Rifles - Mark Urban [54]
The following day, the Light Division stopped just outside Santarem. There was a causeway leading to a bridge across the River Maior ahead of them, and it became clear that the French were prepared to defend it, having wheeled guns up to a position where they could bring a withering flank fire on anyone attempting the crossing. The river thus became the new demarcation line between the forces, for the Light Division was to stop in this area for several weeks, through the worst of the winter weather, while Masséna made up his mind whether to go forward or back.
Craufurd had been making representations to Horse Guards for some time about the need for more troops, and while in Arruda, a further two companies of the 95th (one each from the 2nd and 3rd Battalions) had been made over to him. They had found themselves unable to march to the division’s standards, one officer noting, ‘The company with which I had just arrived were much distressed to keep pace with the old campaigners – they made a tolerable scramble for a day or two, but by the time they arrived at the lines the greater part had been obliged to be mounted.’
The men of the 1st Battalion had already assumed the air of veterans. Their clothes were rain-washed and ingrained with dirt to the point where they had gone black or brown. Their bodies were lean and sinewy, faces tanned like leather. The spare shirts, brushes and the like which had been hauled up to Talavera had since been jettisoned from their packs as dead weight. This difference between what they had left behind and what they had become loomed increasingly large in the minds of those men who had sailed out in May 1809.
Simmons, who had delighted in the veteran’s reputation he had earned in the battalion, found himself reluctantly recognising that his ardour to return to service had oustripped his body’s powers to heal itself. He had come down with dysentery – that and his leg wound meant he could not keep up on the marches. He wrote to his parents, ‘Only a little while back I could run miles, always the first to go through or over anything; judge how my feelings must be hurt at so serious a difference.’
On surgeons’ advice, Simmons returned to Lisbon, a check which he knew would damage his finances. Lieutenant Harry Smith too discovered that his return to action had been premature. Although his ample means bought him a mount, he was in acute pain from the ball lodged in his heel, and resolved to go back to hospital to have it removed.
Those who stayed took over farm buildings and made themselves as comfortable as they could. In one case, only a sheet draped across a barn divided the company officers from their men. This provided the subalterns with a golden opportunity to eavesdrop, since they generally steered clear of their men during the hours of darkness, for all sorts of unfortunate incidents might befall an officer who charted too close a course to them when they were drinking. ‘The early part of their evenings was generally spent in witticisms and tales,’ one lieutenant recalled. ‘In conclusion, by way of a lullaby, some long-winded fellow commenced one of those everlasting ditties in which soldiers and sailors delight so much. They are all to the same tune, and the subject (if one may judge by the tenor of the first ninety-eight verses!) was battle, murder, or sudden death.’
Captain O’Hare knew well enough that the peace of his company was best ensured by keeping close tabs on its consumption of alcohol. His suspicions being aroused one morning by the number of soldiers who still seemed inebriated, he discovered and smashed a still they had set up in one of the outhouses. On another occasion,