Narrative of a Private Soldier in His Majesty's 92d Regiment of Foot

by George Billany

Shortly after the action of the 10th, a number of troops arrived from England, along with the Duke of York, who took the chief command of the army. A large body of Russian troops also joined us, which increased our number to about thirty-five thousand. And on the 19th September the whole moved forward to attack the enemy. Sir Ralph Abercrombie, with about eight or ten thousand men, of which our brigade was a part, marched the preceding night past the right flank of the enemy, and took the town of Hoorn by surprise. We were now a good way in the rear of the enemy's right, and it was intended that the Duke of York, with the main body of the army, should dislodge the enemy from his positions, and that we should then attack them on their flank and rear, and cut off their retreat.

The Duke was successful at the outset of the action, but the Russians under his command falling into disorder, the enemy rallied upon them, repulsed them, and took a great number of them prisoners, which compelled the Duke to retreat. We heard the firing of the cannon while we lay on our arms, waiting for orders to move, but, when word was brought that the Duke of York had been driven back, we retired the same way that we came, and were not engaged in this action. We began now to say that we were a lucky regiment; various expressions were used by the soldiers, when speaking of our good luck, (as it was called) some of them very foolish, which I do not mention. Some said, that there were too many old women in Scotland, praying for their children and friends, to allow us to be exposed to great danger. I began to reflect seriously upon our past preservation, and the bad improvement that we were making of it; and the thought made me tremble: I thought, "It may be, that God has been more favourable to us than to others, on account of the prayers of godly relatives at home; but his kindness has a claim upon our gratitude, and if it does not produce gratitude from us to him, he may be provoked to punish us severely, and make his punishment in proportion to his past kindness; and the longer that he bears with us, the stroke may be the heavier when it comes; and although we have as yet escaped more than other regiments, in the next battle it may be, that for hardening ourselves in sin, and flattering ourselves with security, on account of the prayers of godly relatives, we may suffer more severely than any others:"—and my fears were not groundless.

The sand-hills which run along the sea coast from Helder, terminated a little in the rear of Patten, where our right was posted, and commenced again about three miles farther south, in our front. An embankment of sand fills up this breach, and prevents the sea from flowing over the flat country. Tufts of strong straw are set in the sand in regular rows, like plants in a garden, the whole breadth and length of the embankment. The tops of the tufts rise upwards of a foot above the surface of the sand, and the sand that is washed up by the tide or blown by the wind, lodges about their roots, and as the tufts are regularly renewed, they not only preserve this bank of light sand from diminishing, but also increase its size and solidity. The left of the enemy's army was posted at the commencement of the sand-hills. It was determined that Sir Ralph Abercrombie, with a division of British troops, should attack the enemy posted there, while the Duke of York, with the other division of the army, should attack their positions in the flat country. We left our cantonments before one o'clock of the morning of the 2d October, and assembled before day-break on the beach in front of the enemy's lines. At day-break we began to drive in their outposts; and continued to advance along the sea-side, while another part of the army advanced along the inland side of the sand-hills, with a line of communication across them. The breadth of the beach along which we advanced was various: (the attack had been several days delayed, on account of stormy weather, which drove the sea so far upon the beach, as to leave no passage betwixt the sand-hills and the water:) it admitted sometimes of two or three companies to march abreast, and sometimes scarcely of one. We had four pieces of cannon in front, which fired upon the enemy, who retired along the beach as we advanced. I passed close by a man who had been struck with a cannon ball upon the knee joint; the ball had carried away the joint, and left a ligament of skin on each side of it, which held the leg suspended to the thigh. A little farther, I passed near a man who lay stretched upon his back, dead;—his eyes and countenance had something in them peculiarly dreadful; yet he appeared to be only shot through the thigh with a musket ball:—but it was the centre of it, and it had proved instantly mortal. I was so struck with this man's ghastly appearance, that I thought with myself, "Were I a poet, I would choose, as my subject, the horrors of war, that I might persuade mankind not to engage in it."—As we continued to advance, the sand-hills increased in breadth, which required additional troops to fill up the line of communication across them; we who remained upon the beach, saw nothing that was doing in the interior of the sand-hills; and as the firing there was only musketry, the roar of the sea upon the beach prevented us from hearing it, except when it was close to us. We had frequent and long pauses, waiting for the movement of others. There was a great deal of bloodshed in the interior of the sand-hills, by the continued skirmishing, and detached attacks upon particular points.—These sand-hills were admirably adapted for this mode of warfare; the enemy would have been much more easily driven out of trenches;—for the sand-hills were the same as a succession of trenches, so that when the enemy saw our troops advancing, they continued to fire upon us until they saw that we were just near enough to allow them time safely to retire to the next range of hills. The sand-hills are not much unlike snow blown into wreaths, by a strong wind: they are various in their heights and shapes; some being conical and steep, and others running in winding ridges; and the sand is so light, as to be carried about with the wind. It is extremely difficult to walk amongst it, being like dry snow, a little hard on the surface, which when once broken, is almost impassable: here and there, there are chasms, and hollow flats of various extents among them.

Towards the afternoon we drew near a place called Egmont, a small fishing town among the sand-hills, near to where the battle of Camperdown was fought. Here the enemy had drawn a number of fishing sloops and schuyts upon the beach, in two lines, leaving intervals between them, for their troops to pass. These formed a cover to their columns from our shot, and concealed their cavalry from our view. During the action they had received a reinforcement, which they pushed along the sand-hills close to the beach. The line across these, owing to their increased breadth, now occupied all the regiments of our division but ourselves. The enemy began to press hard upon the troops that were near us, and so posted themselves as to annoy us who were standing upon the beach; we were a considerable time exposed to this, and had a number both of officers and men wounded, amongst which was Lord Huntly, our Colonel, and a son of Sir Ralph Abercrombie, who was at that time an ensign in the regiment. A situation of this kind is the most irksome for a soldier to be in; for when actively engaged, the fury and bustle of action, to a considerable degree, banishes the dread of danger from the mind.

During the march along the beach, and the frequent pauses we made, my mind had time for serious reflection; I was alive to a sense of present danger; and having no well grounded hope for eternity should death be the issue, was led to pray earnestly to God for mercy. While standing exposed to the fire of the enemy, and the balls whistling over us and amongst us, my former sins came into my mind, with all my broken vows and resolutions; my past ingratitude stared me in the face, and made me tremble, but a sense of present danger made me pray earnestly for mercy to pardon my sins, and to preserve my life; I confessed that I did not deserve what I sought, but I cast myself on the mercy of God, and with increasing fortitude, as I thought, resolved once more to forsake every sin, and live only to him.—The enemy having increased in numbers, the troops in the sand-hills next to the beach began to give way. Four companies detached from our regiment, with Sir John Moore at their head, went to reinforce them; but they were also soon overpowered; and Sir John was wounded in three parts of the body, and with difficulty escaped being taken prisoner; the remaining six companies were then ordered to form in three divisions, and march forward along the beach, and then to wheel to our left, and charge the enemy. I was in the front division. We marched forward, and passed a number of the enemy's troops, and came to a place where there was a more than ordinary opening, and the sand rose pretty high, in the form of a semicircle; into this opening we wheeled, and were instantly exposed to a fire upon both our flanks and front. This staggered us, and we began to fire upon the enemy, in place of pushing instantly forward to that part of the height that was on our right, driving the enemy from it, and taking up a position there, from which we could have done them more harm, and not have been so much exposed ourselves. We continued to stand still and fire for a few seconds, and then began to move forward, firing as we advanced; the other two divisions had wheeled into various openings in the sand-hills in our rear, at the same time that we did. They were strongly opposed by the enemy, who were very superior in number; but hearing the firing of our division in their rear, the enemy who opposed them began to retreat into the interior of the sand-hills; those who opposed us did the same, and we continued to pursue them; but the action soon became on both sides quite irregular; for the sand-hills separated us into parties, so that the one party frequently did not see what the other was doing, and, in some instances, parties of our troops came suddenly upon parties of the enemy. In one instance, one of our parties having climbed to the top of a sand ridge, found that a party of the enemy was just beneath, and instantly rushed down the ridge upon them; but the side of the ridge was so steep and soft, that the effort to keep themselves from falling prevented them from making regular use of their arms. They were involuntarily precipitated amongst the enemy, and the bottom of the ridge was so narrow, and the footing on all sides so soft, that neither party were able, for want of room, to make use of the bayonet; but they struck at each other with the butts of their firelocks, and some individuals were fighting with their fists.—For three quarters of an hour we maintained a furious action, and drove the enemy to a considerable distance; but so many had been killed, and wounded, and scattered, that the officers could no longer collect any great number into one body. We then began to retreat: the enemy turned upon us, and we lost a number of men by their fire during the retreat. Our previous advance had exhausted our bodily strength, and we were much in want of water. I was very thirsty, and began to grow very weak. In the course of the retreat we came to a pretty steep rise of sand. I felt myself unable to go over it in a straight line, so had to make a circuit, to get over it where it was lower; although it was almost a matter of life and death with me, for a party of the enemy was close behind us. As I was making this circuit, a party, I think in number about six or seven, fired at me all at once; (I was their only object;) and I distinctly observed several balls strike the sand ridge, both before and behind me, about breast high. I really believe that had I been a span-breadth farther forward or backwards from the spot where I at the moment was, there would have been several balls through my body. Before any more fired at me, I got over the ridge, which then secured me; and I joined the regiment, which was near, and had taken up a position in the interior of the sand-hills; and some fresh troops arriving, the enemy was repulsed.

I no doubt had many hair-breadth escapes during the action, of which I was insensible; but the one I have mentioned, appeared to me as a wonderful mercy of Providence, and I looked upon it as laying me under an additional obligation to devote my whole life to the service of God. If I was bound to serve him, because he was my Creator, I was now doubly bound to serve him, for my wonderful preservation; and I thought that the ties by which I was now bound, would undoubtedly have this effect. I thought I should never indulge in any thing that was sinful; but I was still blind to my own weakness; I had thought the same thing, and had promised accordingly, in prayer to God, at the outset of the action; yet the action was scarcely begun, before I joined my comrades in furious, opprobrious, and profane language against the enemy. Many sins were thus unobserved by me, and did not affect my conscience at the time.

During the time that we were engaged in the interior of the sand-hills, the enemy, seeing no infantry on the beach to protect our guns, sent out his cavalry, from their covert at Egmont, to seize them. Our cavalry had gone into the chasms of the sand-hills, that were next the beach, a little in the rear, to shelter themselves from the fire of the enemy's cannon. They formed upon the beach, and sprang forward to meet the enemy, who had, by this time, reached the guns. They charged the enemy briskly, and drove them back with considerable loss, and pursued them close to Egmont. But, what is something singular, the infantry parties of French and British, that were on the sand-hills next the beach, suspended, as it were by mutual consent, their firing, to become spectators of the cavalry, and did not commence again until the contest of the cavalry was decided.

The firing ceased sometime before sunset; I was much in want of water, and went along with another to search for it. We found it at last, in the hollow of the opening of the sand-hills, into which we had wheeled when we left the beach and engaged the enemy. There had been a good deal of rain some days before: and the trampling of our feet upon the surface of the sand had brought water to it, which being observed by some who came to the place afterwards, they dug a small hole in the sand, and put into it the sides of an empty broken ammunition box, which served for cradling; and the hole was soon filled with good water. A number more of such kind of wells were presently made, and plenty of water got, which supplied both horse and foot. We filled our canteens; and then went to look among the dead and wounded, for a comrade, of whom we could get no certain account. The spectacle of the dead, the dying, and the wounded, greatly affected me. The dead were lying stiff on the ground, in various postures; but death had so altered their countenances, that of all that I saw, belonging to the regiment, with many of whom I had been familiar, I knew only two; and it was by peculiar marks, such as death could not alter, that we distinguished even them. The groaning of the wounded was very afflicting; for they were mostly bad cases, all that were able to walk or crawl having removed farther to the rear; and all the assistance that could be given to those who were unable to move, was to carry them from the spot where they were lying, to a place of greater shelter. This had been in part already done, and the wounded were lying in groupes, in the best sheltered hollows adjacent to the beach. The universal cry of these poor men was for water. I supplied them as far as I was able, both enemies and friends, and amongst the rest one of our own officers, who was most severely wounded. I had to hold him up and put the canteen to his mouth, for he was unable to help himself; he died during the night. We did not find the object of our search; but we got afterwards certain account of his having been wounded, and probable accounts of his death; and we never heard more of him.

I returned to join the regiment, ruminating on the affecting sight I had seen, and grieved for the loss of comrades and acquaintances. When the regiment was mustered in the evening, about one half were amissing; but about thirty joined in a day or two after, who had lost the regiment. We were upwards of 600 strong; and our loss in killed, wounded and prisoners (of whom there were 40), was 288. The company to which I belonged, entered the field with 59 rank and file, and three serjeants, out of which 5 were killed on the field, and 24 were wounded, 5 of whom died in a few days, and three shortly after. Of the rest, few recovered, so as to be fit for service. The regiment had suffered this severe loss in about three quarters of an hour. There was a universal gloom upon every countenance, when we looked to the smallness of our number, when we were mustered; and there was no one, but what had lost comrades and associates, and some had lost relatives. After it was dark, we planted our picquets, and the remainder of us lay down among the sand. I reflected upon my own escape—upon the great number who had already been launched into eternity, and others whom I had seen groaning under the pain of wounds, which would soon prove mortal to many of them. I thanked God for his kindness to me, and promised to keep his commandments in future.

We lay three days among the sand hills: the weather was cold; the nights stormy and wet.—We were waiting for the movements of the other divisions of the army, in the interior of the country. The day after the battle, we buried such of our dead as were adjacent to us. One man belonging to the company I was in, was found dead, without any mark of violence on his body. He was lying on the ascent of a sand-ridge, and had fallen on the retreat. We conjectured, that fatigue and want of water had occasioned his death. I was informed of another singular case: A Frenchman and a Highlander had charged upon each other; the Frenchman had parried the thrust of the Highlander, and run him through the body; the Highlander had then let go his hold of the butt end of his piece with his right hand, and seized, with a death-grasp, the throat of the Frenchman; who, to extricate himself, had also let go the hold which he had of his firelock with his right hand, and seized the wrist of the Highlander, to pull it away from his throat; but he had been unable:—the Frenchman had then staggered backwards, and had fallen on his back; and the Highlander above him, still retaining hold of his throat; and, in the struggle that had then taken place, the head of the Highlander had projected so far over the head of the Frenchman, as to bring that part of the body of the former in which the bayonet was, over the mouth of the latter; and in this posture both had expired. Those who saw it, said, the sight was truly shocking. The Frenchman was fairly strangled; his eyes were out of their sockets; his tongue was greatly swelled, and thrust far out of his mouth, into which the blood from the wound of the Highlander was running. Each still held a firm hold of his firelock with his left hand; and when the Highlander was removed from the Frenchman, and laid along-side of him, he still kept such a firm grasp of his throat, that he raised the body of the Frenchman from the ground, and it was with difficulty it was extricated from the hold.