We first got sight of the enemy about two miles from the town of Pombal. They had possession of a wood, from which, however, we soon managed to drive them. They retired in great disorder in the direction of the town. The long straight road that led to Pombal became filled for some hundred yards, with the confused masses of the French; but their distress was still further increased by the arrival of Brigade-Major Mellish, who came up, at the time, with a couple of Ross’s guns, and commenced playing upon them. It soon became a complete rout with the enemy, and they pressed pell-mell over the bridge of the river between us and the town. They suffered considerably in this business—the ground was strewed with their dead, and as we followed we found several poor fellows at the bridge badly wounded by the rifles, and many dissevered legs and arms, the latter, no doubt, caused by Ross’s two pieces. It was during the preceding skirmish that, for the first time, I heard the words that afterwards became so common in our regiment, “kill a Frenchman for yourself.” Its origin was as follows: Two men of known daring, named Palmer and Tracey, during our approach to the bridge, seeing a French sergeant fall, ran up to claim the meed of conquest, by relieving him of any valuables he might be possessed of. They were quarrelling as to the appropriation of the spoil, when Palmer, who was a known excellent shot, told Tracey to go “and kill a Frenchman for himself,” as he had shot this man. This circumstance afterwards gave birth to a little gasconade in the regiment, that every rifleman could and ought to kill a Frenchman in action. From the period of the above occurrence, Palmer received the nick-name of the “man-killer,” until a singular circumstance, that occurred at the siege of Badajoz, gave him a new title. In relieving picquet in the trenches, many of our men, instead of going quietly through the trenches or parallels in front of the walls of the town, used to show their contempt of danger by jumping out of them and running across in the face of the enemy’s fire. In executing this feat one day with some others, a cannon-shot fired by the French, struck the ground first, and then hit Palmer on the back, and he fell, as we thought, killed upon the spot. To our surprise, however, in a moment he jumped up unhurt, the ball having glanced off his knapsack. In commemoration of this event, he was afterwards known by the appellation of “the bomb proof man.”