She was armed with a pair of heavy old-pattern cavalry pistols. From her perch in the tree, which had been carefully prepared before the attack, she had killed more than half a dozen men. Poor Wallace burst into tears, saying: “If I had known it was a woman I would never have harmed her.”
When the roll was called it was found that we had lost nine officers and ninety-nine men. Sir Colin rode up and said: “Fifty-third and Ninety-third, you have bravely done your share of this morning’s work, and Cawnpore is avenged.”
“On revisiting Lucknow many years after this I saw no tablet or grave to mark the spot where so many of the 93rd are buried. It is the old, old story which was said to have been first written on the walls of Badajos:
“When war is rife and danger nigh,
God and the soldier is all the cry;
When war is over and wrongs are righted,
God is forgot and the soldier slighted.”
“After the Secundrabâgh we had to advance on the Shâh Nujeef. As the 24-pounders were being dragged along by our men and Peel’s sailors a poor sailor lad just in front had his leg carried clean off above the knee by a round shot, and although knocked head over heels by the force of the ball, he sat bolt upright on the grass, with the blood spouting from the stump of his limb like water from the hose of a fire-engine, and shouted:
“‘Here goes a shilling a day—a shilling a day! Pitch into them, boys! Remember Cawnpore, 93rd—remember Cawnpore! Go at them, my hearties!’ and then he fell back in a dead faint. He was dead before a doctor could reach him.”
Sir Colin himself was wounded by a bullet after it had passed through the head of a 93rd Grenadier.