A Reluctant Hero

What would you do if you were a soldier, the last in a long line of fighting ancestors who had all distinguished themselves in battle, but you really hated going to war and wanted to give it all up and become a writer? This is the dilemma for Chris Carey, serving in the 43rd Light Infantry under Wellington in the Peninsular War. He’s the reluctant hero of Captain of Foot, the latest volume in the Slightly Foxed Cubs edition of the Carey saga by Ronald Welch.

The book follows Chris’s adventures in the long campaign. He isn’t afraid of the actual fighting, it’s the acute discomfort he dislikes. He ‘never made any secret of his loathing of cold, wet clothes, of uncomfortable bivouacs, of poor food and long marches. But no one seemed to think any the worse of him for that, though he was notorious for his opinions throughout the division.’ In fact Chris is a very good soldier, better than he thinks he is. He starts the novel as a lowly Lieutenant and ends as a Captain, having been noticed by Wellington himself and mentioned in dispatches. Captured by the French, he escapes, falls in with Spanish guerrillas and manages to get back to England, but family pressures send him back to Spain. He dreams of returning to his comfortable family home in Wales. Does he make it? Well, that’s the story. Ronald Welch writes about life in the early nineteenth-century British army with skilful conviction and an astonishing eye for detail. Captain of Foot covers four years of Wellington’s campaign against the French in the Iberian Peninsula, starting in 1808 with the retreat to Corunna and ending with Wellington’s advance on Salamanca in 1812. Everyone knows that Wellington said his soldiers were ‘the scum of the earth’. What people forget is the rest of the sentence: ‘it really is wonderful that we should have made them the fine fellows they are’. Chris Carey’s regiment, the 43rd, was part of the Light Brigade, ‘by common consent, the finest in the army’. These highly trained and disciplined infantrymen, arrayed in long lines two men deep, could fire a volley every ten seconds from their muzzle-loading rifles. Their accuracy and firepower were lethal. Time and again they routed the French columns that outnumbered them and they even stood unbroken against the French cavalry. Wellington depended on their tenacity and skill, and they knew it. Conditions in the army at that time were incredibly dangerous – and not just because of the enemy. The pay was low (and usually late); there were few comforts, and the camps were dirty and flea-ridden. Discipline was harsh, punishments brutal, with flogging an everyday occurrence. Medical care was virtually non-existent and the only way to treat shattered limbs was by amputation. The figures speak for themselves. In 1811, 6,066 British soldiers died in the Peninsula: 2,000 were killed in action – the rest died from disease. Welch is excellent at describing the harshness of the life but he makes it clear that life at home was not much easier. Private Jones of the 43rd may only have tea, biscuit and tough cold meat for breakfast but his daily ration is far more than he would ever have eaten at home in Carmarthenshire. And he is at least being paid – 1s 1d a day, though 3s 6d a week is deducted for food. By contrast, as an officer, Chris has a horse, two mules, vast quantities of baggage, a goat for milk, a greyhound to catch rabbits and a servant to look after it all – but it’s still a very uncomfortable life. Most of the details of the campaign and many of the people in the book are real but seen through the fictional Chris’s eyes. He takes part in the retreat to Corunna with Sir John Moore, and he’s present at the battle of Vimeiro and the crossing of the Côa. He also fights at Busaco, that extraordinary engagement in which the troops were kept hidden from the advancing French until the last moment. Then ‘above the din, the shouts, the crackle of musketry and boom of the drums rose a high-pitched shriek from General Craufurd. “Now, 43rd and 52nd! Avenge the death of Sir John Moore! Charge! Charge!”’ The 43rd were proud to be able to march faster and further than any other unit, even carrying a full pack. On one famous occasion they marched to Talavera, covering 52 miles in 26 hours under the hot Spanish sun. ‘The Light Brigade marched stolidly on to the battlefield. They might have missed the fight, but they had marched their way into history.’ Chris was there too, exhausted and aching but proud to be an infantryman. Welch has grounded his military history in his characters, which is why all the details – the size of the guns, the marching, counter-marching, skirmishes and full-scale battles – are absorbing and comprehensible even to a non-military person like myself. You can almost smell the powder, hear the shouts, the screams and the gunfire. You know Chris, his friends and his men are living dangerously, and you long for them to survive. Chris Carey is only 20 when the book starts, 24 when it ends. Excited as he is by the smoke of battle and the fog of war, he still wants to go home. As a wealthy, well-connected young man, he can afford to buy himself a Captaincy when a post comes free (at a time when no one could rise in the British army without money or patronage) but he’s clearly an excellent soldier – approved by his superiors, liked by his friends and trusted by his men. As his little company faces extinction while defending a crucial bridge he has to push them one more time.

The dark weather-beaten faces turned and he saw a quick smile of greeting from every man there. A sudden warm wave of exhilaration swept over Chris – he knew these men would carry out any orders he might give them; they would stay where they were until not one was alive, if he said so.

It was loyalty – to their mates, to the regiment and to him – that would keep them there. Welch had been a soldier himself and so understood how crucial friendship and trust are in motivating an army; much more important than abstract ideas like duty or patriotism. The people in your regiment are the ones whose judgement matters, the ones you don’t want to let down. The Black Watch by Gregory Burke is an extraordinary modern play about that regiment, written in 2006. It focuses on a group of young Glaswegian squaddies just back from Iraq and their views on war, fighting and civilians who don’t really understand. There’s a scene where a reporter asks how it feels to be fighting for your country and (I’m quoting from memory) is told: ‘You don’t fight for your effing country, you fight for your effing mates; then your effing regiment; and then your effing country.’ It’s always been like that. The language may be different, but you know the 43rd and Chris Carey would have agreed.

Extract from Slightly Foxed Issue 41 © Amanda Theunissen 2014