered unnecessarily on the way to rejoin his comrades, who were doubly burdened with his arms and pack, he would be certain to incur their displeasure.’ The rifleman who left his weapon with his mates might receive verbal or physical abuse from them if he held back too long, and he would also have lost his instrument for threatening the locals.
The difference between Beckwith’s and Craufurd’s approaches manifested themselves almost as soon as the brigade made its bivouac in Campo Maior and the brigadier announced his programme of daily training.
Craufurd instituted a march, four miles to the nearby River Caya, where the men would bathe, before marching the four-mile return leg. The brigadier ordered that each man dress in full kit for this drill, carrying his weapon, a shako on his head, woollen regimental coat, leather stock around his neck, crossbelts, etc. ‘Every corps did harness and march forth to the river in that form except our own,’ wrote an officer of the 95th. ‘Colonel Beckwith on the contrary always ordered our men on these occasions, to take … foraging caps and a stick.’
Beckwith shared his commander’s belief that it was necessary to maintain his battalion’s marching powers while in cantonments, and indeed to keep them clean, but he did not intend to vex them with petty regulations. On the contrary, he wanted officers and men to enjoy themselves. The riflemen were carrying sticks so that they could go beating in the grasslands around the Caya, while their officers murdered the duck, snipe, plovers and bustards that teemed there for sport and, of course, for the pot.
Another of Craufurd’s preoccupations during that September of 1809 was shooting practice. Very few commanders in the British Army (and none in the French) paid any real attention to marksmanship. What need was there for it, if you only intended to open fire at fifty yards, as Sherbrooke had done at Talavera, and if the men had no clue about aiming? Craufurd understood though that his light troops would often be posted ahead of the army, observing the enemy in small groups, where they might have to defend themselves against superior numbers.
During the 1775–83 war against the American rebels, British generals had learned many valuable lessons: that sharpshooters could stop a battalion functioning properly by picking off its officers; that using cover was sometimes the key to defending yourself; that by allowing the soldier to choose his moment of firing, rather than doing it by rote commands, he might stand a better chance of picking his own target; and that by placing your men with a bigger distance between them, perhaps two feet apart instead of shoulder to shoulder, you made it easier to choose a target without being distracted by your neighbour’s firing.
Craufurd felt the Army was guilty of forgetting many valuable lessons of the American war. Its veterans were too old to be involved in fighting Napoleon, and it lacked the professional journals or institutions needed to propagate this kind of knowledge. There had been attempts to foster professional study and debate during the early 1800s, with imprints like Egerton’s Military Library publishing many books on the latest theories and practice, but too many officers, alas, were more interested in drinking and playing cards than in earnest professional debate. Even if some