Storming Party, San Sebastian


The volunteers to lead the storming of the breaches were called 'The Forlorn Hope' or 'The Desperadoes'. To volunteer for such a task would require a suicidal disposition. John Douglas of the Royal Scots described an attack, "The scene before me was truly awful...legs and arms sticking up, some their clothes in flames; numbers not dead but so jammed as not to be able to extricate themselves, and of course had to remain exposed to the fire of the enemy, which was so thick that you would think it impossible for anything living to escape." from Douglas's Tale of the Peninsula and Waterloo by John Douglas Edited by Stanley Monick published by Leo Cooper 1997


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by Stephen Luscombe