Rifles - Mark Urban [44]
For George Simmons, hobbling about on his wounded leg, and Harry Smith, there was still a little time for recuperation and reflection. They sometimes escaped the city’s heat by making up a bathing party and dipping in the icy Atlantic waters. Neither man particularly wanted to delay his departure, for Smith had a rare kind of hunger for advancement and Simmons simply could not afford life in Lisbon.
While he was at the Rua de Buenos Ayres, Simmons received a letter from his parents. Brother Maud had sent home reports of the gravity of George’s injuries. They had learned too that officers of the 95th were more exposed to danger than those of almost any other regiment in the Army. George tried to allay their fears, writing, ‘You make me blush at the idea or observation in the letter, “a dangerous regiment”. My dear father, “the more danger the more honour”. Never let such weak thoughts enter your head.’
Simmons, like Costello, could not wait to get back to his brothers in arms. They had seen the horrible sights of war all right, but they had reacted in quite the opposite way to McNabb and his ilk. For most of those injured in the 95th did not want to join the ranks of the Rangers. To come through the fire and blood, having conducted yourself in a way that drew the praise of messmates, was just about all that was worth living for. The ironic humour, the softly spoken determination in the face of death: these were the things that drew them back, not the fear of the lash or any desire to please some tyrant like Craufurd.
Had Simmons wanted to give in to his parents’ fears, there were some avenues open to him. An exchange of commissions with an officer serving in some quiet corner of England was one route. Of course, he did not consider it for a moment. He had not forgotten his altruistic notion of helping to educate his brothers, and soon enough he’d be finding money from his meagre pay to send home again. But a powerful new idea now motivated his soldiering, expressed to his father this way: ‘I have established my name as a man worthy to rank with the veterans of my regiment, and am esteemed and respected by every brother officer.’ Simmons regretted only that his wound had not been suffered in a general action – a battle in which both armies were arrayed under their commanders in chief – for the blood money was usually better under such circumstances. All the more unfortunate for the young subaltern, since a general action was exactly what his comrades who remained with the 95th were about to experience.
SEVEN
Busaco
September 1810
Early in the morning of 27 September, the voltigeurs of the 69ème Régiment rooted about their baggage. Water was on the boil for their coffee, and some gnawed at stale bread or some morsel of corn left over from their meal of the night before. They had marched deep into Portugal, part of an invasion army of sixty-five thousand under Marshal André Masséna. The 69th belonged to Ney’s corps within it, and had already had several brushes with the Light Division.
In the early-morning gloom, they could make out the Sierra de Busaco, which they knew was lined with British troops. The massif lay in front of them, like some great snoozing bear. The feet were anchored on the River Mondego, securing one flank. The ground rose up into a great ridge almost four miles long, and then dropped down somewhat at the neck of the beast, where there was a village called Sula. Not far from Sula was the walled convent of Busaco, but it was on the reverse slope, invisible to the French. The natural dip or neck offered the easiest path for the local road from Moura, at the base of the ridge, up across, through Sula and on to Lisbon. Up beyond this road (to the British left or French right of it)