and poor
Uniacke were the two first on the ramparts, Gurwood having been knocked down in the breach
and momentarily stunned, which enabled them to get before him. However, Gurwood's a sharp
fellow, and he cut off in search of the Governor, and brought his sword to the Duke, and
Lord Fitzroy Somerset buckled it on him in the breach. Gurwood made the most of it.
We had many officers of rank wounded. George Napier, of the 52nd, lost an arm; the General
of Brigade, Vandeleur, was wounded in severely in the shoulder; and Colonel Colborne, of the
52nd, received an awful wound, but he never quitted his Regiment until the city was perfectly
ours, and his Regiment all collected. A musket-ball had struck him under the epaulette of his
right shoulder, and broken the head of the bone right off in the socket. To this the attention
of the surgeons was of course directed. Some months after Colborne complained of a pain four
inches below where the ball entered, and suppuration took place, and by surgical treatment the
bone was gradually exposed. The ball, after breaking the arm above, had descended and broken
the arm four inches below, and was firmly embedded in the bone. The pain he suffered in the
extraction of the ball was more even than his iron heart could bear. He used to lay his watch
on the table and allow the surgeons five minutes' exertions at a time, and they were three or
four days before they wrenched the ball from its ossified bed. In three weeks from that day
Colborne was in the Pyrenees, and in command of his Regiment. Of course the shoulder joint
was anchylosed, but he had free use of the arm below the elbow.
After this siege we had a few weeks' holiday, with the exception of shooting some rascals who
had deserted to the enemy. Eleven knelt on one grave at Ituero. It is an awful ceremony, a
military execution. I was Major of Brigade of the day. The Provost-Marshal had not told the
firing off so that a certain number of men should shoot one culprit, and so on, but at his
signal the whole party fired a volley. Some prisoners were fortunate enough to be killed,
others were only wounded, some untouched. I galloped up. An unfortunate Rifleman called to
me by name - he was awfully wounded-" Oh, Mr. Smith, put me out of my misery," and I literally
ordered the firng party, when reloaded, to run up and shoot the poor wretches. It was an awful
scene.
"Blood he had viewed, but then it flowed in combat . ."
Footnotes
Footnote1 - Costello (p.140) tells how, after the taking of Fort San Francisco, many of the French wounded prisoners were stripped naked by the Portuguese Cacadores. One of them, a sergeant, on being marched in, and seeing his officer in the same plight with himself; "ran to embrace him, and, leaning his head on his shoulder, burst into tears over their mutual misery. Captain Smith, the General's aide-de-camp, being present, generously pulled forth his pocket-handkerchief and wrapped it round the sergeant's totally naked person, till further covering could be obtained."
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Footnote 2 - There is an interesting account of this heroic soldier in the United Service Journal for 1837, Part I. p. 354, by J. K. (John Kincaid), written after Johnstone's death at the Cape
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Introduction |
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