00:05Stand firm on the lights!
00:08Warmb Square!
00:12Warmb Square!
00:24My God, sir. I've lost my leg.
00:33Thank God, sir. So you have.
00:38Get over there!
00:48These fields would have been strewn with the dead and men with horrendous injuries.
00:55The most famous casualty of all was the Earl of Uxbridge.
01:00Commander of the British Cavalry.
01:02Hit in the knee by grapeshot.
01:07And yes, you've guessed it.
01:09This is the saw that was used to amputate the Earl's leg.
01:12It's rather beautiful, isn't it?
01:14Now, the Earl is said to have borne the operation very well,
01:17and it's not surprising when you think about his actions that day.
01:21He personally leads one of the most successful cavalry charges during Waterloo.
01:25He's said to have had multiple horses shot under him.
01:28And when he's finally hit in the knee, the wound, of course, that leads to the amputation,
01:34he turns to the Duke of Wellington, who's riding near him, and he says,
01:37By God, sir, I think I've lost my leg.
01:39And the Duke replies, By God, sir, I think you have.
01:49Trauma surgeon Mick Crumplin has made a special study of battlefield surgery
01:54and knows just what the Earl of Uxbridge faced on a farmhouse table at Waterloo.
02:00If you take the knife and place it ready to start,
02:04remember, as you come round, the pressure has got to be even and severe.
02:08So mind my fingers and yours, too.
02:10With no anaesthetic, patients could die of shock
02:13if operations took more than two minutes.
02:16Feel it tear through, even though it's very sharp.
02:19And surgeons prided themselves on their speed.
02:24Remember, you've got a live patient on the end of this.
02:27Yeah, so no time for hanging around.
02:30A sharp knife. I mean, this is an original, is it?
02:33This is. This is a 200-year-old sheer steel knife with an ebony handle.
02:37I can feel the bone there.
02:37And when you feel bone, desist from cutting hard
02:40and concentrate on the bits that feel soft.
02:43Once the flesh and tendons are severed, it's time for the bone.
02:48It's not an easy procedure.
02:51Don't push, pull, push, pull.
02:53It's push, push, push.
02:55OK.
03:00Keep going.
03:05Very sharp, isn't it?
03:06You can feel the resistance.
03:08Yes, a double row of durations, yes.
03:11It's cutting beautifully.
03:15It's quite a painful bit of the operation.
03:21You think you're there, but it's just not.
03:23It's like green sapling wood cutting bone.
03:28Rolled over a bit more.
03:29I think it's this last bit here.
03:31Yeah.
03:34There we are.
03:35The limb is removed and cast away into a heap with others.
03:41Unfortunately, I took so long that my patient would almost certainly have died.
03:46In the real world at Waterloo, that would have been a human body.
03:50And the idea of actually cutting through bone, which must have felt very like that,
03:55with this kind of shuddering, flinching human who wasn't using anaesthetic,
03:59it felt quite chilling to me, I have to say.
04:03And I didn't have any noise and any movement.
04:05And what it must be like under real conditions, I can't even imagine.
04:08I mean, that was rare about the last step, right?
04:08I mean, that by way, I saw toes, so....
