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Updated: May 12, 2025
The honours of the day upon the side of the British rested with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, the Yorkshire Light Infantry, the 2nd Coldstreams, and the artillery. Out of a total casualty list of about 450, no fewer than 112 came from the gallant Argylls and 69 from the Coldstreams.
It is not often that a successful General in modern warfare is called on, like the victorious commander of the ancient Greek armies, to award a prize of superior valour to one of his soldiers. Such was to some extent the case with respect to the battle of Waterloo. There were many gallant candidates, but the election fell on Sergeant James Graham, of the light company of the Coldstreams.
"Unless we walk headlong to our own destruction," he said. "But no, I won't believe it. The general has been bred in the Coldstreams and knows nothing of frontier fighting. But he is a brave man, an honest man, and he will learn. Small wonder he believes in discipline after serving half a century in such a regiment.
I filmed various scenes of the Coldstreams, the Irish and the Grenadier Guards. At the furthermost point of the road to which cars are allowed shells started to fall rather heavily, so, not wishing to argue the point with them, I took cover. When the "strafing" ceased I filmed other interesting scenes, and then returned to my headquarters. The next day was very interesting, and rather exciting.
There was a soubrette provoking enough to have set all the parti-colored world by the ears who traced her descent from a vavasor of Duke William the Norman, and an attorney's clerk, who had evidently mistaken his profession when he took a commission in the Coldstreams. Soon after the ball which followed had begun, Livingstone arrived. He had been dining at the mess of his old regiment.
It appears that on the ever-memorable 18th of June four companies of the Third Guards and of the Coldstreams, under the command of Colonels Maitland and Byng, held the important farmhouse of Hougoumont at the right of the British position. At a critical point of the action these troops found themselves short of powder.
But they who knew him best knew that of all things he hated most the entail. The boys were both educated at Eton, and the elder went into the Guards, having been allowed an intermediate year in order to learn languages on the Continent. He had then become a cornet in the Coldstreams, and had, from that time, lived a life of reckless expenditure.
Fifty-seven officers had fallen in that brigade alone, including their Brigadier and Colonel Downman of the Gordons. Colonel Codrington of the Coldstreams was wounded early, fought through the action, and came back in the evening on a Maxim gun. Lord Winchester of the same battalion was killed, after injudiciously but heroically exposing himself all day.
"You would have thought it was a big crowd streaming out from a cup tie," says Private Whitaker of the Guards. "It was like a farmer's machine cutting grass," so it seemed to Private Hawkins of the Coldstreams. "No damned good as riflemen," says a Connemara boy. "You couldn't help hitting them. As to their rifle fire, it was useless."
But those wonderful Coldstreams and Grenadiers and Highlanders just filled the streets and every man for himself poured in rifle fire, and every machine gun fired into the enemy masses, smashed the attack and then they went at them with the bayonet and flung them back.
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