Rifles - Mark Urban [28]
In order to make the best of his chances, O’Hare had to ensure that his company’s every duty was carried out punctiliously. He also intended to keep certain things about his own origins and his private life to himself. His brother officers were ignorant of the wife, Mary, and daughter, Marianne, that O’Hare left behind in England. To little Marianne, he was something of a stranger, his campaigns having kept him overseas for around half of her six years. As for Mary, he chose not to introduce her into regimental society.
When 3rd Company soldiers supping their grog gossiped about their captain, they talked about his love of wine and women. Before their departure, O’Hare had spent some time pursuing a young lady in Hythe, not far from Shorncliffe camp. As the couple walked arm in arm along the sea promenade, they would be greeted by soldiers from the company, many of whom would ask favours of their captain, knowing that he dare not decline, lest he forfeit her good opinion. O’Hare was not the brightest spark, but even he eventually tumbled to their tactics and swore to ‘flog the first man who made another attempt’. In his pursuit of the maid of Hythe, O’Hare had eventually antagonised a rival in the form of a militia officer who challenged him to a duel. The captain sent word back to his challenger that he was a fool, and in any case the 95th was imminently departing on service.
The Irish captain was no oil painting – he was characterised by one of his riflemen as having an ‘extremely ugly countenance’. Having sprung from obscure origins to the status and pay of a captain of the Rifles, he intended to make the most of his position, particularly when it came to the opposite sex. On campaign, he took many a chance to enjoy good wine and company.
During their march north, on Christmas night, O’Hare had been drinking with fellow officers and retired to his quarters, in the words of one of the party, ‘having enjoyed the wine very much’. A rifleman, taking advantage of O’Hare’s deep sleep, stole his boots. The intention, presumably, was to sell them for drink, since he could never have worn them publicly. The soldier was caught and ordered to be flogged. O’Hare supervised the punishment, ‘gave the man every lash, and recommended the buglers to lay it on lustily and save the fellow from the gallows’.
Someone like O’Hare, having entered the Army as a surgeon’s mate with Irish Catholic origins, could not claim to have started life at a station any higher than had most of the rankers. Many of the soldiers found it harder to defer to such a man. One private of the 95th summed it up pithily: ‘In our army the men prefer to be officered by gentlemen, by men whose education has rendered them more kind in manners than a coarse officer who has sprung from obscure origins, and whose style is brutal and overbearing.’
From the officers’ side of the divide – for O’Hare’s predicament in this regard was far from unique in the Rifles – it was difficult to overcome the familiarity which many soldiers showed to someone of low birth. The riflemen could detect a natural gentleman easily enough by his manners. Whereas, for example, Lieutenant Harry Smith, a dashing young English subaltern who had bought his commission in the 95th, was addressed as ‘Mr Smith’, ‘Your Honour’ or ‘Lieutenant Smith, Sir’, O’Hare’s men often called him by his first name.
‘We had but a slender sprinkling of the aristocracy among us,’ one officer of the 95th wrote later, perceptively summing up the difficult question of social status. ‘They were not braver officers, nor were they better or braver men than the soldiers of fortune, with which they were mingled; but there was a degree of refinement in all their actions, even in mischief, which commanded the respect of the soldiers, while those who had been framed in rougher moulds, and left unpolished, were sometimes obliged to have recourse to harsh measures.