Through all the campaign, Captain Wauchope, with the E Company of the 42nd, had bravely borne his share of the toil and dangers of the situation. At Tel-el-Kebir, he was among the first to enter the enemy's trenches sword in hand. The encounter was a fierce one while it lasted, and it was a marvel how he escaped injury in such a mêlée. But though the impetuosity of the charge bore down all before it, when the fight was over, it was found that no less than 200 of his men had fallen.
After Tel-el-Kebir
Wauchope's first care was to see that the wounded were attended to, for his interest in his men was ever uppermost in his mind. He liked to treat them as brothers as well as subordinates, sharing with them the roughest work and the greatest dangers; and now particularly, when many of them were bruised and bleeding, he had all a woman's sympathy, and did his best to alleviate their sufferings. He went carefully over the ground after the battle, searching out from among the dead such of his men who might be alive, relieving some with a draught of water from his bottle, and seeing that they were removed to shelter, where they could be surgically attended to; in some cases, tenderly helping to carry them himself off the field. Such scenes always filled him with sadness, as they did the heart of Wellington, who was wont to say: 'Take my word for it, if you had seen but one day of war, you would pray to Almighty God that you might never see such a thing again.' The horrors of war make most brave natures shudder.
Immediately after the capture of Arabi's camp at Tel-el-Kebir, at the next halting-stage in the army's progress to Cairo, the 42nd was marched into the square of a cavalry barracks to wait for a train being made to enable them to follow the retreating enemy to Zagazig—an important railway junction on the way. They were in very rough quarters, but were glad to get any sort of shelter from the scorching sun. One of the staff-sergeants, wearied out and oppressed with heat, stumbled into a room which, unknown to him, happened to be occupied by Captain Wauchope and his subordinate officer, Lieutenant Duff. 'As I attempted to withdraw—for I had entered not knowing they were there'—said the sergeant, describing the occurrence, 'Captain Wauchope at once called out in a kindly voice, "Come in, Pinkney, come in and sit down, you have as much right to be here as we have."'
But though this was so, Pinkney, who was not one of his men, did not fare so well on another occasion when his presence stood in the way of the convenience of the men of his company, Captain Wauchope having then no hesitation in leaving him to shift for himself. We give the story in the sergeant's own words:—'Shortly after this, we were marched down to the railway and literally packed into trucks. I being a staff-sergeant, and in a sense "nobody's child," crawled into one marked E. It was Wauchope's, and as all his men could not find room, I was ignominiously ordered out by the same gallant gentleman! We were very good friends, but as I did not belong to his company, he could not allow me to interfere with their comfort!'
Sergeant Pinkney also relates an incident of the same day illustrating Wauchope's thoughts on the inhumanity of war. 'We were all sitting together on the mud floor of the room where we were sheltering, discussing the events of the morning. "Andy," as we all loved to call our captain, had not, for a wonder, been wounded, but a Remington bullet through the scabbard of his sword had bent it nearly double, so that he could not return the weapon. Another bullet through his helmet had disarranged the pugaree and heckle, of which he was so proud. He drew my attention as armourer to the condition of his scabbard, and I took it into my hand and broke it across my knee, so that he could sheath his sword, though some eight inches of the blood-stained blade were exposed. While I was next adjusting his pugaree, he suddenly exclaimed, "I say, Duff, what brutes we men are." We were silent for a minute, and then seeing our surprised look, as we stopped our work, he continued, "Do you know, I felt this morning just as if I was on the moors, and for a while I was quite as anxious to make a good bag; man, Duff, we are terrible brutes, after all!"'
Niddrie Marischal, Back View
The same day Wauchope's regiment proceeded to within a few miles of Zagazig, reaching that place in the morning of the 14th September. Here they seized the railway stock, and went on to Belbeis, an important junction on the edge of the desert. There they remained under the utmost discomfort, without tents and without equipage, until the 23rd September, when they moved forward to Ghezireh, near to Cairo, and were again quartered with the Highland Brigade, under Lieut.-General Sir E. Hamley.