FIVE.
The Coa
July 1810
The 95th's pickets greeted first light, that 24 July, with the heartfelt relief of men who have endured a sleepless and rain-sodden night. Their duty was a difficult one, for they knew that Marshal Ney's 6th Corps lay just in front of them. The snoozing men behind depended entirely on their outlying sentinels for their safety. For several days, the Light Division had been manoeuvring about the plateau between the Coa and Agueda rivers, often glimpsing the French and firing into their forward scouts. Ney had taken Ciudad Rodrigo by assault and, having secured this fortress, everybody now expected him to move into Portugal.
Craufurd had posted his division so that it might cover the withdrawal of some supplies from Almeida. These wagons would have to be taken from the Portuguese stronghold, which would be Ney's next target, two and a half miles down the road. Craufurd's battalions ran from north, just by the walls of the fortress, to south, where they were close to the only line of withdrawal across that difficult obstacle. From top to bottom they went: 43rd, closest to Almeida; 3rd (Portuguese) Cacadores Cacadores; 1st Cacadores Cacadores; 52nd. These Portuguese were clad in brown uniforms and had been trained to perform the same skirmishing tactics as the division's British troops. They were also being equiped with the Baker rifle, although there never proved enough for all of these rangers to have one. Apart from the sprinkling of British officers who led them, the Cacadores Cacadores were generally stocky, black-haired, olive-skinned and enjoyed their own amusements. In bivouacs they would laugh and halloo into the night, gambling over cards, and they returned the suspicious glances of Craufurd's British soldiers with interest. were generally stocky, black-haired, olive-skinned and enjoyed their own amusements. In bivouacs they would laugh and halloo into the night, gambling over cards, and they returned the suspicious glances of Craufurd's British soldiers with interest.
The Rifles covered the front of this line of battalions: the 1st Company manned the outlying picket in the northern half, the 2nd Company (Leach's) the southern. Behind them, close in to the main resting place, was a second line of lookouts, the inlying picket in the northern part of the line, which was manned by O'Hare's 3rd Company. The remainder of the battalion was sleeping, but fully clothed as usual, just behind their pickets, ready to act in support. These men slumbered under their greatcoats or blankets in a warren of little enclosures, bounded by stone walls, where the locals grew their grapes, apples and olives.
As the sun began to warm the air, the ground returned a little of the night's downpour to the atmosphere in a heavy mist that hung thickest in the hollows. Craufurd's pickets stoked their fires and got going with a morning brew. Some riflemen came around with dry cartridges in case the rain had spoiled those in the sentries' pouches. In the main part of the Rifles' bivouac the reveille bugles had sounded, and captains were beginning to form their companies, calling out the muster roll.
All of these telltale sounds travelled through the mist to the French scouts who were working their way across the upland. Marshal Ney had prepared himself for a tough contest. The spearhead of his force was made up of the Tirailleurs de Siege, Tirailleurs de Siege, light infantry picked from several regiments, who had formed into a special battalion weeks before, while Ney was attacking the fortress of Rodrigo. They would move forward with cavalry on their flanks and columns of infantry some distance behind. light infantry picked from several regiments, who had formed into a special battalion weeks before, while Ney was attacking the fortress of Rodrigo. They would move forward with cavalry on their flanks and columns of infantry some distance behind.
With the morning mist burning off, the riflemen on picket began to realise the magnitude of their crisis. One of the 95th's subalterns noted: 'As the morning fog cleared away we observed the extensive plains in our front covered with the French Army as far as the eye could reach.' The alarm was given and roll-call broken off in the main bivouac, as men packed away their gear, took up their arms and began lining the stone walls of the orchards and vineyards where they had slept.
Ney was moving with twenty-five thousand troops on the four thousand or so of Craufurd's Light Division. The crackling of musketry between the leading voltigeurs voltigeurs and the rifle picket announced that the action was beginning. For weeks, the better-informed men of Wellington's army had been worrying about the risks of keeping the Light Division east of the Coa. Major Charles Napier, a clever officer attached to Craufurd's staff, had written in his journal on 2 July: 'If the enemy was enterprising we should be cut to pieces ... we shall be attacked some morning and lose many men.' On 16 July, disturbed that they had still not withdrawn, he wrote: 'Why do we not get on the other side of the Coa? ... our safety has certainly been owing to the enemy's ignorance of our true situation.' Wellington himself had echoed these views, with orders to Craufurd not to risk a battle with the rest of the British Army across the Coa and therefore unable to support him. and the rifle picket announced that the action was beginning. For weeks, the better-informed men of Wellington's army had been worrying about the risks of keeping the Light Division east of the Coa. Major Charles Napier, a clever officer attached to Craufurd's staff, had written in his journal on 2 July: 'If the enemy was enterprising we should be cut to pieces ... we shall be attacked some morning and lose many men.' On 16 July, disturbed that they had still not withdrawn, he wrote: 'Why do we not get on the other side of the Coa? ... our safety has certainly been owing to the enemy's ignorance of our true situation.' Wellington himself had echoed these views, with orders to Craufurd not to risk a battle with the rest of the British Army across the Coa and therefore unable to support him.
As the French brigades marched forward that morning of 24 July, drums beating, Craufurd had one more chance. It would still take time perhaps even an hour or two for Ney to bring up the columns of his main force and shake them into their battle line, ready for the assault. All the time the drums sent their repetitive signal a refrain the riflemen nicknamed 'Old Trousers'. This could allow the Light Division to get away for even the 43rd, furthest from the bridge, were not much more than two miles from it. Craufurd decided to stand. He sent his aide-de-camp, Major Napier, around the battalion commanders, telling them they must hold their ground while some wagons of artillery ammunition and other supplies were taken across the bridge.
Seeing hundreds of French skirmishers moving up through the rocky terrain, the outlying pickets began running back towards their supports some were cut off, the French bagging their first prisoners. O'Hare's company was formed up, rifles rested on stone walls, ready to give covering fire to the pickets running towards them. As they caught sight of the first Frenchmen, bobbing and ducking among the trees and drystone walls, they started finding their targets, leading them, squeezing the trigger and watching them drop with a yelp or a slap of metal on flesh. But these tirailleurs tirailleurs were no recruits. They moved with a mutual confidence born of years of campaigning, timing their dash from one bit of cover to another during moments when they calculated their enemy would be reloading. Some were good shots too: Lieutenant Coane, falling wounded with a ball in his guts, was sent to the rear. were no recruits. They moved with a mutual confidence born of years of campaigning, timing their dash from one bit of cover to another during moments when they calculated their enemy would be reloading. Some were good shots too: Lieutenant Coane, falling wounded with a ball in his guts, was sent to the rear.
This contest between light troops had been going on for an hour when the main assault columns closed up and began their evolution into attack formation. Simmons observed: 'The enemy's infantry formed line and, with an innumerable multitude of skirmishers, attacked us fiercely; we repulsed them; they came on again, yelling with drums beating, frequently with the drummers leading, often in front of the line, French officers like mountebanks running forward and placing their hats on their swords and capering about like madmen.'
A company or two of Rifles, totalling perhaps 120 men, would stand no hope of defending themselves against whole battalions of French, each one four times their number. Ney's men had been able to get some of the cannon up too, and they were beginning to belch fire. O'Hare knew that his boys would be slaughtered or overwhelmed if they did not fall back. He ordered half his company, Lieutenant Coane's platoon (under Simmons now), to move to a new defensive line, while Lieutenant Johnston's covered them.
Craufurd's line could defend itself better for as long as its flanks were anchored; the left or northern one on Almeida fortress, with its heavy artillery, the right on the Coa gorge. As the Rifles were pushed back, though, the French commanders could see a gap opening on the British left. Some squadrons of the 3ieme Hussards saw their moment and rode around the riflemen, turning the Light Division's flank. saw their moment and rode around the riflemen, turning the Light Division's flank.
The moment soldiers realised they had been outflanked, there was every risk of panic. A cry of 'The French cavalry are upon us!' went up around O'Hare's company. They were running now, desperate to save themselves, glancing over their shoulders, gasping for breath as the cantering hussars got closer. The riflemen were trying to reach a line of the 43rd that had formed up, ready to cover them. But with little more than a hundred yards to go, O'Hare's men lost their unequal contest with horses. The hussars were among them.
A slashing of cavalry sabres had begun, the crunch of metal on bone making itself heard above the general shouting, shooting and jingle of saddlery. 'A fellow brandished his sword in the air, and was about to bring it down upon my head,' Simmons wrote. 'I dropped mine seeing it was useless to make resistance. He saw I was an officer and did not cut me.' O'Hare's men were starting to surrender.
The officer commanding the three companies of the 43rd, watching all this, knew he could not easily order a volley. That might kill as many British as it would the enemy hussars. But he decided, after a moment's agony, that there was nothing to be lost. His men fired not a bludgeon volley like some line fellows might, but a discharge in which his soldiers tried to put their training to good use and aim carefully at a target.
With balls flying into the melee, the hussars were momentarily stunned. Captain Vogt, one of their squadron commanders, fell dead from the saddle. Should they attempt a charge on the 43rd or fall back? Simmons and some of the other riflemen decided they had not surrendered after all, and taking advantage of the confusion, ran for the 43rd's line. The volley had not altogether discriminated between friend and foe Private Charity, for example, somehow made it back with Simmons despite two fearsome sabre wounds and one of the 43rd's balls rattling around in him.
Some Portuguese gunners in the fortress who'd seen the fighting had realised the dangers of Craufurd's flank being turned and opened up with their heavy guns. They mistook the darkly dressed riflemen for enemy so the balls, alas, killed without discriminating between the French and the 95th.
At its northern end, Craufurd's line was crumbling. But it was being assaulted at its other extreme too, by none other than General Ferey and his brigade, who gave the 52nd a heavy fight.
The 43rd and 95th being driven back, all order was beginning to vanish men of the two battalions and different companies became mixed as they jogged along. One of the Portuguese battalions started to disintegrate, hundreds of its troops deciding to save themselves by running back to the bridge. As these fugitives reached the defile, they pushed past the last few wagons of ammunition, causing a general jam.
Breathless, their mouths bone-dry through the biting of cartridges and hours of exertion, the riflemen dragged themselves across one stone wall after another. The French followed up determinedly: 'They sent their light infantry in abundance like swarms of bees and they were regularly relieved by fresh troops so that our poor devils not only laboured under the disadvantage of numbers but fresh men, who hunted us down the mountains like deer.'
The fighting had been going on for hours, as men of the 95th and 43rd stumbled towards the bridge. A couple of knolls stood overlooking the crossing, with the rocky ground sloping steeply down to it. The road from Almeida needed to zigzag to negotiate this last tricky drop down to the span. From this vantage point, Lieutenant Colonel Beckwith could see that the battle had reached a crisis. The bridge was clogged with wagons and men, while the French were just a few hundred yards from it. The 43rd and companies of 95th that were with it were best positioned to hold the heights as these last men crossed, but to his horror, Beckwith realised that the the 52nd was still fighting far out to the front, evidently having received no order to withdraw, and was about to be cut off. Beckwith saw Major Napier nearby and ordered him to get through to the 52nd and tell Colonel Barclay to fall back to the bridge without a moment's delay.
Private Costello was among those scrambling back towards the bridge when he took a bullet under the right knee. Another rifleman answered his cries for help, picked up Costello and staggered forward with the wounded man piggyback. Crack! Another ball it smashed its way through the Good Samaritan's arm and into Costello's thigh. Both men went down. Costello's saviour was now unable to carry him, for one arm hung bloody and useless at his side. Both of them staggered on, getting the help of some other riflemen.
With the elements of the Light Division that remained on the eastern bank of the Coa having contracted their line from one a couple of miles long at the start of the business to one of a few hundred yards, the French companies that pursued them began firing to much greater effect. Leach explains it in a letter home: 'Now the fire began (as you may naturally fancy) to be cursedly hot from the French because the nearer we drew to the bridge, the more we concentrated and from behind every wall and rock they directed their fire at the bridge and its vicinity.'
The French forced back the troops on top of the knolls overlooking the bridge, and once their shooters were lining that vital ground, the predicament of the defenders became truly desperate. Balls were whistling about the ears of the riflemen, ricocheting dementedly off rocks, whining into the air. Every now and then there'd be the slap of a bullet hitting flesh and the cry of another man going down. Two of Leach's subalterns, brothers called Harry and Tom Smith, sank moments apart, both with leg wounds. Lieutenant Pratt fell, a ball having gone straight through his neck, splashing blood all over the rocks. Many of the riflemen had been firing for hours and could not reply: they had run out of ammunition. If the French wheeled a couple of guns up to the ridge, the British would be massacred.
Sensing the danger, Major Charles MacLeod of the 43rd rode his horse up the steep slope, its hooves somehow planting themselves between the big stones, and called on the men to follow him. About two hundred Green Jackets and redcoats fell in behind, bayonets fixed, determined to drive the French skirmishers off the knolls from which they were doing such slaughter. Second Lieutenant George Simmons was among them, rallying some of the few remaining 3rd Company men with him.
As he was nearing the top of the slope, the men all around him cheering, Simmons felt a hammer blow that sent him crashing into the rocks. 'I could not collect my ideas, and was feeling about my arms and body for a wound until my eye caught the stream of blood rushing through the hole in my trousers, and my leg and thigh appeared so heavy that I could not move it,' he would write. A sergeant of the 43rd stooped over him, tightening a tourniquet around the leg, but as he straightened up, a bullet blew off the top of his head. MacLeod's attack reached its objective, the French driven back for the moment, allowing precious minutes to complete the evacuation. Companies of the 52nd, responding to Major Napier's urgent message, came pelting back through this position, saving themselves from death or capture.
Many of those crossing the bridge were now the walking wounded, or were carried by mates, as Costello had been. A defensive line had been prepared on the western side, anticipating the withdrawal of the last couple of hundred men. Captain Alexander Cameron's men of the 7th or Highland Company of the 95th were crouching behind rocks, ready for anything. Behind them were several rallied companies of the 43rd and some cannon.
As the soldiers carrying the wounded Simmons rushed up the British-held side of the gorge, trying to find a surgeon, they ran into Craufurd instead. He ordered them to put the officer down on the hillside and go back. Simmons believed that Craufurd's prejudice against him, stemming from the loss of his personal wagon on the march to Campo Maior, had come into play, and that his brigadier cared not a jot if he bled to death on this godforsaken spot. But the Green Jackets ignored the order, one shouting at Black Bob, 'This is an officer of ours, and we must see him in safety before we leave him.'
With almost everyone across, remnants of the last few companies began scrambling down the rocks, trying to make it down to the bridge in the moments it would take for the French to seize their opportunity, retake the knolls, and start shooting down on them again. 'The French in a second occupied the hill which we left, blazed away at us in crossing and as we ascended the opposite heights made damnable work amongst us,' one of the last across wrote in a letter home.
To his consternation, Captain Leach found a lone artillery officer on the bridge with a tumbril full of ammunition, pleading for help. The riflemen helped push the wagon across to the western side and with that, the Light Division was finally over.
Ferey's men, however, did not intend to leave the matter there, for they had driven their enemy from the field, and success in war demanded that they exploit such an advantage to the full. The voltigeurs voltigeurs had worked away throughout the first part of the day in skirmishing; it was now time to employ men of the other elite company in each battalion, the grenadiers. Colonel Jean-Pierre Bechaud called out to the grenadiers of his 66 had worked away throughout the first part of the day in skirmishing; it was now time to employ men of the other elite company in each battalion, the grenadiers. Colonel Jean-Pierre Bechaud called out to the grenadiers of his 66eme Regiment to rally around him, gathering others from the grenadier company of the 82 to rally around him, gathering others from the grenadier company of the 82eme. Just as the light companies had their role in the scheme of war to skirmish up ahead of the regiment so the grenadiers were those you sent for when some desperate feat, a storming, was required.
A cheer and a fusillade went up from the French covering party, as the grenadiers pelted down the rutted road to the Coa bridge. The 95th watched them coming, many of them choosing a target and leading him slowly with their rifle. It was vital, though, not to let fly too soon. As the first Frenchmen made it onto the bridge, muskets held out in front, bayonets fixed, their red grenadiers' epaulettes bouncing up and down on their shoulders, the crackling of rifle fire at last began.
Captain Leach fixed on Captain Ninon, commander of the 82eme's grenadier company, tracked him with his rifle as he came onto the bridge, and squeezed the trigger. 'I fired at him myself with my little rifle (which still stands my friend) and cursed my stupidity for missing him, but a running person is not easily hit.' grenadier company, tracked him with his rifle as he came onto the bridge, and squeezed the trigger. 'I fired at him myself with my little rifle (which still stands my friend) and cursed my stupidity for missing him, but a running person is not easily hit.'
Each storm had its moment of decision, one at which the moral strength of one side would overcome the other. If the grenadiers kept moving forward, many British troops would run. If the attack faltered under heavy fire, the French officers would have trouble urging any more men to go to a certain death or capture.
Leach fired again and dropped one of the grenadiers. But most of those who'd been engaged that morning had weapons that had become too hot and fouled to fire. Cameron's Scots, though, were fresh, and they kept up a lethal barrage of aimed shots at the head of the French column.
It was the turn of the French grenadiers now to cower behind cover. Colonel Bechaud, shouting, trying to urge them on, made an obvious target for one of the British marksmen: he fired and put a bullet in the Frenchman's chest. Captain Ninon, surrounded by wounded and dying men on the bridge, was unscathed by the hail of balls around him but he did what even the bravest man must do when he sees the situation is hopeless, and doubled back to his own side of the bridge.
By 4 p.m. the fire was dying down. Everybody knew that the French would not be able to force the crossing. It was not long before an officer appeared with a white flag of truce, calling out to the British side for their agreement to rescue the wounded. Both sides sent down parties to carry off the groaning men who lay mixed up on the bridge and its eastern side. In a few cases, words were exchanged between the two sides as they worked.
The Rifles fell back some way from the bridge and made their bivouac. Many had been fighting for nine hours without interruption and were completely knocked up. Officers and soldiers with barely the energy to speak asked after friends. Half of 3rd Company were on the other side of the Coa, captured, as were quite a few men of the 1st Company. Some soldiers of the 52nd realised that they too had left dozens of men on the wrong side: in their case the result was happier, the men lay low and found their way back west later.
What was clear to everyone, though, was that the Light Division had suffered hundreds of casualties: 333 to be precise. The 95th had accounted for 129 of them, including 12 killed and 54 missing, presumed captured. Among subalterns there had been a shocking toll of wounded eight were on their way to the rear, where God knows what fate awaited them. O'Hare and Fairfoot had come through unscathed, as had William Brotherwood one of those men in Leach's company who had slogged all the way back from the outlying picket. The Light Division had at least exacted a heavy price from the enemy, inflicting around five hundred casualties.
On the evening of the 24th and in the days that followed there was deep, hard anger. One subaltern mourned that 'all this blood was shed for no purpose whatsoever'. As they talked it over, they found comfort in the heroism of MacLeod, leading his charge up the hill, or in the cool presence of Beckwith issuing orders when their divisional commander had been absent from the hot side of the Coa. One young officer was adamant: 'But for Colonel Beckwith our whole force would have been sacrificed.' In all of this, they sought to find something redeeming in the defeat of their division by Ney, for a defeat it most certainly was.
The French were delighted with the day's work. General Loison, whose division had struck the main blow, wrote in his official report to Ney, 'The Combat of the 24th proves to [the British] there is no position the French infantry cannot take and to our soldiers that the English Army is not even as hard to beat as the Spanish and Portuguese.'
Charles Napier, who had delivered several key orders, felt 'the bloody business closed with as much honour for the officers and men as disgrace for Craufurd's generalship'. Napier noted bitterly that Craufurd had almost repeated his feat of Buenos Aires, in having to surrender a British brigade. Others spoke of their close escape from Verdun, the huge French prison where so many British captives languished.
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, those who reacted most bitterly were the officers who had already formed a deep dislike of Craufurd, with his floggings and tantrums. Jonathan Leach wrote home: He is a damned tyrant and a great blackguard and has proved himself totally unfit to command a company, much less a division ... I am fully confident that any sergeant in the Army would have brought off the Division in better order, God be praised. If we had not all done something like our duty, I know not but that the Division might have been now on its march to Verdun. He is a damned tyrant and a great blackguard and has proved himself totally unfit to command a company, much less a division ... I am fully confident that any sergeant in the Army would have brought off the Division in better order, God be praised. If we had not all done something like our duty, I know not but that the Division might have been now on its march to Verdun.
Word of mouth and vitriolic letters like Leach's flew to the four corners of Wellington's Army, and to various quarters in England. The angry young officers of the 95th had no way of knowing it, but Craufurd's harsh regime during the Talavera campaign had already excited adverse comment at the highest levels in London. Wellington had received a letter from Horse Guards, early in 1810, expressing the Commander in Chief's concerns, 'that a very unusual degree of severity is exercised towards the soldiers in the brigades under the command of Brigadier General R. Craufurd'. Among those around Wellington, the dislike of Craufurd was very evident in the days after what became known as the Combat of the Coa. One staff officer hissed, 'I never thought any good was to be expected from any thing of which General R. Craufurd had the direction.'
The Commander of Forces was alive to these views, but he declined to send Craufurd home in disgrace. Wellington reasoned, 'If I am to be hanged for it, I cannot accuse a man who I think has meant well, and whose error is one of judgement, and not of intention.' The choice to keep Craufurd must indeed have been a lonely one. But he reasoned that Craufurd had fire in his belly and knew his profession, whereas most of his generals were timid, and ignoramuses to boot.
Many of those sitting in the comfort of Horse Guards found Wellington's decision incomprehensible. Colonel Torrens, who as Military Secretary was a key figure in the management of senior officers' careers, told his representative in Portugal: The command of your advanced guard appears to be founded in more ignorance and incapacity than I could possibly have supposed any officer capable of ... I had a very favourable opinion of Craufurd's talents. But he appears to me to allow the violence of his passions and the impetuosity of his disposition to overthrow the exercise of his judgement. The command of your advanced guard appears to be founded in more ignorance and incapacity than I could possibly have supposed any officer capable of ... I had a very favourable opinion of Craufurd's talents. But he appears to me to allow the violence of his passions and the impetuosity of his disposition to overthrow the exercise of his judgement.
Craufurd's soldiers did not know about this hair's-breadth escape from ignominy, but they guessed at it in their own way. In the days after the Coa, reports flew about that Craufurd would any moment be replaced by another general. As night fell on 24 July, too many of Craufurd's men were lying caked in blood in field hospitals, or bouncing along in the backs of rough Portuguese ox carts, their lives in the balance. Simmons and Costello were among those unfortunates, beginning their journey into the netherworld of what passed for the Army's system of care for the battlefield wounded.
SIX.
Wounded
JulyAugust 1810
The first night for the Coa wounded was as rainy and miserable as anyone could imagine. George Simmons and many of the others found themselves packed together on the stone flagstones of a little church. Simmons was deposited next to a man of the 43rd: 'I was on the ground, very ill from loss of blood; he had been placed on a palliasse of straw and was dying, but his noble nature would not allow him to die in peace when he saw an officer so humbled as to be laid near him on bare stones.' In agony, the soldier moved himself so that Simmons could share his straw. He did not last the night.
Strange as it may seem, Simmons and the dying man of the 43rd were among the lucky ones. There were others unable to move, bleeding to death, out on the hills, wallowing in the downpour. That night the French soldiers and their camp followers would be tracing the steps of Craufurd's pickets, searching for fallen soldiers and their plunder. Often enough, a man who showed any sign of life was dispatched with a blow to the head as such thieves relieved him of his last earthly possessions.
In the churches or barns where Wellington's few surgeons struggled to cope with the Coa wounded, there was little to be done by way of treatment. Bandages might be tied around wounds, or plasters made from brown sticky paper slapped across less serious lesions. Simmons knew his surgery, for he had studied it before joining the Army, and he knew that the heavy loss of blood from his thigh made his case a doubtful one. He drew a piece of paper and pencil from his jacket and began scribbling a note to his brother Maud, who was also serving in Portugal, as an ensign with the 34th. In it, he directed Maud about how he might best sell his possessions after his death, so as to gain a few pounds for the education of their other siblings.
To his own surprise, Simmons survived the night, and was transferred the next day to Pinhel, where there were many more wounded. The surgeons and commissaries who organised the evacuation had few proper wagons. The roads of the Beira frontier were in any case so atrocious that only little two-wheelers could negotiate them. Dozens of local peasants were therefore hired to drive bullock-drawn carts full of wounded. These wagons were themselves viewed as instruments of torture by many of the soldiers who were obliged to lie across their rude wooden slats. The vehicles were so crudely made that they lacked a proper axle; instead, the wheels rotated around a pole and emitted a head-splitting drone as they went along the roads.
The makeshift hospital in Pinhel was another charnel house, one even cruder than Simmons's billet of the first night. A sergeant from one of the regiments nearby, hearing of the sanguinary engagement on the Coa, allowed his curiosity to get the better of him and peered inside: 'They were the most shocking spectacle I ever beheld many without arms, hands, legs and every other part ... the cries of them would pierce the heart of a slave.' When he went back the next morning, many had died.
In this miserable place, some of the 95th's wounded subalterns found one another and joined forces. Lieutenant Harry Smith, an active fellow with a grasp of Spanish, was able to make himself understood to the Portuguese. He helped organise a party of wounded who would be taken over several days down the mountain tracks, to a place where they could be put in boats on the Mondego River, then cruise down to the coast where the Navy might be able to evacuate them.
Smith, who had a knack of emerging on top in any situation, was loaded into a local worthy's sedan chair, hitched between two mules, while the others would ride in the back of bullock carts. Officers and men alike were thrown into these conveyances. It cannot be claimed that the commissioned class received any higher standard of care at this stage of the journey, except in one particular: each officer, even the pipsqueak subalterns, was assigned a soldier of his company to act as his servant. The day after the battle Lieutenant Colonel Beckwith sent these men down to ease the miseries of his young officers. The riflemen were able to look after their charges in the most basic way, by fetching water and guarding them as the convoy of sick made its way down towards the Mondego.
Private Costello, with his two leg wounds, was also one of those being bumped along in the carts. A couple of days out of Pinhel, one of the seriously wounded men who'd been propped up close by slumped across him: 'Foam mixed with blood ran from his mouth which, with his glassy eyes fixed on mine, made me feel very uncomfortable. Being weak and wounded myself, I had no power to move him. Death put an end to his sufferings, and his struggles having ceased, I was able to recover myself a little.' Costello called out to the driver again and again, trying to make himself heard above the din of the wheels. He was convinced the surly old Portuguese had heard him all right, but the shouts were ignored, and Costello endured hours before the dead man was lifted off him.
The journey itself was too much for many. Lieutenant O'Reilly of the 95th died two days after the battle. Not long after that, Lieutenant Pratt, whose neck wound left him in hideous discomfort, had grown angry with a Portuguese who would not help him: his shouting caused the artery in his neck to burst, and he quickly bled to death in front of his anguished friends.
At the end of each day's stage, the men would be left in a barn or some little shrine, with scant chance of a visit from one of the handful of medics who accompanied the convoy. One soldier recorded, 'The surgeons had neither the time nor opportunity to look after us. As a consequence of this neglect, maggots were engendered in the sores, and the bandages, when withdrawn, brought away on them lumps of putrid flesh and maggots.' During the daytime marches, many a dressing slipped off or was clawed away by some delirious man scratching at his wounds. Hordes of flies would then swarm around the wound, laying eggs in the rotting matter.
Six days after the battle, the sick were getting close to the river where they would find more comfortable transport. Many had been disgusted by the Portuguese town officials whom they had encountered on the way. At one point Harry Smith had threatened to hang the local magistrate, if he did not furnish some oxen and drivers to pull the sick wagons. The locals, it can be imagined, did not react well to such usage, and four days after leaving Pinhel, Simmons's servant, Private Short, threatened to kill the driver of his master's cart. Happily, the dispute was resolved without further bloodshed.
The river passage went smoothly enough, the men then being transferred to a naval transport, which sailed them around to Lisbon, where they arrived on 7 August, after a hellish journey of thirteen days. Here, the officers and men went their separate ways. Smith, Simmons and some of the other subalterns limped into the Golden Lion Hotel, an establishment that catered for the British officers going to or from their regiments.
The following day, appalled by the size of the bill at the Golden Lion, Simmons hired himself a room in the Rua de Buenos Ayres. Harry and Tom Smith also decamped, but to another address, the rent a little higher, of course, as befitted young gentlemen of their standing. All of them just wanted to recuperate as fast as possible. None required immediate surgery, although Harry Smith still had a ball lodged in the heel of one foot. It was simply a matter of taking rest, sending your servant out for food, and trying to maintain one's composure as an Englishman, amid the stench of garlic or frying sardines and the incessant shouting of the inhabitants. Simmons wrote home to his father, 'The people are not worthy of notice. I met with great barbarity all the way. They would let you die in the streets before they would assist you.'
Those whose wounds allowed a rapid recovery, and whose spirit remained ardent, did not like to linger at Lisbon, for the outgoings were inevitably greater than those they incurred sleeping under the stars and messing with the other officers of their company. A wound could be turned to your financial advantage, of course, with a visit to the Medical Board resulting in a pension. A lieutenant who had lost an eye or one of his arms could augment his income to the tune of 70 per annum. A great many who were in receipt of such a payment fully intended to return to their regiments.
Those who were seriously wounded but who escaped a lasting disability were entitled to a one-off gratuity of a year's pay. The more gentlemanly sort used this benefit for the purpose for which it was intended and, with their colonel's leave, sailed home for a year's convalescence. However, some of the hardier types with no great expectations, of whom there were many in the 95th, calculated that a man who had been sick in Lisbon for a few months but then rejoined his regiment with a year's pay in his pocket was a man who had made himself a devil of a good bargain.
Soldiers too found themselves parading before the Medical Board, where they might also receive 'blood money' for a wound. For those who'd had limbs amputated or other serious injuries, the board often took the decision to invalid them back to England. They would be put on a ship for Haslar on the Solent; there it would be decided whether they could be sent to an invalids' or veterans' battalion, or were so seriously crippled that they needed to be pensioned off. A man sent out in this way could receive a decent stipend some got as much as ninepence a day, rather more than they were paid in their regiments, although there, at least, many of the essentials of daily life were found for them. Others, though, were cast out with a few pence a day and considered themselves hard done by.
Among those who had been evacuated, feverish, from the Guadiana, or shot up from the Coa, there was another category of soldier. By the late summer of 1810, it was clear that quite a few hundreds, certainly had realised the benefits of lingering about Lisbon. The alternative, after all, was a return to the floggings and grapeshot of regimental service. The wine was cheap in the Portuguese capital and there was always plenty of company around the barracks at Belem, just outside Lisbon, where hundreds of men discharged from general hospital but not yet deemed fit to return to their corps would gather. 'It was a place noted for every species of skulk,' one of the hardier riflemen recorded, 'better known to my fellow soldiers as the "Belem Rangers".'
These skulkers earned the contempt of stout-hearted soldiers, whose privations in hospital left them all the more eager to return to their companies. But those who preferred to parade in Belem, or similar establishments in the interior, eventually numbered thousands. Late in the summer of 1810, Brigadier Craufurd wrote to Wellington estimating that, even in the Light Division, many of the five hundred soldiers from the 43rd, 52nd and 95th who were absent from their battalions and loitering about the Portuguese capital were in fact 'fit to join regiments'.
For the man determined not to leave hospital, there were various tricks. 'Some of the younger soldiers, benefiting by the instruction given to them by old malingerers, caused sores or slight wounds, which under ordinary circumstances, would have healed quickly, to become inflamed and daily worse,' one experienced army surgeon wrote. 'Tongues rubbed against whitewashed walls certainly puzzled us doctors. Fits were common and constantly acted in the barrack yard, lameness was a general complaint, and not a few declared themselves hopelessly paralysed.'
However, the accomplished skulker did not consider it very proper to lie about in hospital, for there they made deductions from your pay, and that was money better spent on gin or Madeira. A man 'awaiting instructions' at Belem Barracks could claim his full six or seven pence day's pay, and spend it with alacrity. Poring over his regimental returns, Wellington eventually noticed that something was amiss. On 23 October, Headquarters issued a General Order: 1. The Commander of the Forces has observed with the greatest concern, the large number of men returned sick in general hospital, compared with the returns received from the medical officers of the number of men actually on their books in the hospitals. 2. The former, at present, is more than double the latter, and it must be owing to some existing abuse. 1. The Commander of the Forces has observed with the greatest concern, the large number of men returned sick in general hospital, compared with the returns received from the medical officers of the number of men actually on their books in the hospitals. 2. The former, at present, is more than double the latter, and it must be owing to some existing abuse.
In short, Wellington had realised that a great many men whose regiments assumed they were in hospital had actually been discharged but were not coming back. It might seem surprising that Headquarters did not tumble to the tricks of the Belem Rangers earlier, but by autumn 1810 it was trying to rein them in. The more artful skulkers had already tried to save themselves from such measures by adopting a shrewder line. Private Billy McNabb of the 95th was one such.
McNabb, a native of Falkirk, was thirty-eight and had been in the Army long enough to lose any dreams of glory. He was also a clever fellow who knew how to work the system. He had sailed from Dover with the 1st Company but had soon discovered that a man of his age could not manage the marches as well as a Costello fifteen years his junior, or indeed risk his life with the same nonchalance. When the Army first set up hospitals in Portugal, there had been no staff, apart from a handful of surgeons or assistant surgeons. These few experts were soon given hundreds of patients to look after. A soldier who could read and write, like McNabb, might ingratiate himself with those in charge and gain a position assisting them. Then he would receive the handsome sum of an additional sixpence a day as a ward orderly. As long as he remained in the good books of his medical masters, they would resist the regiment's attempts to get their man back.
Wellington, however, had got wind of the tricks of men like McNabb. His Army was simply too short of trained soldiers to allow them to hang about the rear, currying favour with the surgeons by day and drinking themselves insensible at night. His General Order directed the hospitals to employ Portuguese civilians in place of the McNabbs, who, it added sternly, 'are to be sent by the first opportunity to their regiments'.
The paths of Privates Costello and McNabb thus crossed bright and early one morning that October. Captain Samuel Mitchell, a tough Scot who had been shot in the arm at the Coa while at the head of his 6th Company, had heard reports of his countryman. Having recovered his health in Lisbon, Mitchell was quite determined that McNabb should join the party returning for service with the 95th. The old soldier insisted his services were indispensable at the hospital, 'so was tied to a bullock cart and amid the jeers of the soldiers, conveyed back to his regiment'. The party set off with McNabb stumbling along, suffering the taunts of Costello and others, much as someone in the pillory might.
For George Simmons, hobbling about on his wounded leg, and Harry Smith, there was still a little time for recuperation and reflection. They sometimes escaped the city's heat by making up a bathing party and dipping in the icy Atlantic waters. Neither man particularly wanted to delay his departure, for Smith had a rare kind of hunger for advancement and Simmons simply could not afford life in Lisbon.
While he was at the Rua de Buenos Ayres, Simmons received a letter from his parents. Brother Maud had sent home reports of the gravity of George's injuries. They had learned too that officers of the 95th were more exposed to danger than those of almost any other regiment in the Army. George tried to allay their fears, writing, 'You make me blush at the idea or observation in the letter, "a dangerous regiment". My dear father, "the more danger the more honour". Never let such weak thoughts enter your head.'
Simmons, like Costello, could not wait to get back to his brothers in arms. They had seen the horrible sights of war all right, but they had reacted in quite the opposite way to McNabb and his ilk. For most of those injured in the 95th did not want to join the ranks of the Rangers. To come through the fire and blood, having conducted yourself in a way that drew the praise of messmates, was just about all that was worth living for. The ironic humour, the softly spoken determination in the face of death: these were the things that drew them back, not the fear of the lash or any desire to please some tyrant like Craufurd.
Had Simmons wanted to give in to his parents' fears, there were some avenues open to him. An exchange of commissions with an officer serving in some quiet corner of England was one route. Of course, he did not consider it for a moment. He had not forgotten his altruistic notion of helping to educate his brothers, and soon enough he'd be finding money from his meagre pay to send home again. But a powerful new idea now motivated his soldiering, expressed to his father this way: 'I have established my name as a man worthy to rank with the veterans of my regiment, and am esteemed and respected by every brother officer.' Simmons regretted only that his wound had not been suffered in a general action a battle in which both armies were arrayed under their commanders in chief for the blood money was usually better under such circumstances. All the more unfortunate for the young subaltern, since a general action was exactly what his comrades who remained with the 95th were about to experience.
SEVEN.
Busaco