Rifles - Mark Urban [79]
All of this sickness and leave allowed George Simmons, for example, to command the 5th Company for several months from October, despite being a newly made lieutenant, and to receive an acting captain’s pay for his trouble. It also resulted in Major O’Hare often being in acting command of the battalion. Colonel Beckwith had gone home to England, having come down with bouts of Guadiana fever near the end of the preceding campaign.
Neither O’Hare, nor the hardier types like Leach or Kincaid who remained in the mountains, were ready to let the misery of their situation overwhelm them. In each village where they went, they would soon discover the smoky bothy that passed for a cantina, and bring it alive each night with songs and dances. ‘A Spanish peasant girl has an address about her which I have never met with in the same class of any other country,’ wrote one of them, ‘and she at once enters into society with an ease and confidence of one who has been accustomed to it all her life.’ They would while away their afternoons and evenings drinking the wine of Duero or Rueda, dancing boleros, fandangos and waltzes. Holding their black-eyed Spanish girls close during these assemblies, they parted at the end of the evening with a friendly goodbye. Sometimes they would pay a few local musicians to provide the music; on other occasions Willie Johnston would saw away on his fiddle or the officers would sing lustily into the night.
There were other amusements too – shooting wildfowl or coursing hares on the surrounding uplands, for example. Some of the officers also kept menageries in their quarters. It became quite normal to see colourful characters like Leach or Johnston strolling down the lanes with a pet wolf, badger or some other beast on a lead. Others also began getting plays together, determined to stage some productions a little more ambitious than those of the previous winter.
An important change in the equilibirum of the 95th occurred on 21 August, when half of the 3rd Battalion – four companies comprising its Right Wing, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Barnard – joined the Light Division. These men had been fighting in southern Spain with another expeditionary force, and had been blooded during the Battle of Barossa early in 1811, drawing widespread praise for their conduct. Barnard, the son of an Anglo-Irish family that was both wealthy and politically well connected, was unusual in that he quickly impressed the 95th despite being a latecomer to the regiment. Although Barnard was senior to O’Hare, in command of the 1st Battalion, Army and regimental protocol dictated that he could not immediately take command of it. However, the colonel would eventually emerge as the man with the unusual skills needed to fill the void left by Beckwith.
General Craufurd kept them busy these days with marches, firing practice and manoeuvring. The floggings and harangues went on too. As October passed, Craufurd was becoming increasingly concerned with the supply shortage in his remote station. The Army had established depots on the coast, and in some inland towns too, and its commissaries were charged with bringing the food up by wagon or river to places where it could be transferred to the Light Division’s own train of mules. The constant shortages of hard money, combined with the difficulties of sending victuals to the end of this long supply chain, lead to considerable crimping by the commissaries and hardship in the 95th.
‘We suffered dreadfully through want, and I underwent more privations than at any other place in Spain, except Dough Boy Hill,