No sick leave for him!

www.telegraph.co.uk/ne...g-arm.html

It is claimed that within 30 minutes of having his right arm cut off, Nelson was again issuing orders to his men. He had been hit in the right arm by a musket ball shortly after stepping ashore on the Spanish island of Tenerife in July 1797.

Just about says it all. "Nails", indeed!

Aagh, how we could do with him in charge now.

Or any of the other greats: Wellington, Cromwell, de Bruce...

And his next wound left him with a section of his cranium exposed.... so he just got up and cracked on.



In fact he was wounded several times:

Shrapnel or bullet in the back Corsica 1794
Loss of his eye at Calvi 1794
Wood shrapnel in his stomach (resulting in long-term hernia) Cape St Vincent 1797
Right arm amputated Santa Cruz 1797
Head wound Battle of the Nile 1798

And on top of that he was a sickly runt to begin with.

He must have been a whole bag of nails...

He went to sea at 12, was commanding his own Ship at 20, and by then had considerable experience of command, fighting, and seamanship. By then he also had malaria and chronic seasickness, both of which dogged him for the rest of his life.

Not only hard as a big bag of hard things but - and probably just as important - amazingly bloody lucky (wounds and malaria excepted...).

They don't get experience like that nowadays, do the young'uns

Lucky he was around...... Plate of frogs legs anyone?

do you think they based this guy on him?

There was also the famous incident at Waterloo, when one of Wellington's officers had his leg blown off...

Officer: "By God, Sir! My damn legs gone!"

Wellington: "By God, sir, so it has."

The Officer survived and was fitted with a wooden leg. After he died of old age, his family hung the wooden leg on the wall of his home.

A true British legend, like Capt 'Mad' Jack Churchill!

You are joking right

You are Wahing, right?

The navy were quite tough, read the last chapters of "Sharpe's Trafalgar" it has an excellent description of naval warfare in the Napoleonic era and what it meant to board an enemy vessel under fire. All taken from eyewitness accounts. turn to the end of the book the start is pretty s***.

One of my favourite books. Some great supporting charectors, like the Marine Sgt who hates anyone not born in the North of England...

'He was ugly, foul-mouthed, predjudiced and as fine a soldier as Sharpe had ever met.'

There's also the huge, black Bosun(?)who loses most of the fingers on one hand during the battle, but still manages to kill the enemy.

What was the saying about the Navy of that era? Wooden ships and iron men?

That would be Henry Paget, Earl of Uxbridge. Paget had run off with the wife of the Iron Duke's younger brother and Wellington detested him.

Says much for the Duke that he put it aside and made Paget his cavalry commander, because he knew he was the best man for the job.

I don't know if it was based on fact, but the film Waterloo includes this exchange between The Iron Duke and a junior officer:

Young officer: "Sir! Napolean is in range - should we try to hit him?"

Wellington: "Certainly not! Commanders of armies have better things to do than take 'pot-shots' at one another!"

I am always in awe when I read about the combatants of the Napoleonic Wars, whether at land or sea. The whole idea of standing up in full view whilst you exchange fire with an enemy a few dozen yards away gives me a shiver. I recently found that the brother of an ancestor of my wife’s was killed leading a Forlorn Hope at the siege of Badajoz in 1812*. It was one way of getting promotion - if you survived of course.


* About the same time one of my ancestors, I believe, was helping to burn the White House.

Been there mate - some rough old bars in Veronicas!

He was a rather mediocre cavalry commander, he let the Union brigade run out of control after they charged D'Erlons corps and be virtually destroyed, should've positioned himself with the Scots Greys in brigade reserve rather then leading the charge, then the Scots Greys could've charged against the French Lanciers when they counterattacked the rest of the Union brigade.

Bloody hyperchondriac...