Dear George, we little thought at Belem, when hopping about there, I should become a master of that art we were both "gurning" under, or a swimming master, with pupils in Sutledge!
I certainly hurried the rogues over the river a little unceremoniously, and the credit you all give me is not thrown away, I do assure you. I am appointed to a Divisional command, and must leave these hills at rather a bad season of the year, viz. the rainy. Between the alternations of a fiery sun and torrents of rain, some 600 miles, Juana will go, through not staying here as I advised her. I begin to long to get once more to my native land. Mine has been an awful banishment. I do so long to seize by the hand all those old friends who have so adhered to me notwithstanding my absence, and who thus so kindly feel my success and honour their own. If anything could make a man an ass this ought.
Juana sends her love, and you and your good wife I pray accept mine.—Your old friend
Harry Smith.
Our old, dear, and mutual friends, Sirs Kempt, Barnard, and Lord FitzRoy Somerset, have written in most enthusiastic terms. Oh! such a noble son of Lord F.'s was killed close to me.[32] George, the hand of Almighty God has shielded me; all my staff were killed or wounded, and not I, or even a horse of mine, has been touched. I never dismounted, and I never in my life so exposed myself.
APPENDIX II
Medical Certificates
Brussels, 2nd September 1815.
I do hereby certify that Lieutenant Geo. Simmons of the 1st Battalion, 95th Regiment, was dangerously wounded on the 18th of June 1815 in the Battle of Waterloo. A musket-ball entered the right side near the spine, fractured the 9th and 10th ribs, passed through the liver; I extracted it from the breast near the lower end of the sternum.