Into the Valley of Death

by A L Berridge

  But it was night when he woke, or at least it was dark. The pain was still there, but dull like a headache and he didn’t need to cry. Water he needed, but he was used to that, and somewhere in the nightmare Sally Jarvis had been there, giving him little sips from a canteen and saying the ship’s surgeon had removed his spleen. Sally. Mrs J. She’d been with him all through it, and in the peak of horror he’d felt her hand on his head and been comforted.

  There was no Sally here, and the stillness filled him with dread. Had they arrived? Was this the infamous hospital at Scutari where men came to scream and die in their own filth? But the room was quiet, the sheet on his chest was as stiff and clean as at school, and even the smell recalled carbolic soap, the cleanliness of the San, and a matron who dealt with his broken finger after a cricket match and said, ‘Well done, Oliver, jolly good catch.’ This was the School, he could see it now, the high ceiling and rows of beds and a single lamp moving in the dark; it was the School and he must be dead or how could he be back here? He struggled to sit upright, and gasped at the twinge in his side.

  At once the wavering light swung towards him, and a woman’s voice spoke in the gloom. ‘What is it, soldier? Are you in pain?’

  It wasn’t Sally. The hair under the frilled cap was dark, the face was hard and faintly disapproving, and the voice far too educated for a nurse. He shrank back into his pillows and whispered ‘No, miss. I don’t know where I am.’

  She moved closer, lifted a glass that had been beside him all the time, and put it to his lips. Water, real water, and it tasted clean. She said, ‘You’re safe in hospital in Scutari, and you’re going to get well.’

  He looked doubtfully at her. ‘Scutari?’

  She laid the glass down with a clear, precise clink. ‘I am running things now, soldier. There is a lot to do still, but I think we can say we have made a start.’ She smiled as she said it, and then her face wasn’t severe at all, it was warm and kind, a lady whose word he wouldn’t dare to doubt.

  He settled back in the comfort of certainty, and watched her resume her walk down the long hall. He could hear other sounds in the darkness now, the murmurs and rustling of men stirring in pain, but the lady’s dress swished against the floor as elegantly as in a drawing room, and as she passed along the rows of beds he thought the light of her lamp shone like hope.

  Historical Note

  Into the Valley of Death is fiction, but much of what happens in it is true. Some may be truer than we know.

  The main characters are fictional. There was no ‘G’ Troop in the 13th Light Dragoons, and neither Ryder, Oliver nor any other of its members has any basis in fact. Woodall, Mackenzie, and Bloomer are all inventions, as are their intimates. Outside these closed circles, however, almost everyone is real. Some, like Raglan, Cardigan and Nolan, are well known to history, but others are just as factual. The mysterious ‘Mr Calvert’, for instance, was actually the former Vice-Consul Charles Cattley, who used this alias when he ran the Secret Intelligence Department in the Crimea. Even the ‘bit-part’ characters existed, from Lieutenant Verschoyle of the Grenadier Guards down to the Sergeant Priestley who lost a foot at the Bulganek and the legless man who did indeed cry ‘Go it, beauty Guards! Go in and win!’ at the Alma. The heroism of individuals like Captain Goodlake of the sharpshooters and Captain Burnaby of the Grenadier Guards was certainly real, and far surpasses that of my own invention. The boy who planted the flag of the Royal Welch on the Greater Redoubt was Ensign Anstruther – and the Maltese terrier at the Alma was ‘Toby’. The nurse in the Epilogue is (of course) Florence Nightingale, who arrived at Scutari on the day of the Battle of Inkerman.

  Apart from Cardigan’s brief appearance in the first chapter, the only ‘real’ character I have allowed to interact significantly with my fictional ones is Lieutenant Colonel Charles Edmund Doherty of the 13th Light Dragoons. Little is known of him, but he did lead the ill-fated patrol of 18 September, and was sufficiently ill on 25 October to miss the Battle of Balaklava. He did serve in India in 1840, and had indeed previously authorized payment to help an NCO acquire the equipments needed for officer rank. Everything else said or done by Doherty in this book is fiction, and I hope it does no disrespect to his memory.

  As with characters, so with action. Events witnessed by demonstrably real characters can mostly be assumed to have really happened, while those outside their view are almost invariably fiction. The patrol of 18 September, for instance, happened much as described here, except for the sequence when Ryder and his friends fight the Cossacks out of sight of the regiment. There are, however, two exceptions to this rule. Although ‘commando-style’ attacks were indeed made on the British trenches, I know of none on 15 October 1854 and Bloomer’s account is pure fiction. Neither was there an attack on Balaklava Harbour on 5 November 1854, and nobody who takes part in this skirmish really existed, except the ‘off-stage’ characters of Captain Tatham and Captain Barker. I have deliberately given a false name to the irritating marine captain so as not to cast aspersions on the very gallant force that in reality defended the British base.

  For the rest I have tried to stay within the boundaries of what is true, although there are inevitably omissions and simplifications during the long battle sequences. I have, however, consciously manipulated time only twice. The incident of the stampeding Russian horses that provided remounts to the Light Brigade is true, but it happened on 27 October rather than the 26th. The first cavalry disembarkation from the Jason happened ‘towards evening’ of 14 September, but the attempt on General Airey and Sir George Brown as described by Times correspondent William Howard Russell, was made in the morning. One other detail of that incident is fictional: there is no evidence to say either Airey or Brown lost a hat.

  Which brings us to the shadowy figure of Mikhail Andreievich Kalmykoff. The character is a creation, but he is based very firmly on someone who is not: the ‘unknown officer’ who recurs throughout the first seven weeks in the Crimea. He may have been one man, he may have been several, his actions may have derived from stupidity rather than treachery, but he existed and was certainly responsible for considerable damage. Alexander Kinglake, the official chronicler accompanying the Expedition, drew from interviews with eyewitnesses when he wrote of the unknown voice that called ‘The column is French – don’t fire, men!’ at the Greater Redoubt, and of the unknown mounted officer who told the bugler of the 19th to sound first the ‘cease firing’, and then the ‘retreat’. His account of Colonel Chester’s intervention is even more specific, describing him gesturing as if to say ‘Nonsense … the column is not French … Fire into it!’ before being ‘struck first by one shot and then almost instantly by another’, a circumstance quite as peculiar as Ryder points out.

  Nor did it end there. What Kinglake describes as the next ‘apparition’ occurs with the Grenadier Guards, to whom the unknown mounted officer gave the order to retire before galloping away ‘without having been surely identified’. The situation was saved by Colonel Percy, but meanwhile the officer had ridden to the Coldstream and given the same order, which happily they resisted. The only question mark is over the order for the Scots Fusiliers’ withdrawal, which Kinglake ‘believes’ was given under Bentinck’s authority – but that does not mean the general concurred with it. Captain Gipps describes the moment with obvious emotion: ‘At this moment someone (alas, who was it?) rode or came to our commanding officer and told him to give the word for us to retire.’

  Even excluding this incident, Kinglake believed the matter merited explanation – and there were others of which he knew nothing. It is from regimental sources that we know of the mysterious order given to the Black Watch not to fire on the Russians because they were French – which was indeed foiled by a sergeant insisting ‘there’s no mistaking them divils’. Captain Nolan’s diary refers to a battery that was given the same misleading order, although he makes no mention of an unknown officer. The Recollections of Albert Mitchell of the 13th Light Dragoons give us the patrol of
18 September, which certainly looks like an ambush, and was (unusually) accompanied by an anonymous staff officer.

  Kinglake leaves the question at the Alma, but the mystery continues at Balaklava. Controversy usually focuses on the failure of communication between Raglan, Nolan, and Lucan, but in offering only the traditional Kinglake version I have ducked this issue entirely in order to concentrate on the question of why Raglan gave the order in the first place.

  The issue of the infamous ‘Fourth Order’ is far too complex to deal with properly here, but as Major Colin Robins, Mark Adkin and Terry Brighton have all pointed out in recent studies, the outcome would have been disastrous even had the Brigade advanced along the Causeway Heights as intended instead of straight down the North Valley. Raglan’s explanation for the order is that it was to ‘prevent the enemy carrying away the guns’, but there is no evidence the enemy were even contemplating doing so. It would have been an astonishing thing to attempt in the circumstances, and even Kinglake admits his Russian sources did not confirm it. Brighton goes further and says Russian historians ‘assert that no such operation was taking place at that time’. So why did Raglan think it was?

  Because, as Brighton puts it, ‘a staff officer whose identity has never been established’ shouted out that the Russians were dragging away the guns. No single conference has been subjected to so close a scrutiny as this one, and it seems inconceivable the name would not be mentioned – unless, of course, nobody knew it. As Mark Adkin expresses it: ‘An unnamed officer’s warning had lit a fuse at precisely the right moment.’

  As also at Inkerman. There is no talk of an unknown staff officer here, and no evidence to suggest General Cathcart’s disastrous departure from orders was the result of anything other than his own pig-headedness. I have, however, used real incidents on which to build the fictional denouement, and the unauthorized headlong dash by the Grenadiers, the Coldstream and the 95th Foot remains a mystery today. Kinglake casts about for psychological reasons to explain why so many Grenadiers in the Battery burst out ‘almost at once’ with the word ‘Charge!’ while Captain Wilson is at a similar loss in the Coldstream, recalling only his vain attempts to pursue his errant charges with a cry of ‘Halt, halt!’ Only with the 95th do we have a more specific explanation, and it is alarmingly familiar: as Kinglake describes it, ‘All at once, by some voice still unknown, the word “Charge!” was uttered in a tone of command.’

  But any attempt to impute sinister motives to all this is pure conjecture. That the Russians made determined attempts to mislead and delay the British attack is certainly true, and the incident where they pretended to be British in order to spike the French guns is recorded in Fanny Duberley’s diary entry of 23 October, but ‘Kalmykoff’ himself remains firmly fiction. His interaction with my own heroes is, of course, entirely so. It is true that news of the bombardment leaked and the Russians opened fire first, but that could indeed have been because they observed the British cutting embrasures for their guns. There was no attack on de Lacy Evans’ servants or theft of his property, and all the details of Kalmykoff’s clothes and trappings are invented. None of the facts produced by my heroes as corroborative evidence have any basis in reality – except one. Lord George Paget’s casualty lists do include one staff officer taken prisoner at Balaklava, and yet none was found to be missing. Paget’s source clearly saw somebody going with the Russians who looked like a British staff officer, but was actually no such thing.

  Whatever the truth of it, Kalmykoff’s evil personality is in no way intended as a reflection on the courageous and honourable Russian officers who fought in the Crimea. I have not, however, invented the atrocities. Instances of wounded Russians shooting those attempting to help them are supported by eyewitnesses, as is the widespread bayoneting of the wounded at Inkerman. In defence of the Russians, there had certainly been atrocities committed by the French in the villages, and more than one church was looted in full view of the defenders of Sebastopol.

  I have tried not to exaggerate the attitudes of the British either. The piety of Oliver and Mackenzie is strongly rooted in the reality of the time: officers of the 93rd Highlanders read from the prayer book on the march to the Alma, and Russell gives a moving account of encountering individual soldiers praying on their knees the night before. Oliver’s insistence on ‘fair play’ was also common, and many soldiers recorded instances of officers demanding they ‘spare’ the enemy even in the midst of battle. Private Bancroft of the Grenadiers recalled trying to fight off a Russian who was gripping his legs, only to be told by his sergeant not to ‘kick a man who was down’. This attitude did not, however, survive the campaign. Chivalry in war was perhaps the greatest single casualty of the Crimea.

  Not all its legacy was evil. The monumental inefficiency of the Crimean campaign was an important catalyst for change, and even its battles have left their traces today. The victory at the Alma is still remembered in a previously obscure Christian name, and on the signs of countless pubs and roads around Britain. Balaklava gave us Tennyson’s ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ and the phrase into which Russell’s original ‘thin red streak’ was mutated: the Thin Red Line. Inkerman became known as ‘The Soldiers’ Battle’, and did more than any other to eliminate the system of privilege where rank could be attained only by money. The tragic heroism of the Guards at the Sandbag Battery will in particular never be forgotten, and the unit now comprising the 3rd Battalion of Her Majesty’s Grenadier Guards is known as ‘The Inkerman Company’ to this day.

  For even more than a ‘Soldiers’ Battle’, the Crimean was a ‘Soldiers’ War’. If all we remember now is the incompetence of the high command we do a great disservice to the men who suffered, fought, died – and achieved victory under it. Queen Victoria did not forget, and the medal mentioned by Doherty which was to be available to all ranks was, of course, what we now know as the Victoria Cross. The medals were struck from the bronze of Russian cannon captured at Sebastopol, a tradition supposedly continued to this day.

  It’s certainly appropriate. British naval supremacy had long been acknowledged before the 1850s, but the Russians were of the firm opinion that the British ‘could only fight at sea’. Alma, Balaklava, and Inkerman changed their minds. It is fitting therefore that the highest medal for valour in the British Army should have its origin in the conflict where the legend of its indomitable courage was born.

  Acknowledgements

  To write about the long-forgotten heroes of the Crimean War has been a privilege, and I am very grateful to Alex Clarke at Penguin for allowing me to undertake it.

  To even attempt it would have been impossible without the first-hand accounts left by those heroes themselves. I have tried to preserve the authenticity of these by using their contemporary spelling (including the erroneous ‘Sebastopol’ for modern ‘Sevastopol’ and the ‘off’ rather than ‘ov’ suffix for Russian names), and also wherever possible by reproducing peculiarities of style and voice. Among the many I’ve consulted I owe special thanks to: Albert Mitchell of the 13th Light Dragoons, Timothy Gowing of the 7th Royal Fusiliers, Captain Tipping of the Grenadier Guards, Captain Wilson of the Coldstream Guards, Colonel Sterling and Surgeon Munro of the 93rd Sutherland Highlanders, and Lord George Paget of the Light Brigade. I must also gratefully acknowledge the massive debt owed to the contemporary chroniclers of the expedition: the writer Alexander Kinglake, and Times Correspondent William Howard Russell. These men were there.

  But there are others who might almost as well have been, and I would have been lost without the invaluable guidance of the Crimean War Research Society. Of the many members who have given me help and encouragement I would particularly like to thank Tom Muir, Major Colin Robins OBE, FRHistS, and The Hon. Secretary David Cliff, who has bravely given my manuscript a ‘historical proof-read’ for accuracy. I have also been honoured with assistance from scholars in the Crimea, and am especially grateful to Daniel Berjitsky, senior research historian at the Sherimetievs Museum, for bringing the re
ality of the Siege so vividly to life. Most of all, I would like to thank Manita Mishina of Sevastopol, who not only shared unstintingly her own extensive knowledge of the campaign, but even persuaded eminent local specialists to walk me round the various battlefields. Manita has been the unsung heroine behind many other works on the Crimean War, and I am delighted to have the opportunity to acknowledge her quite unique contribution in this field. I have been extremely fortunate in the help of all these experts, and if I’ve still managed to go wrong then I’m afraid I have only myself to blame.

  In the modern world, thanks are due also to Kevin Lees of the ‘Jersey Militia’ for educating me in the various firearms of the period; to my copy-editor Trevor Horwood for his meticulous and sensitive work on the manuscript; to my agent Victoria Hobbs for her unwavering faith and support; and (as always) to my friends and family for their severely tried patience. To write this book has been a dream of mine for many years, and it is only the generous support of so many people that has enabled it at last to come true.

  He just wanted a decent book to read ...

  Not too much to ask, is it? It was in 1935 when Allen Lane, Managing Director of Bodley Head Publishers, stood on a platform at Exeter railway station looking for something good to read on his journey back to London. His choice was limited to popular magazines and poor-quality paperbacks – the same choice faced every day by the vast majority of readers, few of whom could afford hardbacks. Lane’s disappointment and subsequent anger at the range of books generally available led him to found a company – and change the world.

  We believed in the existence in this country of a vast reading public for intelligent books at a low price, and staked everything on it’

  Sir Allen Lane, 1902–1970, founder of Penguin Books