For the th anniversary of the Battle of Ramnuggur [Ramnagar] we have been looking at the incredible life of Brigadier-General Charles Robert Cureton, the highest ranking casualty of the battle, and a soldier whose links with the 14th Light Dragoons began almost forty years before the battle! His father was a Shropshire gentleman and it was in the Shropshire Militia that Cureton was first commissioned as an Ensign around He is then said to have suddenly resigned his commission and disappeared before joining another Militia regiment.
Being threatened by creditors he left home and, having abandoned his clothes on a beach in a South Coast resort, it was assumed he had drowned while he actually made his way to London. Some sources add that that he disguised himself as a sailor for the journey. In his recollections of the Peninsular War General Thomas Brotherton, then an officer in the regiment, stated that Cureton was a Corporal in his troop and served as Charles Roberts.
Cureton joined the 14th Light Dragoons in the Peninsula in and then served throughout the camapign. On 1 October he was wounded in the right leg by a rifle ball in crossing the Mondego near Colimbra.
Of his time in the ranks of the 14th Light Dragoons there are a few scattered accounts from those he served with. In , when Cureton had distinguished himself in the Sutlej Campaign, a letter was published in the Evening Mail of 15 April claiming to be from a former comrade of the 14th and read:.
Private Charles Roberts the name he enlisted under joined the 14 th Light Dragoons at Portalegre, in Portugal, with a remount from England under the command of the brave Major Fenton Hervey [Hervey had recovered from the loss of an arm at Oporto in the charge of the 12 th May ]β¦. About the end of , Private C. In , Sergeant Roberts Cureton received an ensigncy in the 40 th Foot. The cavalry being his element, an exchange was effected for him into the 20 th Light Dragoonsβ¦.
