Rush also spoke with a British subaltern who, somewhat surprisingly, did not think very highly of his own comrades. This British soldier “observed to me that his soldiers were infants that required constant attendance, and said as a proof of it that although they had blankets tied to their backs, yet such was their laziness that they would sleep in the dew and cold without them rather than have the trouble of untying and opening them. He said his business every night before he slept was to see that no soldier in his company laid down without a blanket.”²⁶

Four days after the battle, on September 15, the American wounded were moved to what is today West Chester, where Rush and the other American surgeons continued to care for them. Many wounds turned out to be mortal. Gilbert Purdy, an officer serving with the British Corps of Pioneers, remembered receiving orders to assist in the burial of the dead and recalled burying 55, “[b]esides was Buryed By the rest of the Army.” Within two short days of the fighting the corpses on the field were putrefying, and locals were hired (or in some cases, likely impressed) to dig the graves. “The peasants about employed in burying the dead Rebels without our Centries,” wrote Captain Montresor, “who have now become very offensive.”27