After the fight had fairly commenced, we kept but little order, owing partly to the want of discipline and experience in our people, and partly to the nature of the ground, which was rugged and uneven in the extreme, being one continued range of sand-hills, with hollows more or less deep between them; and partly it may be attributed to the ardour of our young men, who pressed on perhaps too rapidly. We continued to advance, and never once made a retrograde movement, the enemy regularly retiring from height to height on our approach; but they had greatly the advantage over us in point of shooting, their balls doing much more execution than ours; indeed it cannot be wondered at, for they were all riflemen, trained to fire with precision, and armed with a weapon which seldom fails its object if truly pointed; while we were (what shall I say) totally ignorant of that most essential part of a soldier's duty. They consequently suffered little from our fire; but we could not believe this, and tried to persuade ourselves they had either buried their dead in the sand before we came up to them, or carried them off as they retreated; but experience has since taught me to know that we then must have done them little harm.
About the middle of the day, as I and a young man of the name of Thomas Bambrough (a countryman of my own, and who had volunteered with me,) were moving on in company, in passing through one of the valleys to an opposite height, we were assailed by a little volley from a group of the enemy which we discovered on a hill in front of us; one of which shots took effect in poor Bambrough's thigh just about the ham; he instantly fell, and roared out most piteously; I laid down my musket and endeavoured to hoist him on my back, in order to take him out of the fire, which they now poured in without intermission; but in this I failed, for he was so completely disabled by the wound, as to be rendered totally helpless, and it was so extremely painful that he could not bear the least movement.
I felt constrained to leave him, although I did so with reluctance, telling him that I would push on to the height we had first in view, to which I then perceived some more of our men had advanced, and would drive the enemy from their position; of course all this was not literally told him, but something to that effect was said; and I found that the moment I left him they ceased to fire on him; and, as I promised, we did drive off the enemy. Shortly after, some of our own people came up to where poor Bambrough lay, and carried him off to the rear; he was sent to an hospital, where he soon after died, they not being able, I understand, to extract the ball. Soon after this, there were some tremendous volleys of musketry heard on our left, apparently down in the plain below us. I, with one or two others, now inclined a little towards the left, in order to have a peep at the troops there, so hotly opposed to each other, in doing which, we still kept our line in front of the enemy's skirmishers.
We found it was the Russian army endeavouring to force their way towards the village of Bergen, the scene of their former disaster; but they were most distressingly retarded by the innumerable canals or ditches, by which the country was so intersected, and which were generally impassable by fording. On some occasions I could perceive, when they had found an entrance into an enclosure, and had fought their way to the farther side of it, they were obliged to retrace their steps, and get out by the same way by which they had entered, the enemy all this while pouring into them a close and destructive fire. This appeared to me to be most trying to their patience, and very disheartening; but they bore it with great steadiness.
Meantime, our own heavy troops were advancing on the right by the sea-beach, where was a plain of sand, of perhaps from 100 to 200 yards in breadth; the sand-hills between the two wings, as I said before, being swept by us, assisted by a small corps of Russian riflemen. We moved on till we got a little in advance of the Russian army, (which, from the obstacles they had to contend with, did not make very rapid progress,) and immediately over the village of Bergen, which stood on the plain, close under the sand-hills. Here, the enemy being in possession of considerable field-works, plied us pretty plenteously with shells from their howitzers, (their guns they could not elevate sufficiently to reach us,) but from which we suffered very little; for our people being much extended, and the sand being deep, the bursting of the shells was attended with very little mischief. Indeed, for a long time, I did not know what they were; for, having several times heard a loud explosion pretty near, I actually looked round to see the gun, which I imagined had fired, but could perceive nothing but a cloud of smoke rising from the spot, and the small bushes and herbs about it on fire. I thought it strange, and it was not till it was several times repeated, that we discovered what it really was, for my comrades were equally ignorant with myself.
At length, towards the close of the afternoon, a loud and heavy fire of musketry broke out on our right, which continued for a considerable time, and then ceased. This was our heavy infantry, who had advanced by the sea-shore, and who had now approached the village of Egmont-op-Zee, where the enemy made a most determined stand, but at last were driven back with great slaughter, and our people took possession of the town. From this place the battle derives its name. A little after dark, the enemy abandoned Bergen also, so that we ceased any longer to be annoyed by their shells, which they continued to throw while they held possession of the place. But a short while before they retired, one was thrown, which pitched just close over my company, (for we had then been collected, and were formed in close order immediately above the town,) and where Colonel Sharpe and another officer were walking; it lay for a second or two hissing and burning, and might be expected every moment to explode. Their road lay close past it; the veteran however took no notice of it, but continued his walk and conversation the same as if nothing had occurred, and without going an inch out of his way. It burst with a tremendous report, but fortunately without doing either of them the least injury. I confess I thought it rather too brave; for it appeared to me that he might have walked a little farther from it, or stopped for a moment or two without any imputation on his courage; but people do not all see things exactly alike.
Our loss in this action was but trifling, considering the extent of the operations. We had in my company only about fourteen or fifteen men killed and wounded; among the latter were my two countrymen, Bambrough, as before noticed, and Sutherland. One man of our company, I was told, in charging a fieldpiece, was struck down by the wind of the ball, and which, although it did not touch him, brought blood from his mouth, nose, and ears; he never after thoroughly recovered the effects of it. I do not remember ever to have felt more fatigued than I did after this day's work. We had marched before commencing the action, I should think, twelve miles or more. We had been kept upon the run the greater part of the day, and had fought over nearly as much more ground, through loose sand, sometimes nearly up to the middle of the leg, and over ground so extremely uneven, that a few miles of leisurely walking on such, would be more than I should be able to accomplish now; and we had been nearly all the day deprived of every sort of liquid, for our canteens were soon emptied of what little they contained in the morning, and having myself fired nearly 150 rounds of ammunition, the powder of which, in biting off the ends of the cartridges, had nearly choked me. What would I not have given for a good drink? I felt completely exhausted, and laid me down with the others with great good-will on the top of one of the sand-hills. But the night proved extremely wet, so that every one of us was very soon as completely soaked as if he had been dragged through a river; and, to crown my misfortunes, I was without a blanket. Here I must confess my folly, that others similarly situated may profit by my experience. Soon after the commencement of the action a rumour was spread along the line of skirmishers, that the Duke, seeing the very arduous duty we had to perform, had said, "Never mind, my lads, if your knapsacks are any encumbrance to you, and impede your running, throw them off, and I will take care you shall be furnished with others." No sooner did this silly report reach my ears, than I, with many others, equally simple, believed it, without taking time to consider that if even it were true, a knapsack and a blanket, (for they were together,) to be useful should be at hand when wanted. But, simpleton like, away went knapsack and blanket, and I felt greatly relieved in getting rid of such a burden, and now pushed on after the enemy with increased vigour, trying at the same time to persuade myself the report was true; although I own I occasionally had my doubts on the subject. But night came on, as I have said, and such a one as I have seldom seen for wet, and then I plainly perceived that I had played the young soldier.
An officer of ours of the name of Lacy, who had formerly been the captain of the Northumberland light company, and who volunteered with us, offered any man half a guinea for the use of a blanket for that night only, but without being able to obtain one: this will give some idea of the kind of night it was. I had nothing for it, but just to put the cock of my musket between my knees, to keep it as dry as possible, and lay myself down as I was. I endeavoured to get as close as I could to one who had a blanket, and lay down with my head at his feet, which he had covered up very comfortably with his blanket. The rain pelted so heavily and so incessantly on my face, that I ventured after a while to pull a little corner of this man's blanket just to cover my cheek from the pitiless storm, and in this situation snatched a comfortable nap; but he awakening in the night, and finding that I had made free with the corner of his blanket, rudely pulled it from off my face, and rolled it round his feet again.
I was fain to lie still and let it pelt away, and even in this exposed situation I got some sleep, so completely were the powers of nature exhausted by fatigue. At length morning arose and showed us to ourselves, and such a group of sweeps we had seldom seen. Our clothing was literally all filth and dirt; our arms the colour of our coats with rust; and our faces as black as if we had come out of a coal-pit. In biting off the ends of the cartridges, there are generally a few grains of powder left sticking on the lips and about the mouth; these, accumulated as they must have been by the great quantity of ammunition each of us had fired, and with the profuse perspiration we were in during the heat of the day, added to the wet which fell upon us during the night, had caused the powder to run all over our faces; so that in the morning we cut the most ludicrous figure imaginable. However we immediately set about getting our arms again in trim, for though the enemy had left us masters of the field of action, they were not far distant from us. We soon got our firelocks again in fighting order; that is, they would go off, though the brightness, on which a clean soldier piques himself, was gone past recovery at this time. I now felt rather sore from firing my piece so often; the recoil against my shoulder and breast had blackened them, and rendered them rather painful, and the middle finger of my right hand was completely blackened and swoln from the same cause.
At this time it was reported that a sad accident had occurred in our battalion; a soldier of one of our companies, in cleaning his musket, had by some awkwardness allowed it to go off, and an officer being immediately in front of where he was standing, the ball had taken effect upon him, and killed him on the spot.