![]() ![]() ![]() I have not washed my face nor yet shaved since I landed here. 'Water is very scarce and extremely muddy. We manage it somehow, by grinding it in a broken bombshell with a round shot to crush it. Just like our government, the idea of sending coffee here not roasted. We get biscuits salt pork or beef and one gill of rum with some sugar rice and unroasted coffee. Cholera has broke out amongst the poor fellows who are exposed in the trenches day and night with nothing but their big coats to shelter them from the rain or cold. The newly introduced Victoria Cross was awarded to 28 Irishmen in the Crimea, Sgt (later General Sir) Luke O’Connor from Elphin, Co Roscommon, winning the first ever VC in 1857.'We are now about three miles from Sebastopol and under canvas tents, the rain pouring in torrents and all around miserable. About 4,000 more Irishmen served there in the British navy. Raglan’s descendants are also still paid rents by Irish tenants, though he never set foot here.Īs The Word noted: “In his excellent work, Ireland and the Crimean War, the historian David Murphy reckons that of 111,000 men who fought in Britain’s Crimean army, over 37,000, or one-third, were Irish, of whom some 7,000 were killed. During the Famine, when he was called the Exterminator, he regarded his tenants as vermin to be cleared off the land.” It is doubtful if he considered the Irish as human beings at all. He cherished a powerful contempt for them, half-starving and Catholics into the bargain. The British historian Cecil Woodham-Smith wrote, “He squeezed out the utmost possible amount of cash from his poor tenants to keep up his high lifestyle. Lord Lucan owned vast estates in Mayo, where he was MP. ![]() Russell, the war correspondent, wrote in a private letter to John Delane, editor of The Times, that Raglan was “utterly incompetent to lead an army.” “He met his desserts, a dog’s death – and like a dog let him be buried in a ditch,” said Lucan, who detested him.Ĭardigan, who led the Charge, deserted his men after some minutes and turned back, deeming it beneath his dignity to fight among common or “private soldiers.” He returned, as he did daily, to the harbor to his luxury yacht Dryad which, with his French chef, he had brought out from England he had a bath, drank a bottle of wine with his dinner and slept in his feather-bed. The son of an Irishman, Captain Louis Nolan was killed in the first few minutes of the Charge. We have no choice but to obey.' And so, due to an ambiguous order, the Light Brigade charged down the wrong valley – instead of through a parallel valley behind one of the two Russian lines." 'Certainly, sir,' said Cardigan, 'but allow me to point out that the Russians have a battery in the valley on our front, and batteries and riflemen on both sides.' Lucan replied, 'I know it. "Lord Lucan, who commanded all the cavalry forces, instructed Lord Cardigan, leader of the Light Brigade, to charge at once. They swept proudly past, glittering in the morning sun.At the distance of 1,200 yards, the whole line of the enemy belched forth, from 30 iron mouths, a flood of smoke and flame, through which hissed the deadly balls. At 11.10 our Light Brigade rushed to the front. It is your duty to take them: Lucan with reluctance gave the order to Lord Cardigan to advance…. When Lucan read the order, he asked, ‘Where are we to advance to?’ Nolan pointed to the Russians and said, ‘There are the enemy, and there are the guns before them. It appears that Brigadier Airey gave an order in writing to Captain Nolan to take to Lord Lucan, directing His Lordship ‘to advance’ his cavalry. “And now occurred the melancholy catastrophe which fills us all with sorrow. An Irish-born war correspondent William Howard Russell from Dublin who was there wrote in The London Times: Of its 673 cavalrymen, 141 were Irish and the charge's leaders had interesting Irish connections. The 25-minute Charge of the Light Brigade took place down the wrong valley at Balaclava 160 years ago. The Charge of the Light Brigade went down in history after Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote his famous poem with the chilling lines which every British schoolboy used to know by heart. ![]()
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