Our comrades at home, as a last proof of their affection, very magnanimously offered a reward of ten pounds for the recovery of the body, dead or alive; but whether it filled a respectable position in a banquet of that year, or still lives to bother the decayed tooth of some elderly maiden, at Michaelmas next, remains to be solved.
On the 24th of March, 1809, our first battalion received orders to march at midnight for Dover, there to be united with the 43d and 52d regiments, as a light brigade, under Major-General Robert Crawfurd, and to embark next morning to join the army which was then assembling in the Peninsula.
In marching for embarkation in those stirring times, the feeling of the troops partook more of the nature of a ship's crew about to sail on a roving commission, than a land-crab expedition which was likely to prove eternal; for although one did occasionally see some blubber-headed fellow mourning over his severed affections for a day or two, yet a thorough-going one just gave a kiss to his wife, if he had one, and two to his sweetheart, if he had not, and away he went with a song in his mouth.
I now joined the 2d battalion, where we were not permitted to rest long on our oars, for, within a month, we were called upon to join the expedition with which
"The Great Earl of Chatham, and a hundred thousand men,
Sailed over to Holland, and then sailed back again."
As the military operations of that expedition do not entitle them to a place in such an important history as mine is, I shall pass them over, simply remarking that some of our companies fired a few professional shots, and some of our people got professionally shot, while a great many more visited Death by the doctor's road, and almost all who visited him not, got uncommonly well shaken.
South Beeveland ultimately became our head-quarters. It is a fine island, and very fertile, yielding about forty bushels of frogs an acre, and tadpoles enough to fence it with. We were there under the command of General W. Stewart, whose active mind, continually in search of improvement, led him to try (in imitation of some foreign customs) to saddle the backs of the officers with knapsacks, by way of adding to their comfort; for he proved to demonstration that if an officer had a clean shirt in his knapsack on his back, that he might have it to put on at the end of his day's march; whereas, if he had it not on his own back, it might be left too far back to be of use to him when wanted.
This was a fact not to be disputed, but so wedded were we to ancient prejudices that we remained convinced that the shirt actually in wear, with all its additions at the end of an extra day or two, must still weigh less than the knapsack with a shirt in it; and upon those grounds we made a successful kick, and threw them off, not, however, until an experimental field-day had been ordered to establish them. The order required that each officer should parade in a knapsack, or something answering the same purpose, and it was amusing enough to see the expedients resorted to, to evade, without committing a direct breach of it. I remember that my apology for one on that occasion was slinging an empty black oil-skin haversack knapsack-ways, which looked so much like a newly-lanced blister on my back that it made both the vraws and the frogs stare. The attempt was never repeated.
What a singular change did a short residence in that pestiferous place work in the appearance of our army! It was with our regiment as with others; one month saw us embark a thousand men at Deal, in the highest health and spirits, and the next month saw us land, at the same place, with about seven hundred men, carrying to hospital, or staggering under disease.
I cannot shake off that celebrated Walcheren fever without mentioning what may or may not be a peculiarity in it;—that a brother-officer and I experienced a return of it within a day of each other, after a lapse of five years, and again, within a week, after the lapse of the following three years.