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Lieutenant Richard Bayly:
(12th Regiment)
Death of Lieutenant Thomas Falla
"...This evening (6th April) we were relieved in the trenches by the
gallant 74th Regiment, who lost several men in their approach, and we
were heartily rejoiced to regain the encampment after 24 hours' hard
fighting, fatigue and fasting. In this brilliant affair eleven officers
and 180 men were killed and wounded. One of the officers received so
extraordinary a wound that I cannot refrain from relating the
particulars. As he was entering the nullah, a shot from Seringapatam
struck him in front of the right hip, lodging between the bone of the
thigh. The Dooley men, or bearers of the machine on which he was
carried to camp, complained of the great weight bearing on the right
side. On examination of the wound the surgeons could not suppress a
hopeless cast of countenance; on which the wounded officer
(Lieutenant Falla) requested that he
might have a bottle of port wine to keep up
his spirits, and die like "one brave soldier" (he was a Guernsey man
not well versed in the idiom of the English language); he was supplied
with the strengthening cordial, and soon after died. The body was
opened, and to the astonishment of all in camp a wrought iron shot of
26 pounds' weight was extracted from between the bones of the thigh,
which had been completely covered by a swelling of the part affected,
so that it was not discoovered any ball was beneath the wound until the
extraction took place. This almost incredible fact was generally
known, and the shot weighed and exposed to the public scrutiny of the
majority of the officers of the army ...."
Source:
Bayly, R. Diary of Colonel Bayly 12th Regiment :1796-1803. London: Army and
Navy Co-Operative Society, 1896 p. 87.
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