SERGEANT AND PRIVATE
IN WINTER MARCHING ORDER 1813.
London, Edward Arnold, 1902
To describe the state of the officers would be impossible; for myself, I can truly say I was in rags. I wore a frock-coat, made out of a dress belonging to a priest that was captured by my man Dan Carsons at Badajoz. I wore it during our sojourn at Madrid: it was lined with silk, and might be termed a good turn-out there; but, as it turned out on the retreat, it was the worst description of clothing I, or rather my man Dan, could have pitched on. Every copse I passed, and they were many, took a slice off my Madrid frock, and by the time I had undergone three marches, it was reduced to a spencer! My feet never quitted the shoes in which they were placed, from the moment of the retreat until its close. I knew too well their value, and if I once got my feet out of them (no easy matter), I knew right well it would take some days to get them back again, they were so swollen; and even if I were dead, much less crippled, there were many to be found anxious to stand in my shoes—to boot!
There were others, and many others, as badly off as I was. My friend Meade was obliged to leave his shoes behind him. He tried to walk barefooted for a while, but it was impossible. The gravel so lacerated his feet that he could not move, and he was obliged to make some shift to get a pair in place of those he had abandoned. Captain Graham of the 21st Portuguese, a lieutenant in my regiment, was so worn out with fatigue, barebacked and barefooted, that, on one night of the retreat, having been fortunate enough to get a loaf of bread, he joined me and my companion Meade; but, so unable was he to eat of the food he brought to share with us, that he fell down on the ground and never tasted a morsel of it. It is, therefore, tolerably clear to any man possessing common understanding, that the junior officers of the army, from the neglect of their superiors, were not in a state to do more than they did.
The retreat still continued, but the army was unmolested, and at length, after an absence of so many days, we once more got sight of our baggage. The poor animals that carried it were in a bad state; but they were even better than our cavalry or artillery horses. Of the former, three-fourths of the men were dismounted; and the latter could, with difficulty, show three horses, in place of eight, to a gun.
On this night, I think it was the 26th of November (that is to say, four weeks, less by two days, since we left Madrid), I enjoyed what I never expected to see again—a hearty meal. A knot of us got together under a tent belonging to Captain Robert Nickle, whose batman was one of the first to arrive with his baggage, and he kept open house for as many as the tent could accommodate. In the centre was placed a huge pannella of chocolate, which was garnished by a couple of large loaves of Spanish bread. The contents of the pannella, as also the dimensions of the loaves, were soon altered in appearance, and so, indeed, were we. Our stomachs, which before were as lank as half-starved greyhounds, now became plump and full, and, moreover, some fragments were left even after the servants were fed, and abundantly fed.
A dog belonging to Nickle, that had been absent with the baggage, and which had been on as short rations as his master, also got a bellyful, and soon after came into the tent, but his owner was so changed in appearance and dress that the dog did not at first recognise him—which proves the old adage to be correct that “a man is sometimes so changed that his own dog don’t know him.”
The army continued its retrograde movement unassailed, and by the 30th of November was established in its different stations; but here the real effects of the retreat began to be felt. The soldiers, while in action, or in a state of activity, had not time to get ill! So long as the mind and body are occupied, everything, in comparison, goes on well; but after a storm a calm succeeds, and that calm is sometimes as bad, and even worse, than the storm that has preceded it. So it was in the present instance. More than half the men were attacked with some complaint; but fever and dysentery, from overwork and bad treatment, were most prevalent, and the number of bayonets which we counted at the conclusion of the retreat was considerably diminished before we were settled in our winter quarters.
Many men, whose frames were as robust as their minds were ardent, began to sink under the accumulation of the miseries they had endured during the retreat. The continued and unsparing exposure of their bodies under such heavy rains as had fallen, and their being obliged to lie out, without any covering, for so many nights, during so inclement a season, now began to be felt, and made visible ravages amongst our ranks. The oldest and most hardy soldiers, as well as the youngest, sank alike under diseases, and it was heart-breaking to see our ranks thinned, not only of the hardy old stock, but of the promising young suckers also. But so it was! The men died by tens—twenties—thirties—and in the course of a short time every battalion was reduced to the half of its original strength. In less than a month the hospitals were overstocked, and many officers were taken ill. I, for once, was amongst the number on the sick-list. A bad ill-healed wound, which I received in the breast on the night of the storming of Badajoz, now began to revisit me. A high fever was the consequence, but I was at length relieved by the taking away of three pieces from one of my ribs. The reader is not to suppose from this confession that I was a married man at the time this operation was performed; but I had, nevertheless, a “rib,” though not a wife; and as to the “pieces” which I lost, it would be but a useless task to look after them now.
The Sergeant-Majors wife, a fine, fat, well-looking woman, amongst many others, was taken ill, and visited with a bad fever. She was the sister of my man, Dan Carsons, and had kept close with the regiment from the time of its first landing in the Peninsula to the time I am now speaking of. She acted in many a useful capacity towards the officers. She supplied us with wine and bread, and every other comfort she could afford us, and was, in fact, a necessary appendage to the officers, for she was one of the best foragers I ever saw in the 88th regiment; and the army knows—the Peninsular army, I mean—that we had some good ones. But this poor woman lost two fine mules during our retrograde movement, as also the cargoes with which they were laden, amounting to a good round sum, which, at the lowest estimate, I must value to be worth three hundred dollars. This loss affected her. She had left no stone unturned to realise it, and this untoward event brought on a violent fit of illness. The fatigue she had undergone, no doubt, aided the cause of her disorder; but, be this as it may, she became quite delirious. While in her bed she could not be made to understand that the army was not in full retreat. “Where,” she would exclaim, “are my mules?” My man, Dan, was in constant attendance upon his sister, and was, as a matter of course, continually intoxicated! If she got better, he would say that he took a little dhrop “more than usual” for joy; if she relapsed, he did the same “to dhrown grief.” So that, between Dan’s “joy” and Dan’s “grief,” to say nothing of my own helpless state, I was anything but well off.
At length the poor woman became quite insane, but she still looked up to Dan as her sheet-anchor; nevertheless, Dan always paid her that respect which he conceived due to the wife of the Sergeant-Major, and always called her Misthress O‘Neil; she, on the contrary, forgetting the station she held, always called her brother “Dan.” “Och, then,” said she, “Dan, what do the Frinch mane at all—where do they mane to dhrive us to?—an’t my mules gone, and our baggage gone, and still we’re on the rethrate? Haven’t they taken all from us, even our necessaries?—where do they mane to send us to?”—“By gob! Misthress O‘Neil,” replied Dan, with a broad grin, “I think they mane to send us all to pot!”