Oliver Ellis: The Fusiliers
9781465680389
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
When is a man the arbiter of his own destiny? for he is like the leaf which is torn from a tree, and which the wind of heaven blows about. This fate has been my own, as peculiarly as it has been that of other military wanderers in life; for your soldier is a great traveller both by sea and land, an errant and a restless spirit; yet his travels and his restlessness are involuntary; for the moment he dons the red coat he ceases to be the master of "his own proper person," or (like the leaf torn from the tree) to be the arbiter of his own destiny; but must march, sail, or fight wheresoever he may be ordered, obedience being the first word in his vocabulary. He becomes a machine in some sort, yet not a machine according to the degrading idea of his sapient majesty of Prussia; for the history of mankind will prove that the most brilliant achievements in war, and the most happy results in peace, like those efforts by which thrones have been won and nations freed, had their origin in the influence of the human heart, and in the mastery of the human passions, when hope, religion, or love of country, fired the soldier's spirit! Who, then, will dare to say that the poor private soldier who mounts a deadly breach, or rushes on a hedge of steel, risking mutilation, wounds, and death, without the hope of future fame if he falls, or the chance of sharing in the glory of the victory his valour wins if he survive,—is the mere automaton, the cold in blood and basely utilitarian would have him to be? Love of country, a noble sentiment, is ever strong in the heart of a true soldier. When the 67th, or South Hampshire regiment, commanded by Callender of Craigforth, landed at Portsmouth in 1772, after a long career of dangerous foreign service, with one accord and impulse the whole of the men threw themselves on the beach and kissed the pebbles. The reader will pardon the professional vanity, or esprit de corps, which makes me thus prelude the plain unvarnished story of a soldier's career,—a description of some of the adventures I have passed through, the persons I have met, and the scenes I have witnessed on my march through life. I was born in the camp of Burgoyne's army when it was on the borders of Lake Champlain: thus, the first sounds to which my infant ears became accustomed were the rattle of the drum, the notes of the Kentish bugle, the tread of marching feet, and the thoughtless hilarity of my father's comrades. I remember myself first as a little boy, the pet and plaything of the soldiers, who made bats and balls, tops and toys for me; who allowed me to ride on their backs, and to hold on by their queues, whenever I had a mind to do so; who told me old stories of Wolfe's days, of the siege of Belleisle, and of wild adventures in West Florida. I remember of marches from town to town, from camp to barrack, and from fort to fort—all of which seem like dreams to me now; while the troops trod on, through clouds of summer dust or the deep snows of an American winter, and I with other regimental imps, sat merrily and cosily perched on the summit of a baggage-waggon, among trunks, arm-chests, knapsacks, pots, kettles, and soldiers' wives, who smoked, sung, and swore occasionally, and bantered the escort who marched on each side, with bayonets fixed. A thousand childish incidents of the soldiers' kindness to me when a boy (because they loved my father well), are lingering in my memory, while many a more important event of the days and years between that time and this, is forgotten for ever.
