Rifles - Mark Urban [38]
With almost everyone across, remnants of the last few companies began scrambling down the rocks, trying to make it down to the bridge in the moments it would take for the French to seize their opportunity, retake the knolls, and start shooting down on them again. ‘The French in a second occupied the hill which we left, blazed away at us in crossing and as we ascended the opposite heights made damnable work amongst us,’ one of the last across wrote in a letter home.
To his consternation, Captain Leach found a lone artillery officer on the bridge with a tumbril full of ammunition, pleading for help. The riflemen helped push the wagon across to the western side and with that, the Light Division was finally over.
Ferey’s men, however, did not intend to leave the matter there, for they had driven their enemy from the field, and success in war demanded that they exploit such an advantage to the full. The voltigeurs had worked away throughout the first part of the day in skirmishing; it was now time to employ men of the other elite company in each battalion, the grenadiers. Colonel Jean-Pierre Bechaud called out to the grenadiers of his 66ème Régiment to rally around him, gathering others from the grenadier company of the 82ème. Just as the light companies had their role in the scheme of war – to skirmish up ahead of the regiment – so the grenadiers were those you sent for when some desperate feat, a storming, was required.
A cheer and a fusillade went up from the French covering party, as the grenadiers pelted down the rutted road to the Coa bridge. The 95th watched them coming, many of them choosing a target and leading him slowly with their rifle. It was vital, though, not to let fly too soon. As the first Frenchmen made it onto the bridge, muskets held out in front, bayonets fixed, their red grenadiers’ epaulettes bouncing up and down on their shoulders, the crackling of rifle fire at last began.
Captain Leach fixed on Captain Ninon, commander of the 82ème’s grenadier company, tracked him with his rifle as he came onto the bridge, and squeezed the trigger. ‘I fired at him myself with my little rifle (which still stands my friend) and cursed my stupidity for missing him, but a running person is not easily hit.’
Each storm had its moment of decision, one at which the moral strength of one side would overcome the other. If the grenadiers kept moving forward, many British troops would run. If the attack faltered under heavy fire, the French officers would have trouble urging any more men to go to a certain death or capture.
Leach fired again and dropped one of the grenadiers. But most of those who’d been engaged that morning had weapons that had become too hot and fouled to fire. Cameron’s Scots, though, were fresh, and they kept up a lethal barrage of aimed shots at the head of the French column.
It was the turn of the French grenadiers now to cower behind cover. Colonel Bechaud, shouting, trying to urge them on, made an obvious target for one of the British marksmen: he fired and put a bullet in the Frenchman’s chest. Captain Ninon, surrounded by wounded and dying men on the bridge, was unscathed by the hail of balls around him – but he did what even the bravest man must do when he sees the situation is hopeless, and doubled back to his own side of the bridge.
By 4 p.m. the fire was dying down. Everybody knew that the French would not be able to force the crossing. It was not long before an officer appeared with a white flag of truce, calling out to the British side for their agreement to rescue the wounded. Both sides sent down parties to carry off the groaning men who lay mixed up on the bridge and its eastern side. In a few cases, words were exchanged between the two sides as they worked.
The Rifles