True Soldier Gentlemen (Napoleonic War 1) (4 page)

I
t was a warm sunny evening on the last day of May, ideal weather for walking through the green fields and rolling hills of Dorset. Half an hour after they started clouds came and soon hid the sun. There was the sweet, almost too sweet, smell of blossom in the air, warning of the rain that began within an hour. It grew steadily heavier. Williams heard Private Tout wonder aloud whether the captain had expected the weather to turn.

‘Do you think he knew?’ asked Private Tout. The company had paused, taken greatcoats off the tops of their packs and put them on. Now they trudged up a long and gentle slope, sweating under the weight of the thick woollen coats over their uniform jackets.

No one replied. Their heads were bowed, at least as far as their leather neck stocks allowed. It meant that they gained some small shelter from the peaks of their shakos.

‘I said, do you think the cap’n knew it would rain?’ They were marching at ease, naturally rather than consciously in step, and allowed to talk. Even so Tout had waited until MacAndrews had gone back to the rear of the column, before insisting on this point to the other men in the front.

‘’Course he did,’ Dobson replied. ‘Went specially to the sergeant major to order it.’ He marched on the left, with Williams between him and Tout. Private Hanks completed the front rank to Tout’s right.

‘Wouldn’t put it past the old bugger,’ muttered Tout.

‘Could be worse. Could be much worse,’ said Dobson. Forty if he was a day, Dobson was the oldest of the handful of veterans in the Grenadier Company, indeed in the entire 106th. In
spite of that he was loping along, looking almost comfortable.

‘Yes, he could have asked for snow,’ said Williams. Dobson snorted, and Tout laughed. Hanks remained impassive, but then he usually did.

A moment later Williams wondered whether even this mild joke at the expense of his commander was inappropriate. A gentleman volunteer served in the ranks, wore an ordinary private’s uniform, did the same duties as the soldiers, but lived with the officers. Such men hoped to be commissioned, but nothing was certain, and it could take years. All the time they were neither fish nor fowl. The men were wary of the volunteers, suspicious that they would not pull their weight and so make more work for them. There was also inevitably a degree of nervousness around a man who might one day have them flogged, and who already was close to the officers. Some men saw them as little more than spies. It was only a little easier with the officers, for the good ones realised that they could not be seen to show any favouritism. The bad ones, and those nervous of their own standing, were apt to show disdain.

Williams had joined the regiment at the start of the year. He was twenty-four, so would be old if he did gain an ensign’s commission, especially compared to infants like Derryck. Yet for as long as he could remember he had wanted to be a soldier. As a boy he had read every story of adventure he could find and every history of war. In his pack, carefully wrapped in oilskin along with his Bible, was a battered translation of Caesar’s
Gallic War
, its spine cracked and with more than a few loose pes. There was something about the great campaigns of the Ancients which still fascinated him, and he read anything he could afford on such subjects. As a child, he had often managed to convince his younger sisters to play at being Alexander and Darius, or Scipio and Hannibal – the girls had especially liked being elephants.

His mother had not been keen. Married at sixteen, she had been left widowed and with four children before she was Hamish’s age now. His father was an engineer, a good one in an age when machines were changing the world and how everything
was made. Then one day there had been an accident at the factory, and the promising young engineer was killed. Hamish could still remember the faces of the men who had come to tell his mother, and that she showed no emotion. Never in his life had he seen her weep.

The factory’s owner gave the widow a pension. It was extremely modest, for he assumed, if he cared at all, that the young woman would marry again and find another man to provide for herself and her offspring. That was not unreasonable, for the golden-haired Frances was undoubtedly pretty, if more than a little stern. There were suitors, as soon as it was decent, and several were handsome and even modestly well off. Mrs Williams was always courteous, but adamant. A few of them persisted for some time, until finally they gave up. Interest faded, and eventually so too did gossip from those jealous of the attention she received. Gradually a grudging acceptance grew that the young widow had no wish to change her status – still less for any liaison of a less formal kind. Any suggestion of the latter prompted a fierce, icy look, and indeed most people came to consider her as an extremely cold woman.

They had lived in Cardiff for a while, where his mother rented a small house and let two spare rooms to respectable guests. There was little new in the furnishings, but the food was ample, if basic, and the entire house was kept spotlessly clean. Laundry was done, clothes mended and other little tasks performed with ruthless efficiency. A few years later the family moved to Bristol, where she began to run a larger establishment of the same sort. In both places many of the guests were mates and sometimes even the masters of merchant vessels. Mrs Williams encouraged no familiarity, but she enjoyed listening to the men talk of distant shores and storm-swept seas. For quite a few the house became their only real home – a somewhat austere home, but a home none the less. There was no question of deep affection between the landlady and her staff or guests, but all knew where they were with Mrs Williams.

Hamish had to admit his own feelings were similar. His mother’s
approval was never lightly given and he cherished those rare occasions when he had been granted it. Sometimes he was proud of her, especially when she put on her bonnet, best dress and gloves and took the children to church, singing Mr Wesley’s hymns in her beautiful voice. Those were the only times he felt she showed passion. To him she was beautiful, but distant – a queen to be feared and obeyed, but loved only in the way a country was loved.

She had hoped to raise him for a doctor. His grandfather had been a physician – a very good one according to his mother. Dr Campbell had also been a poor one, because she said he would treat anyone whether or not they could pay. Yet the schooling needed for that was expensive – far too expensive for a widow to afford – and so Mrs Williams had set her ambitions lower. Her son and three daughters had all been taught to read and write. In time the girls also learned to sew and to cut material, and along with their mother they brought money into the house by doing work for people apart from the guests. Hamish had been kept in school until he was sixteen, and then, scorning mere appreniceships, his mother’s persistence had secured him a post as junior clerk in the office of a shipping corporation.

It was dull work, with lists of cargoes and delivery dates, of ships and their provisioning, of harbour fees and pilots’ fees, of sailors and their pay and allowances paid to families during a voyage, and always of timber, ropes, sailcloth and the myriad of supplies needed to keep vessels at sea. Hamish had felt his youth was slowly drowning under the weight of lists. Every day was the same, with the same petty rivalries and little jokes among the half-dozen leathery old men who worked in the office. Yet he was good at his job, temporary employment became permanent, and slowly, painfully slowly, his wages rose. The money helped the family, for as his sisters grew older his mother was intent that they should be dressed properly, and be able to attend decent functions in the hope of finding good, respectable husbands.

Until he was twenty-one Hamish stayed in the office and dreamed of adventure and glory. Then one day he told his mother than he was resolved to be a soldier, and would enlist as soon
as he could. He was not sure what he had expected. Not rage certainly, for his mother never showed so much emotion. There was disappointment, but no surprise, and he had readily agreed to the condition that he must wait until a suitable place could be found for him.

Frances Williams had set about the task of securing an officer’s commission for her son with all of her usual determination and perseverance. In his youth Dr Campbell had been an assistant surgeon with a regiment, so she wrote letters to its present colonel, and to a pair of officers who had served at the same time and were now elderly and obscure generals. There was no response. In any case her choice would have been a Highland regiment, so she wrote to the colonels of these. Hamish’s father may have been a garrulous Welshman, but as far as his mother was concerned he was a Scot, and better than that, a Campbell. The commander of the 91st Foot replied with a polite letter explaining that there were no vacancies for ensigns at present, and unlikely to be for some time. The 93rd did not respond at all.

Undaunted, she dispatched more letters to general after general, any whose address she could find, humbly (and that was something which did not come naturally to Mrs Williams) requesting a place for her son, a young gentleman of good education and sober character. It took years until finally a letter had arrived from Major General Sir Augustus Lepper, colonel of the 106th Foot, ‘The Glamorganshire Regiment’, informing Mrs Williams that although he could not offer her son a commission at this time, he would be glad to accept him in the regiment as a volunteer. It was less than she had hoped for, but that was something so familiar from her life. Mrs Williams showed no emotion when her son ‘went for a soldier’. She had agreed and that was that. He promised to write and to send them what money he could and she simply nodded, and let him kiss her on the cheek. His sisters provided tears and embraces enough to add drama to the scene, but when he thought back it was only his mother, standing straight and stern, that he remembered.

Williams joined the 106th at the beginning of 1808. A few
weeks later another gentleman volunteer arrived and was sent to a different company, and Hamish did not come to know Mr Forde at all well, but the latter seemed to adapt more readily to the new life. For the army was not quite what Williams’ dreams had made it. The routine was dull, with day after day of drill. Unlike the officers who had their servants, he was expected to care for his own uniform, equipment and musket. He learned to polish his boots, the pair identical with no left and right. Veterans like Dobson changed them to the oppos foot at the end of each week to spread the wear. He learned the mysteries of pipe-clay, which whitened his cross-belts, and how to polish the brass buttons on his tunic and gaiters without dirtying the material around them.