War, with Wind

If it wasn't a tornado that came through the campground, it was close enough. I watched the roof of our dome tent try to spin off counter-clockwise.

Giant royal pavilions down, telephone-pole supports snapped. Tents half-burnt when lanterns fell. The wind roared down the mountain side, flamed the fires. The following downpour put out the fires. People yelled for help or asked who needed help.

Then ... the drums. One, two, half a dozen, the familiar deep rhythm from the far side of the field.

We sighed in relief. If Rolling Thunder was drumming, then all was right with the world.

Argh. Three questions:

1. Am I nuts if I email an existing regiment of the British Army to find out the exact dates one of their ancestor regiments served in the Peninsular Wars? IOW, is that a stupidly frivolous thing to ask people who are presumably busy being a 21st century armored unit?

2. If I am nuts, where the hell am I supposed to find someone who can find me a cavalry regiment that was in the right places at the right times?

3. If I can't find such a regiment, is it kosher to make up a cavalry regiment when I'm using a real infantry regiment?

Further searching, with swearing at Google here and there, revealed that the Light Dragoons let you make historical inquiries from their homepage. I just sent them a nice note asking if any of their antecedent regiments were in the right place in the right time for the story, and promising a donation to their charitable trust if they help me and a mention on my acknowledgements page.

What I did NOT tell them was that I'm proposing to saddle one of their regiments with a pompous misogynist who dies offscreen in the first chapter so that his widow can learn the joys of hot NCO infantryman lovin'. But I can always apologize in the acknowledgements and say I'm sure the real officers were all much nicer.....

What I did NOT tell them was that I'm proposing to saddle one of their regiments with a pompous misogynist who dies offscreen in the first chapter so that his widow can learn the joys of hot NCO infantryman lovin'.

spits coffee all over keyboard

Seriously though, I have to think that the regiment archivist, historian, or what-have-you is probably going to be delighted to receive your enquiry. You may end up receiving lots of interesting tid-bits that you can use in the novel.

ita, that's gorgeous.

What I did NOT tell them was that I'm proposing to saddle one of their regiments with a pompous misogynist who dies offscreen in the first chapter so that his widow can learn the joys of hot NCO infantryman lovin'.

Like Anne, my morning beverage is now on the keyboard. Hopefully tea is easier to clean up. I want to actually say "hot NCO infantryman lovin'" to someone today.

Susan, what Anne W. said.

Susan, not nuts at all. I spent an hor on the phone with a verger at a parish in East London, as he obligingly read me snippets of the chuch records from shortly after the Great Plague; I was researching how plague victims were buried (wrapped in gauze and buried shallow, a REALY bad idea).

Research is never frivolous. But if you can ask the specific regiment specific questions, it's a help.

OK, I think I've solved my problem. Not entirely happy with the outcome, but I think it'll work:

Those of you who followed a question I posted on Natter and Bitches about what might make a 19th century woman logically conclude she was infertile may remember I moved Lucy from 1810 to 1809 to make the 1811-12 setting of Anna be two years after Anna's marriage to Lucy's cavalry officer cousin Sebastian. At the start of Lucy, Sebastian is away from his regiment recuperating a leg wound that's left him temporarily unable to sit a horse. When I moved the setting to 1809, I thought it would work perfectly to have him wounded on the retreat to Corunna, since all the troops involved were evacuated back to England anyway, returning (so I thought) a few months later. All I'd have to do is make him not well enough to rejoin his regiment right away.

Except I remembered after already starting my rewrite that I really needed to do due diligence and make sure the regiment I'd picked for him was more or less where I needed it throughout both books and the two years in between. That's when I discovered that, best as I could piece together from brief online regimental histories and lists of battle honours, the cavalry regiments that were at Corunna, unlike the infantry, didn't return to the Peninsula until 1812 or 1813. Cue writerly angst. I didn't want to make Sebastian an infantry officer, though I could if I had to. And I really didn't want to invent a fictional regiment, because it just seems kinda sloppy to put Jack in a real one and not do the same for Sebastian.

So. After squinting at the list of battle honours for awhile, I noticed the 16th Light Dragoons were absolutely everywhere I needed them to be BUT Corunna. Poking around Google eventually revealed they arrived on the Peninsula in April 1809 and stayed for the duration. Problem is, Lucy opens in May 1809. My current idea is that Sebastian sustained some kind of accident (broken leg?) or illness around February March 1809 that left him in no shape to depart with the rest of his regiment. It changes him from "romantic wounded veteran" to "prickly and somewhat embarrassed at being absent from his unit at such a time," but I think my plot will still work. Right?

Actually, considering Sebastian's personality, I think it works even better. Let go the reins and tossed off his horse, perhaps, in front of superior officers, with a cracked tibia, or something?

Hmm. I don't want Sebastian to actually be an incompetent rider or anything, but I'm also not sure I want to give him a straightforward good rider fall like I gave James in the first chapter by having Ghost get spooked (pun intended) and refuse a fence. Maybe there's a new horse who's a bit of a brute, and Sebastian thinks he can be the one to tame him and gets thrown in the process?