The Shadow of Great Britain

737: Chapter 354: Police Intelligence Department Ghost Squadron 737: Chapter 354: Police Intelligence Department Ghost Squadron “Report!”

“Come in.”

London, Westminster, Greater London Police Department, Office of the Director of the Police Intelligence Department.

Arthur looked at the man sitting upright in the chair before him, a scar still evident at the corner of his eye, which induced a sense of inexplicable kinship due to the identical location of their wounds.

For senior officers at Scotland Yard, past military service was not an unusual occurrence.

The officer sitting opposite Arthur also had retired from the Army, but unlike those who had retreated to the ranks of the Guard Cavalry or the Grenadier Guards, his presence at Scotland Yard was extremely inconspicuous.

Even…

His old regiment was looked down upon by some officers at Scotland Yard, despite their illustrious record of battle honors.

The 95th Royal Rifle Regiment, a unit founded in 1800, was also the first regiment in the British Army to be equipped with the Baker rifle.

They had participated as naval infantry in General Horatio Nelson’s Copenhagen expedition, helping the Royal Navy annihilate all Danish naval forces.

During the Peninsular War, at the most difficult time for the British Army when Duke Wellington was summoned home for an inquiry, the 95th Royal Rifle Regiment was used by the new Commander, Sir John Moore, as a rearguard to cover the main army’s retreat to Corunna.

At that time, Marshal Ney ordered the Light Cavalry Brigade of his Sixth Army to chase the retreating British forces, and the soldiers of the 95th Royal Rifle Regiment, clad in their Green Jackets and acting as rearguard, responded with a dense crossfire network.

Not only did they manage to repel the pursuing French cavalry, but sharpshooter Thomas Plunkett also succeeded in killing the French cavalry commander General Auguste de Colbert at a distance of 300 yards.

What’s more dramatic was that in order to prove his shot was not fluke, he immediately followed up by felling the French bugler who went to General Colbert’s aid—another shot to the head.

Both shots being headshots was enough to prove Plunkett’s prowess.

Perhaps for modern snipers, landing two headshots at 300 yards would be considered the basics.

But in the 19th century, limited by the technology of the time, the requirement for a qualified soldier in most countries was simply this: under good weapon and weather conditions, being able to hit a target within 70 yards, with exceptional marksmen expected to hit at 100 yards.

If a soldier could hit a target at 150 yards, it indicated that he must be very devout to God, for only then would he have such good fortune in battle.

And if there was a soldier firing at 200 yards…

According to the general opinion among the generals of various nations, such behavior was almost no different from shooting at the moon.

Because of the poor precision of firearms, nations widely adopted the tactic of forming three ranks of soldiers to compensate for the lack of accuracy with dense volleys of fire; they pursued rate of fire and the courage and discipline of the soldiers to stand fast amid a hail of bullets more than precision.

The 95th Royal Rifle Regiment, formed in Yorkshire and nicknamed ‘Green Jackets,’ was precisely a unit that went against the grain—a rarity that rarely formed line formations but instead preferred to disperse and occupy advantageous terrain for ambush.

In other countries, such a unit would certainly not be favored.

Fortunately, their combat habits were very much to the taste of Wellington, adept at defensive battles.

In the Battle of Waterloo, the 95th Royal Rifle Regiment participated in the battles that erupted at Quatre Bras and La Haye Sainte, and after sustaining losses of 35 officers and 482 soldiers, they successfully completed their defensive mission.

After the Battle of Waterloo, Duke Wellington, in order to commend their achievements, officially changed the 95th Royal Rifle Regiment’s designation to the Rifle Brigade of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

Yet despite their distinguished battle record and the esteem of Duke Wellington, they were never well received by the Army’s other sibling regiments.

For other regiments, standing in line to face the enemy, engaging in a forthright and direct confrontation was the romance of a soldier; hiding in pits on mountain tops sniping was seen as the underhand tactic of lowlifes.

The Battle of Fontenoy in 1745, a conflict between Britain and France, is the best proof of such thinking.

Before the battle began, Sir Charles Hay, the British commander, expressed courteously to the French commander, the Count of Anteroches: “Gentlemen of France, please fire the first shot.”

The Count of Anteroches responded just as gentlemanly: “We French never do such things; you British gentlemen should fire first.”

Thus, both armies spent half an hour on whom should shoot first.

Eventually, the British couldn’t stand the French enthusiasm and accepted the enemy’s gentlemanly invitation, firing the first shot.

The French gentlemen’s reply to the British bullets was that about five hundred of their men fell in formation.

However, this did not affect the outcome of the Battle of Fontenoy, as the French gentlemen still won the battle.

And the British reporters, having learnt of the event, wrote somberly in the newspapers – both militarily and spiritually, the French had soundly defeated Britain.

With such a classic example as the Battle of Fontenoy preceding them, it’s no wonder that the 95th Royal Rifle Regiment had a tarnished reputation.

Not only did they have to endure the enemy’s gunfire, but they were also ‘covered’ by their own ‘fire.’

The Army internally mocked their mode of combat; honorable people do not approach the enemy slinking through the trees in green jackets like hunters, taking precise shots to hunt down the enemy.

The 95th Royal Rifle Regiment was a unit that could survive only on the battlefield, a dirty unit lacking formal combat consciousness, one with battle honors but no honor.