52 pages • 1 hour read
C. S. ForesterRifleman Dodd
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1932A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 19-22Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 19 Summary
The Zezere appears impassible. Dodd may have to detour far into the mountains to get across it. First, though, he performs a routine reconnaissance, scrambling down the ravine and following the foaming rapids to reach the road below. The ravine flattens, and Dodd peers above its lip to find that the bridge builders are right below him, pontoons and road planks and cord neatly stacked, a roof under construction above the materials.
All day he observes, memorizing the camp’s layout—boiling cauldrons, piles of timber, a rope-walk—and noting bushes and other landmarks between him and the camp that he will rely on when creeping forward in the dark. That night, under a full moon, he observes a two-person guard, posted mainly to prevent thefts of wood for campfires, and notes how the sentries behave.
The next day, he continues his observations and makes his plan. When night falls, he makes the difficult decision to leave behind his rifle, and, armed only with a tinderbox and a bayonet, creeps toward the bridge factory. At one point, the clouds clear and the moon shines down, and he freezes in place for an hour. Clouds and rain follow, giving him good cover, and he crawls to within 20 yards of the target.
Dodd waits for hours until the right moment, just after the shift change, then sneaks forward and stabs the nearest sentry in the gut, killing him. (The sentry happens to be Private Dubois, Godinot’s last surviving recruit.) Dodd retrieves the sentry’s musket and, acting as if he were the sentry, walks forward in the darkness toward the other sentry and brains him with the butt of the musket, killing him instantly.
With no guards in his way and nearly two hours left before the next shift change, Dodd proceeds with his plan. He finds the rope piles, cuts long pieces, soaks them in a pot of greasy, flammable waterproofing, and casts them among the pontoons and road timber. He pours the rest of the grease where he can, including on the rope piles, then retrieves embers from the cauldron fire with his shako hat and pours them onto the greased ropes. They begin to smolder, and one lights up in flames; he runs with it, lighting the ropes he had tossed among the pontoons and timber. Flames leap up and begin to consume the bridge materials. Dodd runs for his life upriver. French troops pour out of their sleeping huts to find a roaring inferno. Dodd feels greatly cheered—and he never needed to use his tinderbox.
Chapter 20 Summary
(Chapter 20 replays Chapter 19 from the French viewpoint.)
The bridge builders at Zezere notice the distant thrum of a cannon bombardment to the south. It sounds to them like a siege, but from whom, or at whom, they can only guess. Sieges can take months, but the soldiers camped on the Tagus are dying of starvation by the hundreds each day. The men don’t know all of this, but they can sense the despair among their officers.
Bridge assembly continues uneventfully. Rations are lower than ever, there’s no wine to cause drunkenness, and inspections are useless because the men are in rags and their equipment “had been reduced by wear and tear to a nullity” (201). No one dares desert and fall into the hands of the irregulars. Sergeant Godinot, in charge of the guards, finds the duty simple: Watch over the wood to prevent pilferage by thieving soldiers searching for campfire fuel.
As the night progresses—moonlit at first, then cloudy and rainy—Godinot thinks about the mothers back in France who will blame him for the deaths of their children, his recruits. Godinot hopes that Dubois at least will make it through the war. He steps outside for a moment and sees red lights glowing among the bridge materials. The lights flare up and grow. Godinot kicks the guards awake, orders the sleepy drummer to play the Beat to arms, and runs down to the river. He tries to move the burning ropes but they’re too hot. Soldiers hurry down from their tents; Godinot orders everyone to fill buckets and hats with river water to pour onto the inferno.
It’s too late: By dawn, half the pontoons are destroyed, along with most of the rope. As the men stand about glumly, staring at three months of work up in smoke, General Eble arrives and scolds them for not completing his orders: “I sent you orders three hours back that the bridge was to be burnt down to the last stick and the bridging detachment returned to their units. The army retreats to-morrow” (207).
The companies gather the scattered debris, pile it up, and light it into great bonfires. Then the battalions gather their few belongings and begin the long march west to Santarem, where the regiments are gathering. As Godinot’s company, the rear guard, pulls out, he hears ugly talk of desertion: Groups of 20 might make it past hostile Portuguese irregulars to the British lines. He fears that any sharp talk toward them will get him a bayonet in the ribs or a musket ball in the head; instead, he tries to humor and cajole them into staying in ranks.
Godinot’s section suddenly plops down and refuses to move. The sergeant hauls a few of them back on their feet, but a scuffle breaks out. One of the men grabs Godinot’s musket and swings it like a scythe, knocking Godinot off his feet and breaking his leg. The section members run off. Godinot manages to stand; he can only move slowly; he’s alone on the road. The section is never heard from again. Irregulars find Godinot struggling along, hungry and thirsty, and take him prisoner.
Chapter 21 Summary
From his resting spot on the Zezere ravine, Dodd enjoys the spectacle of men scurrying about, trying to put out the fire he started. Soon, though, his pleasure is obscured by a gnawing homesickness for his regiment. The French finish Dodd’s work by immolating the remains of the bridge, packing up, and moving out, and Dodd takes pride in thinking that his efforts might have been the catalyst for a general retreat. Even better, the departing French will no longer block his path to the British lines.
Dodd waits a day and then begins his methodical return toward Santarem, again often on hands and knees. On the way, he finds that the retreating French burned the occupied villages. He notices bodies everywhere, lying bloated or skeletal on the ground or, sometimes, hanging by nooses from trees. None of this bothers him, for war is war and he is eagerly focused on getting back to his regiment. He gets to Santarem, itself a broken ruin, where he meets an advancing line of His Majesty’s Light Dragoons. A lieutenant looks down to at Dodd to see a battered shako atop a mop of hair, blue eyes, and months of beard; beneath are the remains of a shredded uniform. Dodd’s equipment is intact, his rifle in excellent condition, the cartridge belt orderly. The lieutenant, satisfied that Dodd isn’t a deserter, orders a sergeant to escort Dodd to the 95th, positioned two miles away.
The sergeant, who believes Dodd is a deserter, says nothing to him as he rides his horse in a walk and Dodd follows along. Nearby, a fife-and-drum corps plays as red coats and kilted soldiers march down the road. They reach the 95th; the sergeant hands Dodd off directly to Colonel Beckwith. Beckwith, a popular leader who knows every one of his charges by name, interrogates Dodd, who formally reports in. Beckwith recognizes Dodd as a recruit from Shorncliffe: “But you look more like Robinson Crusoe now” (220). Despite his condition, Dodd begs Beckwith to grant him immediate return to his company. Beckwith agrees, stipulating that he’ll have a fresh uniform waiting and that he must get a shave and a haircut. The colonel asks Dodd how he survived. Dodd replies, “Dunno, sir. I managed somehow, sir” (223).
His story comes out in dribs and drabs over the years; in his dotage, Dodd relates much of it to others, but the tale is garbled, and no one other than Dodd ever truly knows the extent of it. For Dodd, it’s of little importance. No awards are given the enlisted men: “There was only honour and duty, and it was hard for a later generation to realize that these abstractions had meant anything to the querulous, bald-headed old boozer who had once been Rifleman Dodd” (223-24).
Chapter 22 Summary
Dodd is repatriated to his section. One wag, seeing Dodd’s dreadful condition, dubs him “the King of the Cannibal Islands” (224). Dodd is merely happy to be back among his mates; to him, it feels like heaven. The regiment moves forward, chasing the retreating French. At camp on the first night, Dodd eats his first decent meal in months. He notices a flickering light in the hills but gives it no thought. He doesn’t know that the light is a fire made by the Portuguese as they burn Sergeant Godinot to death.
Chapters 19-22 Analysis
The final four chapters resolve the fates of the bridge, Dodd, and Godinot.
In Chapter 21, Forester makes plain his contempt for the effects of war, not only in the cruel treatment of the Portuguese by the retreating French battalions, but by the callous attitude of soldiers such as Dodd, who sees war as inevitable and his role in it as straightforward and honorable.
In the chaos of warfare, the best-laid plans of belligerents can go awry. Dodd’s painstaking plan to destroy the bridge comes to a spectacularly successful conclusion, but it’s revealed that the French, only hours earlier, have decided to destroy the bridge anyway and pull out of the region. All of Dodd’s meticulous efforts against the bridge are for nothing. Piling irony on top of irony, Dodd never learns of this. The rifleman finally makes his way to the British lines, where he’s welcomed back by his mates but quickly dubbed “King of the Cannibal Islands” (224). This is a reference to Fiji, where natives killed and ritually consumed European explorers. The implication is that Dodd survives by feeding on the French.
As part of the invading French army, Sergeant Godinot suffers from hunger and other privations; he also must endure the death of every one of his recruits, each one dispatched by Dodd. Godinot the failed braggart represents the futility of France’s overweening ambitions in the Peninsula; Dodd’s killing of every one of Godinot’s men stands in for the relentless and methodical British dismantling of the French ability to wage war.
In an ironic twist, Dodd dines on his first decent meal in months while watching a flickering light on a nearby hill that, unknown to him, issues from the flames of the bonfire that immolates Sergeant Godinot, his chief nemesis. The final irony is that Dodd “did not know there had ever been such a man as Sergeant Godinot” (225).
Both Godinot and Dodd do damage to each other’s cause, but, in the end, their efforts have little effect on the war. This blunts the warm hope that the story might provide a decisive victory for at least one of the two chief adversaries. Instead, the outcome has a quality of empty randomness. Moreover, the fact that one of them dies and the other lives might easily be written off as mere chance. War makes a mockery of planning and purpose; outcomes often ride on moments of blind fate. Of all the plans and undertakings in the story, only two come to fruition: The British starve the French out of Portugal, and Dodd reunites with his regiment.
