Rifles - Mark Urban [77]
Passing muster with those who had been fighting for two years was a challenge that would also afflict those already serving in the regiment who had gained rank but never been near gunfire. There were many such officers in the 2nd and 3rd Battalions, some of whom had merrily spent the last two years’ campaigning in Shorncliffe, the clifftop camp relinquished by the 1st Battalion on 25 May 1809. ‘General Murray who commands the garrison … is very fond of shew and parade,’ Second Lieutenant James Gairdner wrote to his father, after experiencing numerous field days that summer near the garrison. Gairdner had been born in America and his family had considerable property in Atlanta. It had been intimated to him that he would be sent on service as soon as possible, and he took his preparation seriously, if at times misguidedly, writing home at one point, ‘I am learning dancing every day for it would never do for an officer not to be able to dance. I have been learning drawing, in which I think I have greatly improved.’ It was not until early 1812 that he made his debut in the field, and the battalion’s hardened officers would get the measure of the callow Gairdner.
The regiment’s life during the late summer of 1811 consisted of much marching and countermarching along the frontier. Shortly after Fuentes d’Onoro, the French garrison left behind Allied lines in Almeida had broken out at the dead of night, its commander succeeding in getting most of his men through the British lines and back to French ones. This gave one and all another chance to excoriate General Erskine, widely held responsible for the fiasco, one officer commenting bitterly that Erskine was, ‘the laughing stock of the whole army, and particularly of the Light Division’.
Craufurd, back in the saddle as the division’s commander, was a man who needed activity and the scent of battle if he was to keep the blue devils at bay and stop himself becoming a bully to his subordinates. His promotion to major general, early in June, did nothing to mollify him. During the marches of June, July and August, he reverted to type, punishing his men for any deviation from Standing Orders, issuing more of them to cover various contingencies, and generally keeping an iron grip on his command.
Some of the newcomers were utterly shocked by what they saw. Ensign William Hay joined the 52nd that summer only to witness the following ‘act of diabolical tyranny’ during one march. The division was moving through a ford, with Craufurd watching from his horse not far away. ‘The general, from his position on the bridge, observed two or three of the 95th take some water in their hands to cool their parched mouths,’ wrote Hay. ‘Instantly the halt was sounded, the brigade ordered to retrace their steps, the whole division formed into hollow square, and these unfortunate men paraded, stripped, and flogged. Such scenes, alas! were of almost daily occurrence, and disgusted me beyond measure.’ Hay took the earliest opportunity to transfer to another regiment.
With Craufurd back to his usual form, his many enemies among the regimental officers were soon seething against him. ‘Order upon orders of the most damnable nature were issued … by General Craufurd, the whole evidently compiled for no other reason than that of annoying the officers of his Division,’ wrote Leach in his journal at the end of July, exclaiming, ‘Oh! That such a scoundrel should have it in his power to exercise his tyrannical disposition for years with impunity.’
Thus far, Craufurd had been shielded from his enemies at Horse Guards by Wellington. In the late summer and early autumn of 1811, though, their relationship, hitherto professionally correct, began to break down. Matters took a turn for the worse when the French, after weeks of manoeuvre, finally succeeded in catching Picton’s division unsupported on the border and