Rifles - Mark Urban [31]
Simmons was up just in time to see Mercer take a shot through the forehead and drop dead at his feet. One rifleman leapt out of his cover: shouting ‘Revenge the death of Mr Mercer!’ he ran down the slope until he reached a French officer, and in one deft movement swung his rifle to the Frenchman’s head and blew it off. As the officer dropped, there was a cacophony of firing, and the rifleman fell dead too. With Mercer’s death, Simmons was in command of the men trying to hold their ground. Lieutenant Coane had rushed off to get their captain.
In the terror of this close-quarter fighting, men loaded and fired like demons. Private Green, in combat for the first time, forgot his ramrod and fired it and the ball it had pushed home through the body of a French grenadier who was charging him. Costello wrote, ‘I felt an indescribable thrill, for never before had I been under the fire of a French musket.’
For a moment the moonlight shone through the scudding clouds and several riflemen were able to find the most excellent mark: the white crossbelts that the French soldiers wore across their greatcoats. ‘X’ marked the spot for their firing. The 95th’s shots began opening holes in the ranks of Ferey’s storming party and their commander faced the choice of trying to fight further up the slope, to clear the riflemen from their firing positions, or to give up the game and retreat across the bridge. He chose to fight. The French officers tried to urge their men onwards, into the ‘well nourished fire’ of the British skirmishers. Ferey’s drummers started beating the pas de charge, the repetitive signal heard above the din of battle that communicated one idea: forward.
O’Hare appeared and joined in the general turmoil, bellowing out for all his men to hear it: ‘We will never retire. Here we will stand. They shall not pass but over my body.’
The firing, drumming and shouting had been going on for half an hour when the first of Beckwith’s reinforcements appeared. One company had been sent to cover a flank – two others came to the top of the feature that overlooked the bridge. Riflemen loaded their weapons and joined in the general mêlée. With each flash of a Frenchman’s firing musket briefly illuminating their targets, Beckwith could see enough through the murk to detect signs that the French attack had faltered, with the officers capering about, beating the backs of their soldiers with the flats of their swords, trying to get them to quit their cover and move up the slope. It was time to use the close-quarters weapon issued to each of his riflemen: a bayonet that was so large and fearsome-looking that they called it a sword.
Orders were given swiftly; there was the sound of metal on metal as the blades were slotted onto the muzzles of each Baker rifle, and then a great cheer. One of the subalterns who was part of the reinforcements Beckwith brought up recorded: ‘Our swords were soon fixed and giving the war cheer we closed on the foe sending them helter skelter into the gorge and down the pass as far as their legs could carry them.’
Many of the French turned and began fleeing across the bridge. Moore and McCann were bundled over too, as prisoners – but Fairfoot and one or two others seized their moment to break free and throw themselves into cover.
As Beckwith led his chargers down the difficult slope towards the bridge, they became mixed with the more steadfast remnants of the French, who were still trying to defend themselves. The adjutant fought hand to hand with a couple of enemy soldiers, before being delivered by a rifleman’s timely