Rifles - Mark Urban [59]
That evening Costello and several others cooked up their spoils after the Combat of Redinha. Private Humphrey Allen reappeared and tried to join them, ‘but was refused because he had gone out of action with the wounded’. Having sent Allen packing with some choice language, the 3rd Company men chomped away and thought nothing further of the matter until they heard a shot in the distance, followed by a heavy exhange between the two sides’ pickets.
Lieutenant Colonel Beckwith raced down to investigate the firing, only to discover Private Allen was the cause of it. On being rebuffed by his mess, he had walked down to the outlying picket, chosen a French sentry and killed him. When Beckwith asked why, Allen replied, ‘Why sir, I arnt had nought to eat these two days and thought as how I might find summit in the Frencher’s knapsack.’
Two days later, they were in action again, at Cazal Noval. Once again, Ney had made his dispositions wisely. Wearing his dark-blue coat, red hair visible beneath his cocked hat, Ney could be relied upon to appear at the key moment. The troops around him drew new inspiration from this leadership. ‘The slightest position offering any advantage was occupied,’ Sub-Lieutenant Marcel wrote. ‘If there was a gun shot at five in the morning, the Marshal would appear at the post of the sentry who’d fired it; if a man was wounded in the rearguard company of voltigeurs, he’d make sure that he wasn’t abandoned. “With the redhead we can be calm,” said the soldiers.’
It was rather different in the Light Division. Just before Redinha, Wellington had appointed Major General Sir William Erskine as acting commander vice Craufurd. Erskine was so short-sighted that some said he could see no further than the head of his horse. Wellington even doubted Erskine’s sanity, but felt unable to sack him because of his political connections. Erskine, in theory at least, was a commander of horse, but as Wellington pithily observed, ‘He is very blind, which is against him at the head of the cavalry, but very cautious.’ The last characteristic seemed to be a faint sort of recommendation. In action at Cazal Noval, he proved not just cautious but quite incapable. The Light Division was checked with ninety-four casualties, including two officers and three soldiers of the 95th killed.
The 95th’s dead included the commander of the battalion’s Left Wing. He had fallen with a shot through the lungs, and when George Simmons ran to his help, frothing blood was coming from his mouth, a sign the one-time apprentice surgeon knew all too well. ‘Major Stewart, as many others have done, asked me if he was mortally wounded,’ Simmons jotted in his journal. ‘I told him he was. He thanked me, and died the day following.’
It was perfectly obvious to the rank and file that Erskine was a bungler, and they soon began referring to him as ‘Ass-skin’. The French, knowing how well Ney brought them away from some difficult situations, considered the British pursuit ‘timid’ and poorly conducted. Wellington too had drawn conclusions from these affairs and soon began exercising a closer personal supervision of the Light Division, appearing more often at the head of the Army.
With these skirmishes between French rear and British advance guards, many of the riflemen were confronted with the effects of their handiwork for the first time. At the Coa or Busaco, the British had been falling back. But in March 1811 they were advancing and often a rifleman who potted his Frenchman soon stood over him. Rushing forward at Cazal Noval, Ned Costello picked his target: ‘My blood was up because he once aimed at me, his ball whizzing close by as I approached, so when I got within fifty yards of him, I fired. I was beside him in an instant. He had fallen in the act of loading, the shot having entered his head … A few quick turns of his eyes as they rolled their dying glances on mine turned my