Rifles - Mark Urban [94]
The regiments of the Light Division filed away from the execution ground. They had seen plenty of death in battle, but there was something deeply disturbing about what they had just witnessed. Quarter Master William Surtees wrote:
I cannot describe the uncomfortable feelings this spectacle produced in my mind – nay, not only there, but in my body also – for I felt sick at heart; a sort of loathing ensued; and from the recollection of what I then suffered, I could not easily be persuaded to witness such another scene, if I had the option of staying away.
Following the execution of its former members, the Light Division was soon under way again, marching south for an appointment with another siege. Badajoz, the last remaining border fortress still in French hands, was their objective, Wellington having resolved to take it as quickly as possible so that he might press on with the campaign of 1812, deeper into Spain. The 95th and its brother regiments faced a series of marches, down through the Sierra d’Estrella mountains to the plains of Alemtejo (where they had suffered such sickness before) and across the Guadiana into Spain.
The columns moving south were commanded under improvised arrangements. Craufurd was dead, Colborne of the 52nd seriously wounded. Others accompanied the column in a state of fragile health, either through wounds or sickness, drifting in and out of their posts as each bout of delirium subsided or rose. Among these officers were: Colonel Beckwith, who had returned from England, in theory to resume command of the 1st Brigade, though in fact he was never well enough to do so; Major General John Vandeleur, the 2nd Brigade chief who now coveted the command of the entire division but had also been wounded at Rodrigo; and Major O’Hare, the commanding officer of the 1st Battalion of the Rifles, who had been laid low by a series of fevers. So it was a time of acting commands throughout: lieutenants led companies; Cameron, a brevet major but technically still a captain, commanded the 1st/95th; majors from the 43rd and 52nd ran the brigades; and Lieutenant Colonel Barnard, having arrived less than a year before, was in charge of the entire Light Division.
It was in this atmosphere, in which nobody exactly felt confident of his place, that a grubby prisoner was taken swiftly down the division’s march route and delivered to its provost. Shortly after the previous executions, Joseph Almond had been captured by a patrol of Spanish guerrillas while trying to make his way through to Salamanca. The forests and byways between Rodrigo and that city were intensively patrolled by Don Julian’s men, who were always on the lookout for Spanish collaborators or spies carrying messages. Anyone who seemed out of place soon attracted their attention.
Almond’s former comrades were quickly aware of his capture because he had to join their daily marches, manacled, at the rear of the column. February’s executions had, for many of the men, righted the wrong caused by the deserters’ defection to the French – accounts had been settled. Quite a few of them had been disgusted by the spectacle of the firing squads too. So when it came to Almond, there was a general feeling that they did not want to see another capital trial.
Since the division was marching, it was not possible to convene even the semblance of a general court martial, as had been done the previous month. Instead, the recuperating General Vandeleur would act as president and his staff officer or major of brigade, Harry Smith, would be given the prosecuting role of acting deputy advocate general. The ‘court’ was convened in Castello Branco on 4 March and its proceedings would last but an hour or two. Almond, like the others, pleaded not guilty on the grounds of the sufferings he had faced the previous November.
Smith and Vandeleur did what