On my arrival in camp I found that a deep gloom hung over everyone, and I
heard the sad news that Colonel Dunn, the commanding officer of the 33d,
had the day before accidentally shot himself when out shooting. The native
servant who alone was with him reports that he himself was at the moment
stooping to pour out some water, that he heard the report of a gun, and
turning round saw his master stagger back, and then sink into a sitting
position with the blood streaming from his breast. The man instantly ran
back to camp, a distance of five miles, for assistance, and surgeons at
once galloped off with bandages, &c., followed by dhoolie wallahs, with a
dhoolie to carry him back to camp. When the surgeons arrived, they found
Colonel Dunn lying on his back, dead. His flask was open by his side, his
cap pulled over his face. He had bled to death in a few minutes after the
accident. It is supposed that the gun was at full cock, and that the
slight jar of putting the butt to the ground must have let the hammer
down. There are very few men who could have been less spared than Colonel
Dunn; none more deeply regretted. As an officer he was one of the most
rising men in the service, and had he lived would probably have gained its
highest honours and position. He was with the 11th Hussars in the
Balaclava charge, and when the men were asked to select the man who in the
whole regiment was most worthy of the Victoria Cross, they unanimously
named Lieutenant Dunn. Never was the Victoria Cross placed on the breast
of a more gallant soldier. When the 100th regiment was raised in Canada,
he enrolled a very large number of men, and was gazetted its major. After
attaining the rank of lieutenant-colonel he exchanged into the 33d, of
which, at the time of this sad accident, he was full colonel, and was next
on the list for his brigadier-generalship. He was only thirty-five years
of age, the youngest colonel in the British service, and would, in all
human probability, have been a brigadier-general before he was thirty-six.
Known as a dashing officer, distinguished for his personal bravery, a
colonel at an age when other men are captains, there was no rank or
position in the army which he might not have confidently been predicted to
attain, and his loss is a loss to the whole British army. But not less
than as a soldier, do all who knew poor Dunn regret him as a man. He was
the most popular of officers. Unassuming, frank, kind-hearted in the
extreme, a delightful companion, and a warm friend—none met him who were
not irresistibly attracted by him. He was a man essentially to be loved.
In his regiment his loss is irreparable, and as they stood beside his
lonely grave at the foot of the rock of Senafe, it is no disgrace to their
manhood to say that there were few dry eyes amongst either officers or
men. He was buried, in accordance with a wish he had once expressed, in
his uniform, and Wolfe’s lines on the burial of Sir John Moore will apply
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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