Rifleman Dodd

Dodd is a private in the 95th Regiment of Foot—the famed Rifle Brigade—who becomes trapped behind enemy lines during a late-1810 engagement between French and British forces involved in the lengthy Peninsular War in Spain and Portugal. A five-year veteran of many engagements, Dodd is a sharpshooter trained in the use of the rifle, a weapon much more accurate and powerful than a musket. His job isn’t to fire across a field at a line of enemy soldiers but to scout, stalk, and harass them. Tall and burly, and something of a cross between a modern-day sniper and commando, Dodd has the skills—and, most importantly, the can-do attitude—needed to find his way back to his regiment.

Among the first to encounter the trapped Rifleman Dodd, French Sergeant Godinot and his small detachment also are the first to suffer a loss from Dodd’s marksmanship. Godinot is a bit of a braggart but he cares about his men, many of whom are friends he convinced to enlist, and he takes his duties seriously. Godinot endures the same hunger and misery as his fellow soldiers and suffers the loss of every one of his recruits to the lethal ministrations of Dodd. The sergeant shows occasional streaks of cowardice; these might be forgiven by circumstance, except that his opponent is the fearless and ruthlessly diligent Dodd, who presses his opponents mercilessly. Flawed as a leader, Godinot suffers a mutiny by his men and becomes easy prey for Portuguese partisans.

Teenage Bernardino is tasked with helping Dodd find his way across the country to Lisbon. He initially believes Dodd’s insistence on finding the Tejo river is imprudent, but he later understands Dodd’s focus and comes to admire the Englishman’s skill, determination, and leadership. Energetic but inexperienced, Bernardino often must be pulled back from foolish actions. Alternately inspired and moody, Bernardino symbolizes the naive enthusiasm of recruits as contrasted with the methodical expertise of grizzled veterans like Dodd.

While traveling to Santarem, Dodd and Bernardino encounter in a forest “a stunted little man, with a knife at his belt and a musket in his hand” (129), who lives in a makeshift hut at the base of a giant tree. He has the listless personality of someone who has seen too much tragedy—his father’s death and the destruction of much of Portugal tear at him—but he proves a dogged and proficient member of Dodd’s informal team. Mostly silent and slow moving, the stunted man sums up the Portuguese attitude of resignation and quiet determination in the face of an immense enemy.

The boy is “clothed in fantastic garments, fantastically ragged, half breeches, half trousers” and walks “with a wreathing, dancing step” (21). Dodd refers to the boy as “the idiot,” but the boy proves to be courageous and helpful. It’s likely his caretakers have been killed in the war—on meeting Dodd, the boy shows him the house of two elderly people, murdered by the French, who might well have been the boy’s guardians—and his behavior symbolizes the extreme emotional trauma suffered by a society whose culture has been torn to ribbons by a marauding army.

Older and wiser than most of the Portuguese who fight in the hills against the French, Maria finds the best hiding place for their meager food supplies and resists the men’s calls for increased rations “with a resolute ‘Nao, nao’ whose nasal tones seemed to voice all her contempt for the masculine half of humanity” (120). Maria dies defending the hideaway against French troops. Dodd admires her and is angered by her death and the wholesale killing of her village compatriots.

The leader of the Portuguese irregulars and guerrilla fighters, Capitao Mor—“Great Leader,” a rank just below provincial governor—receives Dodd at his mountain hideout and commissions young Bernardino as the rifleman’s guide on a trek to Lisbon. Capitao Mor is a reminder that the Portuguese aren’t prostrate before the French, and that the people and their government find ways to organize, even if only informally, against the invaders.