Death to the French (aka Rifleman Dodd) (23 page)

He had almost to force himself to take an interest in the scene of ruin which daylight disclosed-the heaps of ashes, the half-burned boats, the exhausted bridging train lying about the ruins of their handiwork in attitudes clearly indicative of despair. His interest revived when later in the day he saw guns and infantry on the move downstream along the distant high road, and when the bridging party pulled themselves together and wearily set about the task of piling together the debris of the bridge and completing the destruction. All this looked uncommonly like the beginnings of a retreat. Then the bridging party began to march away in small detachments, some by the high road, others by the two paths running diagonally inland from the village. The last to leave were a group of mounted officers and orderlies, and when they had gone the banks of the stream were left desolate, with only the great heaps of smoking ashes to mark where had been the farthest limits of the French army.

Certainly these moves indicated a concentration, and a concentration could only mean one of two things-an attack on the Lines or a retreat. Dodd knew far too much about the condition of the French army to consider an attack on the Lines in the least possible. There only remained a retreat-and he can hardly be blamed for believing, with a modest pride, that it was he who had caused the French army to retreat. And a retreat meant that he would soon have his path cleared for rejoining his regiment, and that prospect caused him far more excitement than did the consideration of his achievements. He had to compel himself to remain where he was until next day, and then, with all due precaution, he started back across country- over much the same route as he had previously followed largely on his hands and knees-back towards Santarem. What he saw confirmed him in his theory of an immediate retreat. The French had burned the villages and hamlets in which they had found shelter through the winter, just as the Germans were to do in France one hundred and six years later. They burnt everything, destroyed everything; the smoke of their burnings rose to the sky wherever one looked. In truth, the area which the French had occupied was horrible with its burnt villages and its desolate fields, ruined and overgrown, where not a living creature was to be seen. There were dead ones enough to compensate- dead men and dead animals, some already skeletons, some bloated corpses, with a fair sprinkling of dead men- and women- swinging from trees and gallows here and there.

Yet it was all just a natural result, even if a highly coloured one, of war, and war was a natural state, and so the horrible landscape through which Dodd trudged did not depress him unduly-how could it when he was on the way back to his regiment?

As for the wake of death which Dodd had left behind him- the Frenchmen whose deaths he had caused or planned, the Portuguese who had died in his sight or to his knowledge, from the idiot boy of his first encounter to Bernardino and the stunted man a week ago, all that made no impression at all upon Dodd. Five campaigns had left him indifferent regarding the lives of Portuguese or Frenchmen.

Santarem when Dodd reached it was a mere wreck of a town-only as much remained of it as there remains of a fallen leaf when spring comes round. And just beyond Santarem Dodd met the first English patrol; the English were out of the Lines. Great minds sometimes think alike: the conclusions reached by Marshal the Prince of Essling and General Lord Wellington had been identical. The former had judged that his army was too weak to remain where it was on the very day that the latter had issued orders for his army to sally forth and fall upon the weakened French.

Advance and retreat exactly coincided. The Light Dragoons came pushing up the road on the heels of the French from one direction just when Dodd came down it in the other. The lieutenant in command of the patrol looked at Dodd curiously. 'Who in God's name do you think you are?' he asked. Dodd thrilled at the sound of the English language, yet when he tried to speak he found difficulty; he had spent months now struggling with a foreign language.

'Dodd,' he said at length. 'Rifleman, Ninety Fifth, sir.'

The lieutenant stared down at him; he had seen some strange sights during this war, but none stranger than this.

An incredibly battered and shapeless shako rested precariously on the top of a wild mane of hair; beneath it a homely English face burned to a red-black by continual exposure, and two honest blue English eyes looked out through a bristling tangle of beard all tawny-gold. With the British army Dodd shared the use of a razor with Eccles, his front rank man; with the Portuguese Dodd had never once set eyes on a razor. The green tunic and trousers were torn and frayed so that in many places the skin beneath could be seen, and only fragments of black braid remained, hanging by threads, and there were toes protruding through the shoes. Yet the lieutenant's keen eye could detect nothing important as missing. The rifle in the man's hand looked well cared for, the long sword bayonet was still in its sheath. His equipment seemed intact, with the cartridge pouches on the belt and what must have been the wreck of a greatcoat in its slings on his back. The lieutenant's first inward comment on seeing Dodd had been 'Deserter' -desertion being the plague of a professional army -but deserters do not come smiling up to the nearest patrol, nor do they bring back all their equipment. Besides, men did not desert from the Ninety Fifth. 'Are you trying to rejoin your battalion?' asked the lieutenant.

'Yessir,' said Dodd.

'M'm,' said the lieutenant, and then, slowly making up his mind. 'They're only two miles away, on the upper road. Sergeant Casey!'

'Yes, sir.'

'Take this man up to the Ninety Fifth. Report to Colonel Beckwith.' The sergeant walked his horse forward, and Dodd stood at his side. The lieutenant snapped an order to the rest of the patrol, and he and his men went jingling forward along the main road, leaving Dodd and his escort to take the by-lane up to the other wing of the advance guard.

The sergeant sat back in his saddle well contented, and allowed his horse to amble quietly up the lane, while Dodd strode along beside him. They exchanged no conversation, for the sergeant was more convinced than his officer had been that Dodd was a deserter, while Dodd's heart was far too full for words. The sun was breaking through the clouds, and it bore a genial warmth, the certain promise of the coming Spring. Away to their left a long column of troops was forming up again after a rest; it was the First Division, for the leading brigade were the Guards in their bearskins and scarlet. Dodd saw the drum-major's silver staff raised, he saw the drummers poise their sticks up by their mouths. and he heard the crash of the drums as the sticks fell, 'Br-rr-rrm. Br-rr-rm' went the drums.

Then faintly over the ravaged fields came the squealing of the fifes

Some talk of Alexander,

And some of Hercules,

Of Hector and Lysander,

as the river of scarlet and black and gold came flooding down the lane. Farther off more troops were in movement; a kilted regiment headed a column marching over a low rise of ground. The sun gleamed on the musket barrels, and the plumes fluttered as the long line of kilts swayed in unison. Dodd breathed in the sunshine with open mouth as he looked about him; he was well content. They found the Ninety Fifth on the upper road, just as the lieutenant had said. They were drawn up on the roadside waiting for the word to move, because for once in a way the foremost skirmishing line had been entrusted to the Fifty Second and the Portuguese. Sergeant Casey brought his man up to where Colonel Beckwith with his adjutant and other officers stood at the side of the column, with their horses held by orderlies.

'What's this? What's this?' demanded the colonel. Beckwith, the beloved colonel of the Ninety Fifth, was popularly known as 'Old What's this?' because that was how he prefaced every conversation.

The sergeant told him as much as he knew.

'Very good, sergeant, that'll do,' said Beckwith, and the sergeant saluted and wheeled his horse and trotted back, while Beckwith watched him go. If there was any dirty linen to wash, the Ninety Fifth would not do it in front of strangers.

'Well, who the devil are you?' demanded Beckwith, at last.

'Dodd, sir. Rifleman. Mr. Fotheringham's company.'

'Captain Fotheringham's company,' corrected Beckwith absentmindedly. Apparently there had been some promotion this winter.

The colonel ran his eye up and down Dodd's remarkable uniform. Just as the lieutenant had done, he was taking note of the fact that the man seemed to have done his best to keep his equipment together.

'Dodd,' said Colonel Beckwith to himself. He was one of those officers who know the name and record of every man in the ranks. 'Let me see. Why, yes, Matthew Dodd. I remember you. You enlisted at Shorncliffe. But you look more like Robinson Crusoe now.'

There was a little splutter of mirth at that from the adjutant and the other officers in the background, for the comparison was extraordinarily apt, save in Dodd's eyes, for he had never heard of Robinson Crusoe.

'What happened to you?' asked the colonel. He tried to speak sternly, because the man might be a deserter, as the sergeant had tried to hint, although men did not desert from the Ninety Fifth.

'I was cut off, sir, when we were retreating to the Lines,' said Dodd, still finding it hard to speak. 'Been out here trying to rejoin ever since.' 'Out here?' repeated the colonel, looking round at the desolation all about them. That desolation was in itself a sufficient excuse for the state of the man's uniform. And the man looked at him honestly, and despite himself the colonel could never help softening to the pleasant Sussex burr whenever he heard it.

'Is there anyone who can answer for you?' asked the colonel.

'Dunno, sir. Perhaps Mr.- Captain Fotheringham- sir'

'I can remember when you were reported missing, now you remind me,' said the colonel musingly. 'Matthew Dodd. Nothing on your sheet. Five years enlisted. Vimiero. Corunna. Flushing. Talavera. Busaco.'

The glorious names fell one by one from the colonel's lips, but the colonel was being matter-of-fact: he did not realize what a marvellous opportunity this was to sentimentalize.

'Yes, sir,' said Rifleman Dodd.

'We can't have you back in that state,' said the colonel.

'You'll have to go back to the advanced depot.'

The great wave of relief in Dodd's soul was instantly flattened by the realization that he could not rejoin at once.

'Oh, sir,' said Dodd. It took more courage to protest to the colonel than it did to burn the Frenchmen's bridge.

'Can't I- can't-?'

'You mean you want to fall in now?' asked the colonel.

'Yes, sir. Please, sir.'

'Oh, well, I suppose you can. Report to the quartermaster this evening and tell him I said you were to have another pair of shoes and a coat and trousers to hide your nakedness.

And for God's sake have that hair and beard off by tomorrow morning.'

'Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.'

Dodd was about to salute when the colonel checked him.

'What happened to you all this time?' he asked curiously.

'How did you live? What did you get up to?'

'Dunno, sir. I managed somehow, sir.'

'I suppose you did,' said Beckwith thoughtfully. He realized he would never know any details. There might even be an epic somewhere at the back of all this, but he would never be able to induce these dumb Sussex men to tell it. 'Very well, you can fall in. Join your old company for the present.' The epic would have to wait long before it would be written. It would only be pieced together with much difficulty, from hints in diaries here and there- diaries of French officers and English riflemen. Dodd would never tell it in its entirety. Sometimes little bits of it would come out over the camp fire, on a long evening when the brandy ration had been larger than usual or someone had looted a quart or two of the wine of the country, and would be noted by some of the many diarists to be found in the ranks of the Rifle Brigade. Many years later, when Dodd was a rheumaticky old pensioner, mumbling in approaching senility in the chimney comer, he would tell bits of the tale to the doctor and the Squire's young son, but he never learned to tell a story straight, and the tale of how he altered history- as he thought- was always so broken up among reminiscences of Waterloo and the storming of Badajoz that it was hard to disentangle. Not that it mattered. Not even trifles depended on it, for in those days there were no medals or crosses for the men in the ranks. There was only honour and duty, and it was hard for a later generation to realize that these abstractions had meant anything to the querulous, bald-headed old boozer who had once been Rifleman Dodd.

DODD'S mates greeted him with laughter when they recognized him; he joined his section bashfully enough, at Captain Fotheringham's orders. Rifleman Barret, the company wit, promptly labelled him 'the King of the Cannibal Islands,' a nickname which was much approved. They could afford to jest; they had just spent a winter in comfortable cantonments, and every man was well-fed and properly clad, in startling contrast with the barefooted, naked multitude of living skeletons which Dodd had been harassing. And they were in high spirits too. The Army knew, even if England yet did not, that the tide of the war had turned. All the unembarrassed might of the French Empire had fallen before them, and not merely the French army but the French system- the new terrible style of making war which had overrun Europe for nineteen years- had failed.