The Dangerous Book of Heroes (41 page)

With cameras sending a broadcast back to earth, Aldrin planted the Stars and Stripes and saluted. They went on to deploy an array of scientific equipment, collect forty-eight pounds of rocks, and leave a plaque with these words:
HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH FIRST SET FOOT ON THE MOON JULY
1969
A.D. WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND
. It has two images of earth and the signatures of the astronauts and the president, Richard Nixon. In addition, they left a silicon disk with etched messages from former presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson, as well as Nixon and other world leaders.

In all, they spent just over two and a half hours on the surface before returning to the
Eagle
to rest and prepare for takeoff and docking with the orbiter. Reentry and the splashdown in the Pacific went without a hitch on July 24, and the astronauts were honored around the world.

 

Since that extraordinary event, nine other men have visited the moon. We did not find precious metals or even the remnants of civilization there, as many had hoped, but if there is ever to be a launching pad for further manned exploration, the moon is the obvious choice. We will go back.

Recommended

The Invasion of the Moon 1969: The Story of
Apollo 11 by Peter Ryan

Apollo 11:
The NASA Mission Reports
by Buzz Aldrin and Robert Goodwin, vols. 1 and 2

N
o collection of heroes could be complete without the man known as “the Iron Duke.” There are few for whom becoming prime minister of England is only a small part of their life and honors. Winston Churchill was one of those, Arthur Wellesley certainly another.

He never lost a major battle and is famous as the man who stopped Napoléon on land, as Nelson stopped him at sea. It is no exaggeration to say that without the military talent of this particular man, Britain would not have remained a free nation. Interestingly, the pantheon of British, commonwealth, and empire heroes has as its brightest stars not those who conquered but those who resisted dictators and oppression.

Arthur Wesley (originally “Wesley” until the family adopted the earlier spelling of “Wellesley”) was born in 1769 to a Protestant family in Ireland. In the same year a boy was born in Corsica who would go on to be Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte.

Arthur Wesley's father was the Earl of Mornington and owned land in Ireland, so that young Arthur was born with the title “the Honorable.” Regarding his Irishness, he later said famously that being born in a stable does not make one a horse.

His earliest years were spent in Dublin before his family moved to London. His father died in 1781, and his older brother Richard inherited the title. Arthur attended Eton in the same year. However, his family lacked financial security and he left after only a short time. His mother then moved to Brussels.

In those days, the army was not regarded as a suitable career for noble sons, in part because of its use as a police force at times of national unrest. Even so, Arthur was sent to be trained at the Royal
Academy of Equitation in France. He learned basic French as well as becoming a decent hand at the violin before returning to England in 1786.

His brother wrote to the lord lieutenant of Ireland to secure a commission for Arthur, and he was gazetted as ensign, joining the Seventy-third Highland Regiment of Foot. His brother's support aided his rise, and a year later Arthur Wesley was promoted to lieutenant in the Seventy-sixth Regiment, then transferred to the Forty-first, which was on its way to Ireland.

In Ireland, Wesley also tried his hand at politics for the first time. He spoke well at public meetings and was elected to the Irish House of Commons as MP for Trim. Around the same time, he met Kitty Pakenham, the daughter of the Earl of Longford. However, when he asked formally for her hand in marriage, her family refused. In great distress, Wesley burned his violins and never played again.

With that defeat behind him, Arthur borrowed money from his brother and purchased the ranks of major, then lieutenant colonel, commanding the Thirty-third Regiment. In later years, when men such as Garnet Wolseley were reforming the system that allowed men to purchase commissions, it became generally accepted that the practice had allowed great incompetence and corruption. That may be true, but it also gave us the man who would become the Duke of Wellington.

In 1794, the Thirty-third was sent to Flanders to resist a French invasion. There Wesley was promoted to command a brigade of three battalions and saw his first major military action at Breda in September. He and his men stopped a French column with steady fire from their flintlocks.

In 1795, faced with overwhelming French forces, the army was evacuated in chaos and Wesley saw firsthand the incompetence of senior officers. The experience taught him a great deal and stood him in good stead years later. He suffered with illness caused by damp and a frozen winter and had a good idea of the horror and misery that was a part of the soldier's life.

In 1796, at the age of twenty-seven, Wesley traveled as colonel of
the Thirty-third to India, leaving behind a troubled Ireland that would erupt into violent rebellion just two years later. In the same year, Napoléon married his mistress, Josephine, and took command of the armies of Italy.

The India of that time was experiencing the last great days of John Company before it was taken over by the Crown. The British East India Company was in almost sole control of the subcontinent, and there were still fortunes to be made when Wesley landed at Calcutta in 1797. France, Holland, and Spain had all declared war on Britain, and advancement could be quick for a competent young officer. It could not have hurt that his brother Richard was being sent as governor general of British India. It was his brother who changed the spelling of the family name back to a much older form. Young Arthur accepted the change readily enough and used “Wellesley” first in a letter announcing the arrival of his brother in India. Another brother, Henry, also came as Richard's private secretary.

Arthur Wellesley went with the Thirty-third to Madras in 1798, a harsh sea journey during which fifteen of his men died from fevers brought on by bad water supplies. He joined the staff of General Harris for a time, handing command of the Thirty-third to Major John Shee. By December 1798, Wellesley was in command of a mixed force of British and Indian units intent on battle with the forces of Tipu Sultan, known as “the Tiger of Mysore.” As an open ally of France, Tipu Sultan was seen as a potential threat.

With his men, Wellesley traveled to the sultan's fortress of Seringapatam. Another large force under Harris moved up from the east, while a smaller one marched from the Malabar coast.

On March 10, 1799, Tipu Sultan's cavalry attacked the rear guard. Wellesley led the counterattack and saw them off without major losses. In another attack, the Thirty-third routed the enemy with bayonet charges. Tipu withdrew to the fortress.

Wellseley took part in a night attack on an outlying village, but it was chaotic in the darkness and the Thirty-third was beaten back by Tipu's rocket teams and musket fire. Wellesley was hit in the knee by a spent musket ball, though not seriously wounded. He took the
position easily enough the following day but said later that he had learned “never to attack an enemy who is prepared and strongly posted, and whose posts have not been reconnoitered by daylight.”

Seringapatam fell after British guns made a breach in the walls. Tipu Sultan was killed in the fighting that followed, his body found by Wellesley himself. He returned to his camp, bathed, and slept. Overall command was not his, and he could do nothing while British soldiers looted and gutted the fortress.

The following morning Wellesley was appointed governor of Seringapatam. He strode back in, hanged four soldiers, and flogged many others to suppress the orgy of looting and destruction. He was paid four thousand pounds as prize money for his part and offered to pay his brother Richard back for the loan to purchase a commission. His proud brother refused the offer. Despite recurring sickness, Wellesley completed his duties as governor. He was promoted to major general shortly afterward.

Copyright © 2009 by Graeme Neil Reid

In 1802 he was ordered to battle against the Maratha Confederacy, a number of Hindu principalities united in opposition to British power in India. Arthur Wellesley planned the campaign in great detail, which
was already a habit of his but unusual for the time. In 1803 he took around 15,000 of his own men and 9,000 Indian troops six hundred miles to a Maratha fort. He had decided that a long defensive war was impossible, so moved quickly and boldly. His men took the defended local town in less than an hour.

As one of the Maratha officers said: “The English are a strange people, and their general a wonderful man. They came here in the morning, looked at the Pettah wall, walked over it, killed the garrison and returned to breakfast! What can withstand them?” The fort itself surrendered only days later.

The brilliantly fought battle of Assaye followed on September 23. Wellesley's men were outnumbered seven to one, but he was still intent on quick victory as the only possible plan. Under heavy cannon fire, his army had to cross the Kaitna River, then attack a vastly larger force. He briefed his officers in person once they were across the river, impressing them with his calm demeanor as shot whistled on all sides. The Seventy-eighth Highlanders were the first to meet the Maratha infantry. Wellington had his horse killed under him and calmly mounted another. It was a chaotic scene, and Wellesley's regiments were battered by cavalry as they advanced and eventually routed the enemy. Wellesley lost 1,584 men killed or wounded, while the Marathas lost around 6,000 as well as all their guns. It had been a costly victory, and Wellesley said later that it was “the bloodiest for the numbers that I ever saw.”

Other battles followed, and in December, Wellesley took the key fortress of Gawilghur, a loss that was the final straw for the Maratha forces. They sued for peace, giving up disputed territories and disbanding their men.

Wellesley was made a Knight of the Bath in 1804 and had amassed a personal fortune of some £42,000. He applied for leave to return home in 1805. On the way, his ship stopped briefly at the island of Saint Helena, which would one day be the final prison of Napoléon Bonaparte. In India he had learned his trade, from the need for personal fitness and moderation to the logistical importance of planning a campaign down to the vital supplies of food, water, and ammunition.

In England, an expeditionary force was being prepared to fight against Napoléon. Wellesley was keen to command it and traveled to the Colonial Office on Downing Street to put his case to Lord Castlereagh. In the outer office he waited for a time with an admiral named Horatio Nelson. Wellesley recognized him, but at first Nelson did not know the general fresh from India. When Nelson found out who he was, they talked for some time and Wellington said later that he'd never had a conversation that interested him more. The following day, Nelson joined HMS
Victory
and went out to the battle of Trafalgar and his death.

While Napoléon was winning the battle of Austerlitz, perhaps his greatest victory, Arthur Wellesley was given a brigade at Hastings in England, a long way from the action he desired. There he offered marriage to Kitty Pakenham for a second time. He was no longer a penniless young man without a future, and in November 1805 she agreed to marry him. He also returned to the political debates of the day. He was elected as MP for Rye in 1806 and used his position to support his brother when Richard was accused of wasting public money in India.

Wellesley married Kitty Pakenham in April 1806, though with an extraordinary lack of grace, he muttered to a friend that “she has grown ugly, by Jove!” It was not to be a happy marriage and may have come about in part because of the obligation and challenge he felt after the first proposal was turned down. After a brief honeymoon, he returned to his brigade.

In 1807, Wellesley was given command against the Danes. In what is known as the second battle of Copenhagen, he bombarded the Danish capital until they surrendered. The British aim of securing Danish ships for their own fleet was accomplished. More important, it denied those ships to the Napoleonic fleet. Wellesley was promoted to lieutenant general.

In 1808, he prepared to take command of an army heading to defend allied Portugal. His years there in what would become known as the Peninsular War would secure his fame and Napoléon Bonaparte's eventual downfall.

At that time, Spain had deserted its alliance with France and was using guerrilla tactics against French forces there. Britain was keen to support any European nation willing to fight Napoléon. Wellesley had a small army of around fifteen thousand, and his first action was to march from Mondego Bay on the west coast, to join up with sixteen hundred Portuguese soldiers. He faced two active French armies in Portugal as he pushed on south to Lisbon, the capital.

He reached Óbidos by August 1808 and climbed a church tower to view a French army only miles away. The following day he attacked. The French army under Delaborde was forced into a fighting withdrawal. Though it was not a rout, it was an auspicious beginning, and reinforcements arrived for Wellesley, so that he had around seventeen thousand men.

The battle of Vimeiro followed on August 21. Wellesley's forces met two large French columns. His riflemen engaged them as they approached, killing many before the enemy was close enough for his artillery to fire one round from cannon. The French column then met a British line and was hammered by concentrated musket volleys. The French broke quickly and the rifle regiments ran out again to shoot them as they left the field. Wellesley used the new shrapnel ordnance to great effect against the massed French forces, though he felt his cavalry could have done better, having lost their heads and many lives by galloping wildly after the fleeing French. In all his career, he preferred infantry to cavalrymen, whom he regarded as having very little common sense.

The battle was over by noon, and shortly afterward senior British officers agreed the Convention of Cintra, a French request to evacuate peacefully from Portugal. Wellesley was among those who imposed very generous terms and allowed the French to take even looted supplies with them. It took the rest of the summer to organize and would later be ridiculed at home. He was summoned back to Britain for an inquiry, leaving Sir John Moore in command of the force in Portugal.