The above company with its sub-lieutenant, and the eighth company, second battalion, struck camp in February and moved forward with the army. The former company was attached to the column under Sir Rowland Hill, and the latter to Marshal Beresford’s. Both companies, numbering 130 of all ranks, were present at the battle of Orthes on the 27th of February, but their services in the action were of little importance. A portion of the companies being attached to the pontoon train, assisted to re-establish the ruined bridge of Berenx during the night of the 26th; and on the 27th, a small party under sergeant Thomas Stephens, who had distinguished himself in the demolition of the flood-gates at Flushing, destroyed a barricade in front of a bridge which led into the town of Orthes. In this little rencontre, sergeant Ninian Melville and private Samuel Needham were wounded, the latter mortally. These companies, still attached to the advancing army, aided in forming the several pontoon and flying bridges required for the passage of the troops, both on the march from Orthes and just before the battle of Toulouse. In this action, fought on the 10th of April, the two companies were present, but were not required to perform any service worthy of especial remark. During the winter of 1813, the seventh company, second battalion with Sub-Lieutenant Wallace, was detached to St. Jean de Luz to prepare a bridge for the passage of the Adour; and early in January, Sub-Lieutenant Stratton with the second company, second battalion, was sent to Socoa to hasten its completion. These companies with the artificers of the guards and staff corps, and large parties of the royal navy, worked incessantly at the undertaking under the direction of the engineers.[203] ----- Footnote 203: Jones’s ‘Sieges’ ii., p. 107, 2nd edit. ----- In the middle of February, the necessary apparatus and stores being ready and every preliminary arrangement completed, the greater part of the two companies were shipped on board the chasse-marées, intended to form the bridge. In two vessels six sappers were embarked, in others three, but the majority carried only two, who were destined to cut “away the waste boards to render the deck level, and also to spike down the timber, prepared with grooves to receive the cables, the moment the vessels should be moored.”[204] ----- Footnote 204: Jones’s ‘Sieges,’ p. 109. -----