Note 162 — Chapter VI

I have extracted the above return from the ‘Wellington Despatches,’ xii. 487, and it is signed by Lieutenant-Colonel Waters, Assistant Adjutant-General, but it is certainly incorrect as regards the 1st Battalion. Two Field Officers were certainly present, Barnard and Cameron: both were wounded, and are so returned (‘Army List,’ August, 1815), nor is it easy to account for the number (185) reported as ‘sick absent.’ A note to the original states that the large number of ‘sick absent’ in this (and some other regiments) is owing to their losses at Quatre Bras; yet the 1st Battalion had only forty-eight men wounded there. It will be seen on comparing this return with the lists of casualties that the 1st Battalion lost of all ranks in killed and wounded more than three-eighths of its numbers; the 2nd Battalion rather less than one-third; and the 3rd Battalion a little more than a fifth, and the whole Regiment (fourteen companies) about a third.