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 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
General Lord Wellington and several of his staff ride to the top of a ridge in Portugal, where Wellington notes the puffs of smoke from enemy weapon fire in the valley below. Below him stand a line of Red Coats; further out are green-clad men in sheltered positions. Wellington scribbles a note to one of his generals and passes it to an aide, who gallops away. Wellington turns and gallops back down the trail to inspect his troops across the river; his aides ride hard to keep up.
Below, a lieutenant of the 95th Regiment of Foot—the famous Rifle Brigade—hears a bugle play the signal for “Fire and retire” (4), and climbs the hill, wondering where his picket is. The picket, a sergeant, hurries up from the battle and reports that his men had to scramble to avoid an ambush, and that “Dodd’s missing.” The lieutenant decides that his men can’t wait for Dodd, and they retreat.
Chapter 2 Summary
Cut off from his fellows, Dodd runs through a grove of olive trees, angling around the line of French soldiers, but they see him and give pursuit. Dodd dashes out of the grove and up a hill, a backpack bouncing on his dark-green uniform, pursued by a dozen of the enemy. They follow him up the hill and fire on him, but he is already 100 yards ahead, and their musket balls fall short. His pursuers turn to leave. Halfway up the hill, Dodd plops down, checks his rifle—which has twice the range of a musket—and gets off a round that strikes down one of the French soldiers, who rolls back down the hill. Angered, the French renew their climb, but Dodd gets away.
Chapter 3 Summary
(This chapter retraces Dodd’s escape from the viewpoint of the French.)
A dozen French troops, laden with heavy packs, their uniforms dull and dirty from months of fighting, walk down a narrow road, six days into a two-week march to Lisbon, their next quarry. Sergeant Godinot calls a halt and they rest under some trees. The sergeant regales them with promises of loot up ahead for the taking, and good times when they reach his uncle, a general. A sentry shouts an alarm and fires a shot. He reports a “green Englishman” among nearby olive trees. They chase after the enemy soldier.
The squad emerges from the grove to see the Englishman climbing a hill. A few begin firing, but Godinot stops them. He leads half of them up the hill, giving chase, but the Englishman gets away. They give up and begin to climb back down, but a shot rings out and one of them pitches forward, struck in the neck by a bullet. One soldier tends to the fallen while the rest revive their pursuit up the hill. The Englishman outpaces them, and again they give up.
They return to where the fallen soldier lies, his life bleeding out from his neck. Weakly, he offers his regards to Godinot’s uncle, then dies. It’s the first loss under Godinot’s command. He distributes the dead man’s belongings to the other men. There’s no time to bury him; they must hurry to rejoin their battalion. The body would lie there through the fall and winter, to be picked clean by crows.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
In these first short chapters, Forester establishes the setting—Portugal in the early 1800s during the Peninsular War—and introduces us to the hero and his need to get back to his battalion from behind enemy lines.
Forester was fascinated with the Napoleonic Era, when Napoleon Bonaparte rose through the ranks to lead the French Revolutionary Army, conquered much of Europe, and became an emperor. He conspired with Spain to attack Portugal, but within a year, Spain realized they’d simply opened the door and let a foreign army invade their own country. It took years and a lot of help from Britain to hold France at bay there, and it wasn’t until Napoleon was defeated by a large coalition of European nations in 1814 that Spain finally rid itself of the invaders.
Forester’s most famous novels, the Horatio Hornblower series, follow the adventures of a British naval officer during the Napoleonic Wars. Rifleman Dodd also takes place during this era; aside from the Hornblower series, it’s among the best-known of Forester’s novels.
The novel opens on Wellington observing a battle between his troops and the French. Wellington is a legend among military leaders; he harried the French in Spain and later engineered the final defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. His rapid tactical thinking and swift decisions set the tone of competence, professionalism, and determination among the British troops. Chapter 2, in which Dodd is chased up a hill by a French musket team, is revisited in Chapter 3 from the French squad’s point of view. This begins a process that recurs throughout the novel, the presentation of events as viewed in turn by each side of the conflict.
Dodd’s expertise and cool performance under fire is featured early. Forester makes clear from the outset that danger and death will haunt the story. Dodd is a rifleman, while most soldiers at the time are musketeers. Rifles and muskets had to be loaded and primed before each shot; muskets were easier to reload, but rifles were much more accurate and had double the range. With his weapon, Dodd can kill a man at 200 yards. Today’s rifles will strike a target a mile away, but Dodd’s equipment is state-of-the-art for its time. Today, he’d be considered a sniper commando trained in escape and evasion.
In Chapter 3, Forester writes of the French troops “that these men had been six days on the march from Busaco” (9). The Battle of Busaco happens in late September 1810. Elsewhere, Forester mentions the onset of autumn and the newly completed defenses at Torres Vedras. Dodd’s adventure begins then, early in October 1810; it won’t end until months later, early in 1811, when a warm sun beams down on Dodd’s back with “the certain promise of the coming Spring” (218).
