"Thirty-two, sir," I replied.
"What trade have you been of?" he inquired.
"A shoemaker," I replied.
"Where have you been?" he said.
"In Denmark, Spain, Portugal, and Walcheren," I said, "in which latter place I met the worst enemy of all."
"Never mind that," he said, "you'll do yet; and we will send you to a Veteran Battalion."
Accordingly I was appointed to the 8th Veteran Battalion, with others, and sent to Fort Cumberland. Here I joined Captain Creswell's company—an officer who had lost one eye, whilst in the 36th Regiment, in Spain.
I was again the only green jacket of the lot, and the officers assembled round me during the first muster, and asked me numerous questions about my service amongst the Rifles, for we had a great reputation in the army at this time. Major Caldwell commanded the battalion; he had been in the fifth, and received a grievous wound in the head. He was a kind and soldier-like man, but if you put him out of temper, you would soon find out that he felt his wound. Captain Picard was there, too, and Captain Flaherty, and Lieutenant Moorhead; all of them were more or less shattered, whilst their men, although most of them were young, were very good specimens of war's stern service. One, perhaps, had a tale to tell of Salamanca, where he lost an eye, another spoke of the breach at Badajoz, where he got six balls at once in his body. Many paraded with sticks in their hands, and altogether it was something of a different sort of force to the active chaps I had been in the habit of serving amongst. In fact, I much regretted my green jacket, and grieved at being obliged to part with it for the red coat of the Veterans.
I remained in the Veterans only four months, as, at the expiration of that time, Napoleon was sent to Elba. We were then marched to Chelsea, to be disbanded, where we met thousands of soldiers lining, the streets, and lounging about before the different public-houses, with every description of wound and casualty incident to modern warfare. There hobbled the maimed light-infantry man, the heavy dragoon, the hussar, the artilleryman, the fusileer, and specimens from every regiment in the service. The Irishman, shouting and brandishing his crutch; the English soldier, reeling with drink; and the Scot, with grave and melancholy visage, sitting on the steps of the public-house amongst the crowd, listening to the skirl of his comrades' pipes, and thinking of the blue hills of his native land. Such were Chelsea and Pimlico in 1814.