Rifleman Dodd

Dodd, Bernardino, and the stunted man trek through the rainy night, zigzagging across fields, creeping along ditches, and dodging sentries at villages. They climb down to a berm at the river’s edge, where they can hide during the day. From there they can see, through the rain, the houses and docks of Santarem. Dodd notices red coats across the river; his heart leaps.

A back-and-forth cannonade begins. The British next fire rockets—very inaccurate but highly incendiary—at the town. Dodd reasons that the target is materials to make a bridge. French cannons aim for the rocket battery, while British guns fire at the French cannons. Six cannons roll up on the field just above Dodd’s party and fire a loud flanking cannonade against the British across the river. A French soldier walks to the edge of the field, searching for water for the horses; the trio freeze, hoping he doesn’t see them. The soldier decides to lead his horses down another path to the river.

The rockets do no damage; neither, apparently, do the cannons. Rocket fire ceases, and the nearby cannons stop as well. A while later, the nearby cannons are hauled away. Dodd wants to burn the bridge materials, but he can’t see a way to get past all the French guards. At dusk they give up and sneak back to the stunted man’s hut. Disappointed and cranky about the failed expedition, the men huddle in the leaky hut, tired, wet, and muddy, and sleep.

Bernardino doesn’t understand the importance of Santarem; he wants to return home and fight the French there. The stunted man, grieving his lost father, doesn’t much care either way. Dodd heads out for Santarem; the others follow, Bernardino in a sulk. This time, they observe the town from a spot inland; it’s walled and gated.

Suddenly the gate opens and a long train of horse-driven caissons and other wagons by the dozen emerges and rolls east on the main road. They carry pontoons and other parts of a bridge. The three men hurry to where the forest meets the road near the middle of the passing train and, hiding behind trees, fire a volley at it. Two horses go down; the wagons behind it come to a halt.

Dodd and his team retreat into the forest and reload, then find a different spot from which to shoot. As the rear wagons try to roll past the crippled one, Dodd fires again, bringing down another horse: “two helpless waggons completely blocked the narrow paved road” (144). The trio continues loading and firing for several minutes, doing yet more damage to the train, until the front- and rear-guard units arrive to protect the center.

The trio retreats into the forest; they run toward the head of the train and fire at will on the now-undefended front wagons. Guards hurry forward to fight them, but the trio is long gone and shooting instead at another undefended section of the train. This pattern continues for some time until the Fourth of the 46th is called in from the village up ahead, and another battalion arrives from Santarem. Exhausted but elated, the team pulls back for the day. The damage is done: The train has progressed only three miles. Dodd counts it a victory, and Bernardino, his respect for Dodd refreshed, keeps chuckling at the memory: “It had taken a thousand men in the end to guard those waggons against three enemies” (146).

That night, the stunted man disappears and returns later with horse liver cadged from the crippled train. Liver doesn’t need to be cooked over a telltale fire. The three men dine on the raw meat; they sleep well. Dodd wakes the others two hours before dawn, and they head back to the hills above the village. They arrive to find the bodies of the Portuguese irregulars; Maria lies dead at the secret cave; the village’s other women and girls are missing.

Dodd doesn’t know that Sergeant Godinot, regretting his cowardice during their previous encounter, convinced his superior officers to bring in two battalions that clear the Portuguese from the hills and capture and rape the women. The locals’ caches of food are retrieved as well, but Dodd takes grim satisfaction in reckoning that the found food provides only a mouthful to each of the 1,300 soldiers involved in the sweep. There’s nothing to be done for the dead: The trio must leave the bodies in place, lest French patrols be alerted to their presence. It doesn’t help the rifleman to know that his decision to scout Santarem saved his life.

(Chapter 17 revisits Chapter 16, this time from Godinot’s perspective.)

At Santarem, Godinot works in the pontoon shed; he and Dubois much prefer their new station, where the mills and ovens have been restarted and bread replaces some of the endless corn at meals. A small music band forms and plays during moments of rest; the men enjoy the company of prostitutes and women captured from inland villages. Bridge-building progresses well. Iron railings are refashioned into tools; houses dismantled for their parts sometimes reveal rats: “A roasted rat made a splendid addition to one’s daily ration during the frequent weeks when no meat was issued” (155).

Despite the distraction of bridge building, the soldiers have no idea what’s happening in the war outside the 20 square miles they hold. The bridge will be hard to cross during battle, and success only puts the regiments onto the barren southern plains. They try to hope that the bridge will instead bring reinforcements from the south, perhaps led by Godinot’s uncle, the general. Refashioning bent nails and old wooden studs and wool into a bridge is a frustrating business. Should any part break, the army crossing the bridge might find itself split in two. Bridge anchors, at least, are easy: Big rocks are everywhere in Portugal.

Godinot notices the presence of Portuguese and British forces across the river. Everyone notices them when cannonballs crash down onto the town. Soon the army’s leaders—Marshal Massena, General Eble, and Marshal Ney—arrive to assess the situation. Shortly, cannons pull into the alleyways and begin firing on the British. Accompanied by other cannon downstream, the fusillade forces the smaller British force to cease fire and pull back. However, the English guns return to action the next day, protected by earthworks. The British also fire rockets, but most of them land wildly off course.

Godinot realizes that the British cannons will make casting the bridge across the river “so difficult as almost to be impossible” (162). Still, he develops ways of using the block-and-tackle hoists of the wool warehouses to lift the pontoon boats onto their caissons; for this he receives praise from General Eble.

They set out at five o’clock in the morning with the huge wagon train on the road heading upriver. Rain pours down on the men, many of whom are dressed in rags and leather wrappings for boots. Shots ring out and the wagons halt. Spirits sag as the soldiers realize that not only is the bridge a long shot for success, but that enemy soldiers—they assume at least 50—have infiltrated the district and are wreaking havoc on the train.

Godinot recognizes the sound of one of the attackers’ guns, a rifle, and the sergeant guesses that it belongs to the same Englishman who harassed them in the hills. The Fourth Battalion arrives from their village to help the wagon guards; that evening, Godinot learns from Adjutant Doguereau that the Fourth wiped out the Portuguese up in the hills above the village. Godinot asks after the Englishman; Doguereau replies that no such person was found on the hill. Godinot says the rifleman has been shooting at the wagons from the forest. Doguereau says, “Bah.”

The column struggles up a steep hill and rests, then continues onward the next day past the hills where the Portuguese guerrillas harassed the Fourth, but no shots ring out. Instead, a steep descent makes trouble for the horses as they slip in the rain and stumble through potholes. Wagons roll away, out of control, and crash into other wagons or turn over in ditches. The lack of horses forces men to help haul the wagons across culverts. That night they get one-quarter rations and sleep fitfully in the rain. In the morning, a guard is found with his throat slit.

The column finally arrives at a village, Punhete, on a roaring stream that feeds into the Tagus. Here the bridge will be completed, large portions assembled and launched in the side stream out of sight and range of the British cannons, and floated down to the main river, all in a quick process of surprise.

Dodd’s team sleeps, hidden up in the hills. In the morning, the trio finishes the horse liver. No more food can be found that day, and that night they go to sleep hungry. The stunted man again disappears, to return near dawn with a mule, one-eyed and bony. The men will eat for days.

They lead the mule down a well-concealed canyon near the river, where a campfire can be hidden in mist and rain. The stunted man prepares to slit the mule’s throat, but Dodd notices that the man and his knife are covered in blood and realizes that French soldiers were killed in the taking of the mule. Not wishing to dine on horse flesh flayed in the blood of humans, Dodd gets Bernardino to rinse the knife in the river. Bernardino and the stunted man are amused by Dodd’s daintiness.

The stunted man slashes the mule’s throat and it jerks free of its tie-down and nearly falls into the river. The stunted man throws his arms around its neck; it falls onto the land, blood gushing, and dies. Bernardino prepares a fire while the stunted man butchers the mule; Dodd climbs the ridge and keeps watch. The meat is roasted and Dodd’s men gorge themselves. The stunted man climbs the hill and gestures for Dodd to trade places with him and take his turn at the food. Dodd does so; then he and Bernardino cook the rest of the meat, roasting it dry. By day’s end, 120 pounds of meat form a large pile next to the fire. Sated and exhausted, Bernardino sleeps around the clock.

The next morning, the men load the meat into their packs, “stuffing every available pouch and pocket with it” (179). They set off to the east after the bridge convoy, sneaking slowly past occupied villages. At one point, a sentry spots them and gives the alarm, and they run frantically, dodging squads of French troops. Dodd hears Bernardino fall behind him, but he keeps running: To turn and help means death to both. Dodd outruns his pursuers; heart pumping wildly, he crawls on weak legs to a bush and peers back. To his horror, he sees Bernardino and the stunted man being hung, hoisted up a tree like strange flags.

Dodd forces himself to turn away and continue: “There are many who give up, and many who procrastinate, but there are some who go on” (183). The stress and loneliness take their toll, but Dodd is undeterred. For the next three days, he hears the distant thunder of a cannonade—a siege of some sort—that reminds him of his self-appointed duty to destroy the bridge. After 50 miles of zigzagging across 25 miles of distance, Dodd reaches the Zezere River, the tributary where the bridge will be assembled.