nemy. One of his staff then bound up my leg with a silk handkerchief,
and told me to go behind a hill which he pointed out, where I would
find a doctor to dress my wounds; so I proceeded on, and found that it
was the doctor of my own regiment.

Next after me Lieutenant Elland was brought in by a man of the name of
Charles Filer, who had seen him lying wounded at the breach with a
ball in the thigh, and on his asking him to convey him from the
breach, had raised him on his shoulders for that object. But during
his march a cannon-ball had taken the officer's head clean off without
Filer finding it out on account of the darkness of the night, and the
clamour of cannon and musketry mingled with the cries of the wounded.
Much it was to Filer's astonishment, then, when the surgeon asked him
what he had brought in a headless trunk for; he declared that the
lieutenant had a head on when he took him up, for he had himself asked
him to take him from the breach, and that he did not know when the
head was severed, which must have been done by one of the bullets of
which there were so many whizzing about in all directions. Some may
doubt the correctness of this story, but I, being myself both a hearer
and an eyewitness to the scene at the surgeon's, can vouch for the
accuracy of it. Certainly Filer's appearance was not altogether that
of composure, for he was not only rather frightened at the fearful
exposure of his own body at the breach and across the plain, but he
was evidently knocked up, or rather bowed down, by the weight of his
lifeless burden, which he must, if he came from the breach, have
carried for upwards of half a mile, so that, under these
disadvantages, the mistake might easily have been made even by any one
of harder temperament than his. But the tale did not fail to spread
through the camp, and caused great laughter over Filer, sentences
being thrown at him such as "Who carried the man without a head to the
doctor?" &c.

After Lord Wellington had found it useless to attempt to face the
breach with the _chevaux de frise_, he altered his plans of attack.
More success had fortunately been achieved in the other breaches, so
he withdrew the men from our fatal breach to reinforce the others, but
not till at least two thousand had been killed or wounded in this
single assault. He had ordered the castle to be attacked, and a
quantity of troops had been supplied for the purpose with long
ladders, which had been raised aga