The following will prove that while there is life there is hope:—At the siege of Gibraltar by the French and Spanish, during one of the attacks, a shell came through one of the embrasures and killed a number of the 73rd (the present 71st), and wounded others of the same corps. The case of one of the wounded was desperate, and it will serve to enforce the maxim that, even in the most dangerous cases, we should not despair of recovery whilst life remains. Pte. Pat Murphy was knocked down by the wind of the shell, which, instantly bursting, killed and wounded all around, and mangled him in a most dreadful manner. His head was terribly fractured, his left arm broken in two places, one of his legs shattered, the skin and muscles torn off part of his right hand, the middle finger broken to pieces, and his whole body most severely bruised and marked with gunpowder. He presented so horrid an object to the Surgeons that they had not the smallest hope of saving his life, and were at a loss what part to attend to first. He was that evening trepanned, a few days afterwards his leg was amputated, and other wounds and fractures dressed. Being possessed of a most excellent constitution, nature performed wonders in his favour, and in eleven weeks his cure was completely effected, and he long continued to enjoy a pension of nine-pence per diem. These were the good old days.
W. Masters, Esq., who died in March, 1799, was a Colonel under the Duke of Cumberland, and in one of the engagements was shot through the lungs by a musket ball, which entirely cured him of a violent asthma. The Duke used to say, when any of his friends laboured under that disorder, that they must get shot through the lungs, like Masters.
Samuel Evans, a private in the 2nd Foot, was carried off amongst the wounded at Corunna. He arrived in England, and died in the Military Hospital, Plymouth, on the 30th January, 1809. On a post mortem examination being made, it was discovered that he had been shot through the heart, and yet had survived for sixteen days. His heart is preserved to this day in the museum of the above-named hospital. Some soldiers are as tough as old leather.
Sir Charles Napier’s life is one justifying Lord Byron’s remark, that truth is stranger than fiction. In infancy he was snatched, when at the last stage of starvation, from a vile nurse. When a boy, attempting a dangerous leap, he tore the flesh from his leg in a frightful manner. A few years later he fractured the other leg. At the battle of Corunna he received five terrible wounds, and, but for the aid of a generous French drummer, would have been killed. He was made a prisoner, and, his fate being long unknown, was mourned as dead by his family. In the battle of Busaco a bullet struck his face and lodged behind the ear, splintering the jaw bone; yet, with this dreadful hurt, he made his way, under a fierce sun, to Lisbon, more than 100 miles. Returning from France after the battle of Waterloo, the ship in which he was, sunk off Flushing, and he only saved himself by swimming to a pile, on which he clung until a boat carried him off, half drowned. He escaped cholera, and a second shipwreck, off the Indus. At Kurrachee, 13th September, 1842, he was observing the practice of a rocket battery, when one of the missiles burst, rocket and shell together, and tore the calf of his right leg open to the bone. The wound was at once stitched up, and in a short time he was able to set firmly on horse back, and then conducted a dangerous war to a glorious termination. This gentleman was the brother of the late Lieut.-General Sir William Napier, the author of “The Peninsular War.”
Perhaps one of the most singular wounds, ever received without causing immediate death was the following:—Lieutenant French, of the 38th Foot, on the 18th June, 1855, at the attack on the Redan, received a gunshot wound in the upper portion of the left shoulder, which penetrated the chest, and resulted in compression of the left lung, and the removal of the heart from the left to the right side. He recovered, but his left arm was powerless, and his general health very delicate. He died on the 9th Dec., 1857.
Major Sir Thomas Troubridge, Bart., of the 7th Royal Fusiliers, while commanding a battery at the battle of Inkermann, 5th November, 1854, was desperately wounded by a 42-pounder, and would not allow himself to be removed, but remained at his post doing all he could to animate his Fusiliers to acts of valour. Both his feet were carried away. The same shot did a lot of damage. It carried away the calf of Captain Owen’s leg, and knocked over four or five men. After the action was over, Sir T. Troubridge was attended to, one of his feet was amputated, also the other leg just below the knee. This gallant old Fusilier recovered, and strangers would scarcely know that he had been so severely wounded. I was close to him when he fell. He died a few years ago, Assistant Quartermaster-General to the British Army, Clothing Department. He had two cork feet made, and could walk well with the aid of a stick. Capt. Owen, of the 33rd, died from the effects of his wound, having suffered severely for many years, the wound never having healed.
The following remarkable wound was received by a private of the 14th Regiment during the siege of Sebastopol:—On the morning of the 25th July, 1855, Private Francis O’Brien, a lad of eighteen years, was brought from the trenches, with a wound from a musket ball in the right temple. Surgeon De Lisle attended the case; the ball entered two inches above the orbit, passed downwards and drove out a large portion of the spina-orbital ridge, which appeared to be embedded in the upper eyelid, and was cut down upon by the medical officer in the trenches, in mistake for the ball, which it certainly very much resembled. As no ball could be found, it was supposed to have passed out at the opening of entrance. The finger, when passed into the wound, could feel the pulsation of the brain, yet from that day to the present, or for years after, no symptoms of cerebral disturbance appeared, unless it be that since his convalescence, the muscles of the face work convulsively when he feels faint and weak, from remaining too long in an erect posture. About a month after admission to Hospital the detached portion of the bone above the orbit was removed from the eyelid, though with considerable difficulty, and on the following morning the ball fell from the wound, much to the poor lad’s horror, for he thought his eye had dropped out. Both wounds have now been healed, but he is unable to raise the right eyelid; the eye is perfect, but apparently without power of vision, though sensible to the light, for on turning the wounded side to the light the left pupil contracts. His general health is good.
A comrade of my own, Corporal Spence, of the Royal Fusiliers, received a wound from a musket ball at the Alma in the right cheek, but took no notice of it; thought it must have been a piece of stone; did not report himself either wounded or sick. About 30 days afterwards he complained of a stiff neck, but would not give in; day after day went on, it kept getting worse and worse every day, until at last he could not move his head, and a large lump was visible on the left side of his neck, about two and a half inches from the ear. We all thought that it was a blind boil, and so did the Corporal, and as he was for the trenches that evening, and not one of those who would give in at trifles, he said he would go to Hospital and get his boil lanced, and take up his duty in the evening. He accordingly went to Hospital; Dr. Hale, V.C., examined the boil, and applied the lance, and out came his friend from the Alma—about an ounce of lead. It had worked round from the right cheek to the left ear. The Corporal at once returned to his duty, and went through the remainder of the campaign. He wore this little messenger on his watch chain. He was for some years a Corporal-Major in the Oxford Blues, and, as far as I know, is alive now.