FAMOUS FEATS OF THE "FIGHTING FIFTH."

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 4, Issue 24, 26 March 1915, Page 3 (Supplement)

FAMOUS FEATS OF THE "FIGHTING FIFTH."

SOME DEEDS WHICH WON THEM

THEIR NICKNAME

(from Sheffield "Weekly Telegraph.")

In the long story of British fighting you will find no chapters more bloodstirring than those which recount the exploits of the Northumberland Fusiliers, known to fame as the "Fighting Fifth," and by a dozen other nicknames eloquent of their valour. Ever since "Dutch William" gave the regiment its baptismal blessing, nearly two and a half centuries ago, there have been few British battlefields on which the Northumberlands have not taken the lion's share of the fighting, and acquitted themselves like lions.

When the regiment had seen but two years of its long life it covered itself with glorv at the siege of Maestricht <in 1676),' when acourle of hundred of its stalwarts stormed the Dauphin bastion with such reckless bravery that only half a hundred of them came back, repulsed but undaunted. So furious, indeed, were they at their failure that, with cries of rage, they returned to the assault, swept the enemy from their stronghold and captured it. As the gallant handful stood, flushed and triumphant on the bastion, a mine exploded under their feet, and blew haJ their number into eternity. A regiment capable of such heroism as this was assured of a brilliant maturity; and how nobly the Fifth has fulfilled the promise of its infancy a hundred battlefields have proved, from Wilhelmsthal and Vimiera to Modder River; but never more gloriously than in the historic siege of Ciudad Rodrjio, the swiftest and most brilliant in th& Peninsular War.

ALMOST IMPREGNABLE. "Wellington's army of 30,000 men (of whom only 10,000 were British), wasted by sickness, ragged and starving, found its entrance to Spain blocked by the armies of Soult and Marmont, •67,000 strong; and it was at this moment, with all the odds against him, that he conceived the daring plan of leaping on the great frontier fortress of Ciudad Rodrigo, a stronghold considered almost imnregnable. For ten days the unequal artillery duel raged, Wellington's thirty light pieces thundering impotentJy against the half hundred heavy guns of the besieged; and at the end of this long cannonading, when the British cannon were almost worn out, only two breaches had been made in the massive walls of the fortress. Wellington's condition had become desperate, for Marmont's army was now within four marches of him"; and in his terrible predicament he issued his famous order "Ciudad Rodrigo must be stormed this evening"— an order as seemingly impossible of execution as anv ever issued by a general. The greater "of the two breaches was a gap in the wall at its northern angle, about thirty yards wide. The slope which led to it was covered with bags of powder, bombs and hand-grenades; beneath it was a great mine; and a <leep ditch crowded with riflemen yawned between the breach and the adjoining ramparts. A tseven o'clock, the hour fixed for the assault, city and trenches were wrapped in dense darkness and silence —a darkness that was soon to hurst into terrible flame, a silence that ominously heralded one of the fiercest storms in the history of war. At the signal, a thunderous shout broke from the Brittrenches;. it grew and spread from end to end of their long lines; and from the darkness rushed the broad wave of stormers, the gallant Fifth, racing first neck and neck with the men of the 77th and 94th Regimentsthen, leading the way.

FIRST IN. So impetuous were the Northumbrians that, scorning to wait for the ladders, they leaped like one man into the ditch, poured through it and up the breachslope. At that moment every gun on the ramparts flashed into flame and drove its furrows with shot and shell through the red-coated ranks of the stormers. Beneath their feet, as they climbed over the rough stones, the pow-der-bags and bombs exploded, filling the air with scattered limbs and strewing the slope with shattered bodies. But nothing could stay for a second the onward rush of the gallant Fifth and their brave fellows. Staggering onward and upward, over fire and in the hot blast of flame, they fell with fierce cries on the Frenchmen, driving them into their entrenchments wich voileys of lead and thrust of bayonet. Here, supported by a heavy fire from houses commanding the breach, the Frenchmen made a gallant stand. "None," "says Napier, "would go back on either side, and yet the British could not get forward; and men and officers in heaps choked up the passage, which from minute to minute was raked with grape from the two guns flanking the top of the breach at the distance of a few yards. Thus, striving and trampling alike upon the dead and the woundcdT these brave men maintained the combat." At this critical moment a sergeant and two privates flung away their firelocks, and with their bayonets attacked the gunnei.,, iriiu were playing such havoc with the stormers. Forcing themselves through the embrasures, they fell 0!: them with such violence that they jiihv them almost I a man, and thus effectually silenced the guns. A few moment.'" later the men of the Fifth the battery; and being attacked behind by the 43rd, which had broken into the town in another direction, "the Frenchmen were put to flight, und Ciudad Itodrigo was won. An equally thrilling chapter in the history of the "Fighting Fifth" is that which tells the story of their heroism in the attack on Badajos one April night in 1812 —''a night of horrors, of which," Napier says, "posterity can scarcely be expected to credit the tal(!." Wellington had "jumped witli both feet" on one of the two great border fortresses, Ciudad Rodrigo; be now determined to capture the second, Uadajos, a still harder task—-for Badajos, a stronglyfortified city, standing on a rocky ridge and protected by rivers on two sides, was held by a garrison of 5,000 men under the redoubtable General Phillipson a soldier with a rare genius for dffence. No sic:o in hisiery ever witnessed more furious valour in the assault than this, which cost the besiegers 5.000 men in twenty days of tho fisreest righting.

GIRDLED WITH FIRE. For nrarlv three- wcpU.s tho sicw had fasted: airain and ncrain the British troops had horn hurled hark from tlio wn ]1q willi rrvriblr I.v<p?: in one assault on flir Pirnrinn Fort. 300 mrn. out of .100. and 10 officers were killed or wounded. On (he nicht of Anril 6th Wrilin.flon determined to attack the town at no fewer than seven points n! the same time: and it was honed thai tlic ctrcn-'tl' of Mir encmv would quickly shrivel v i* l ' l '! M-at nor ?' ccirdlo. ' The nii'hl was Mark as F.ml„is. and an omino'i-- «ilenre lay on the ramparts '.. f1,,. Tlii'rtl Division ocean their straltliv riw.vr to tho attack of t),o Pas]\c wl"it. arrim walls rosr heyond the T- ti ]|., u p:-or: hut. as they mndo their favorer II"? narrow bridge whirh cross-

Ed the river every rampart burst into angry flame, and a gale of bullets began to rage around them. The Rivillaa crossed, Picton had just reformed his men when a lighted carcass flung from the Castle revealed them plainly to the enemy, and compelled them to attack at once. In an instant hell itself seemed to bo let loose on them. To quote the description of one of them, "it seemed as if all the stars, planets, and meteors of the firmament, with innumerable moons emitting smaller ones in their course, were descending on our heads." It was through this inferno of fire and destruction that tho stormers, led by the Fighting Fifth, rushed forward to the assault, and reared their heavy ladders, some against the lofty Castle," some against the adjoining front on the left. "With incredible courage," says Napier, "they ascended amid showers of heavy stones, logs of wood, and bursting shells hurled from the parapet, while from the flanks musketry was olied with fearful rapidity. In front, the leading assailants were stabbed with pike and bayonet, and the ladders pushed from the walls: and all this was attended with deafening shouts, the crash of breaking ladders, and the shrieks of crushed soldiers answering to the sullen stroke of the falling weights." Fast as the ladders were hurled back, they were raised again and again, the men swarming round them and fighting to be the first to scale them, to death; until of all the ladders only two remained unbroken, while the ground beneath the Castle wall was heaped high with dead and dying. For a few moments the survivors fell back a few paces to recover breath and strength under the rugged edge of the hill. There the ranks were re-formed, amid the taunting cries of the besieged. Infuriated by the enemy's jeers, Colonel Ridge sprang forward, seized one of the ladders and raised it against the lowest point of tho wall; a gallant Grenadier, called Canch, reared the other by its side, and the two heroic men raced swiftly up the ladders, followed closely by the redcoated swarm below. A GALLANT ASSAULT.

The moment Caneh's head appearel above the rampart he was shot dead, but not for one second was the upward rush stayed. The thin stream of desperate men poured ceaselessly upward through the deluge of lead and lightning thrusts of steel; they leaped into the Castle and, with the fury of a tornado, swe7>t the garrison before them through the double gate into the town. The Castle was won; but the price paid for victory was terrible. Of the " Fighting Fifth'' one man out of every two was struck down; but no man died more gallant than their Colonel, Ridge, who fell shot through the heart at the very moment that victory was assured. "No man," Napier says, "died that night with more glory—yet many died, and there was much glory." While the Third Division was thus covering itself with deathless fame, the fourth and light divisions were flinging themselves against the breaches in the bastions of Santa Maria and Trinidad. No sooner had the leapers leaped into the ditch than the mine beneath their feet exploded with a roar of thunder, dashing five hundred men to pieces in one fieive explosion. Their fellows halted Vor an instant on the brink; then, with a shout that almost matched that of the explosion, they flung themselves into the smoking ditch and swarmed up to the breach amid the roaring of guns, the bursting of shells, and a pandemonium of cries. But across the top glittered a range of sword-blades, fixed in ponderous beams, and in front of this terrible chevaux de frise, the slope was covered with loose planks studded with iron spikes. Again and again the assailants surged up the steep; again and again they were swept hack by the furious blasts of bullets which strewed the ground thick with their dead. For two terrible hours, during which 2,000 men fell, the British flung themselves impotently against that awful barrier of steel and'flame, unable to carry the breach, refusing to retreat; and it was only when the defenders heard behind them the tramp of the fast-approaching Fifth. Division, which had broken into the town at the opposite end, and struck In panic fled, that the gap of death was at last broken through, and Badajos was won. Well mav Napier say, "Who shall do justice to the bravery of our soldiers on this day of heroes? Who shall measure out the j'.lorv of Ridge and many another who perished on the breach at the head of the stormers? . . . ■ When the havoc of the night was told to Wellington, the pride of conquest sunk into a passionate burst of grief for his gallant soldiers."