Chapter 17 - Hastings, February 1806

Chapter 17

Hastings, February 1806

As the long winter months dragged on Arthur was determined to make the most of his small command, billeted in the quiet coastal town of Hastings. The men of the brigade had become used to the relative inactivity of winter quarters and were surprised and not a little unenthusiastic when their new major-general gave orders that they should be roused for drilling and exercise every morning. Come rain, snow or hail, the men of each battalion assembled at dawn and were put through their paces under Arthur’s keen eye as he rode over the fields that had been chosen for exercise grounds. His experience in India had proved to him the need to keep his men fit and healthy through regular exercise. They might well curse him for it, but when the time came for them to endure long marches and hard battles while on campaign they would cope more easily, even if they never thanked him for it.

He was aware that some of the men grumbled that there was little point in training since the government seemed adept at sending British soldiers to join campaigns just in time for them to be sent home again. Arthur sympathised with their frustration, but that was no reason to relent on regular drill and the maintenance of uniforms and equipment to the highest standards. He recalled an expression he had once heard that an army’s drills should be bloodless battles, and its battles bloody drills.

Arthur smiled at the thought one morning in late February, when he rode out to find one of his battalions formed up on frozen ground. A thick frost coated the surrounding trees and hedges with gleaming white against a backdrop of a pale grey sky.This morning the men had been joined by a commissariat wagon loaded with boxes of cartridges and Arthur gave orders for each man to be issued with twenty rounds. He was well aware that the penny-pinching officials of the War Office frowned upon live fire practices since the cost of the powder and balls discharged was considerable. But Arthur well knew that men who were familiar with the din of firing and the rolling clouds of stinking smoke on the training ground were far less likely to be perturbed by musket fire when it happened on the battlefield.

The prospect of live fire practice lifted the mood as the battalion went on to form column a half-mile from a long low hedge that bordered a little-used turnpike.When the men were ready the order was given to advance on the hedge and the column rippled forward. As the front rank closed to within a hundred paces of the hedge Arthur abruptly reined in his horse and bellowed, ‘Form line!’