Rifles - Mark Urban [81]
Private Almond did not have the option of retiring on leave to Lisbon or even Britain to recover his health, as many of the officers had done. Headquarters was putting the squeeze on skulkers in the hospitals again, with a new order to send NCOs who had got themselves comfy jobs there, like Esau Jackson, back to their regiments. In any case, Almond was not a coward and could not allow himself to be taunted as such by his messmates – he had taken his part in all the fights. A different idea had entered his mind: desertion.
The Light Division had little experience of desertion until that autumn. Three men had absconded from the 1st/95th within a year of its landing: one found his way back sheepishly to the regiment; another, it was widely believed, died serving the French. A private of the 43rd had tried desertion back in the summer of 1810 when the regiment was on outpost duty on the frontier. He was caught and sentenced to death for his trouble. Another fellow, John Davy of the 52nd, had headed off not long after that, living off the land for almost a year before he was discovered and arrested. Davy was sentenced to death by firing squad, a singular punishment reserved for deserters, since even murderers got the noose. There had been quite a few Germans from the Brunswick Jagers executed after that – such was their propensity for desertion that they were turned out of the Light Division after a few weeks.
It was a risky business, no doubt. But when the British outposts were only a rifle shot from the French ones, it might be attempted rather more safely than before. The Light Division had been positioned close to the French-held fortress of Ciudad Rodrigo, and this very proximity gauranteed that if they headed in the right direction they would find Johnny François quickly enough. The riflemen knew quite well that some soldiers had made it across to the French side and now served Napoleon.
At the Coa bridge, in July 1810, just after the fighting, the Rifles had an unsettling experience. One of the party sent forward by the French to help clear the wounded had looked up and taunted them in the clearest Irish brogue: ‘Well, Rifles, you will remember the 24th of July. We came to muster you this morning.’ A soldier of the 95th replied, ‘We have thinned your ranks pretty well, and if we had been allowed to keep on firing we should have thinned them a little more.’ The Irishman told them that he much preferred the French service to the British, which he had deserted some time before, and then helped carry off one of his new comrades. ‘If he had stayed until the time had expired, he would doubtless have had a ball from some of our rifles for his pert language,’ one of O’Hare’s men later remarked.
So all of them knew that desertion was possible and all of them had also heard enough about the French service to know that its officers looked after the men and were forbidden to flog them. The case of Allan Cummings may also have persuaded them that they might just get away with it, even if caught. Cummings, one of several Scottish brothers in the battalion, was a talented musician in the regimental band who had decamped while the Rifles were in the lines of Torres Vedras. He had signed up with the French, impressing them in turn with his bandsman’s skills, but eventually quit their ranks too, ending up back in the custody of the 95th and facing the death penalty. Colonel Beckwith was so determined not to lose his talents that he appealed to Headquarters and saved Cummings from the firing squad.
It was evident that the best opportunity for desertion arose when the armies were