They began volley fire at the oncoming wall of charging Russian horse soldiers and stood their ground until the charge collapsed against their rifle fire. It is said that one of the Highlanders was able to reach out and touch the face of a fallen mount as it lay within arm’s length of him. Ever after, the stand was known as “The Thin Red Line.”
The second main action of the day occurred when the main body of Russian horse soldiers entered the southern valley. General Sir James Scarlett had brought up the Heavy Brigade at this time. The name is no exaggeration, as both men and horses were large and stronger than usual, a hammer rather than a rapier on the battlefield. General Scarlett ordered 300 of these from the 2nd and 6th Dragoons uphill against the Russian force of 2,000. It seemed foolhardy, but the Heavy Brigade cavalry smashed through their lighter Russian counterparts, driving them from the field with almost 300 dead. The Heavy Brigade lost only ten that day, not all of them at that charge with Scarlett.
The third and final action of the day is by far the most famous. By this time, Menshikov was entrenched in the North Valley and had cannons lining the position. It was never the intention of Lord Raglan to send the Light Brigade down into the “Valley of Death.” He saw that the guns in the captured redoubts on Causeway Heights were being removed by the Russians and sent a message to Lord Lucan that could have been better phrased. He also made the mistake of sending it with a galloper named Captain Lewis Edward Nolan, who added his own twist to the disaster.
The message to Lucan read as follows: “Lord Raglan wishes the cavalry to advance rapidly to the front—follow the enemy and try to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns. Troop Horse Artillery may accompany. French cavalry is on your left. Immediate.”
Raglan also gave the verbal instruction: “Tell Lord Lucan the cavalry is to attack immediately.”
Captain Nolan reached Lord Lucan with the message and passed it on. Lucan could not see the guns to which the note referred and queried which ones were meant. In exasperation, Captain Nolan replied, “There, my lord, is your enemy, there are your guns!” and he gestured angrily in the direction of the redoubts, which was also the direction of the main Russian position. The arrogant Lucan was infuriated by the man’s tone—and perhaps the implication that he was deliberately delaying going into action.
Lord Lucan ordered the Light Brigade and Lord Cardigan into the North Valley—against the wrong guns. Cardigan pointed out that three sides of the valley were covered in entrenched cannon positions, but Lucan told him haughtily that Raglan had ordered it and “We have no choice but to obey.”
The Light Brigade soldiers were also thirsty for glory. The Heavy Brigade had seen action, but the Lights had hardly been used. Without the slightest hesitation, all 660 of them advanced into the North Valley, led by Cardigan. As the Russian guns opened up, Captain Nolan galloped alongside Cardigan, but was killed before he could point out the error.
On the north and south sides of the valley were almost fifty cannons and nineteen infantry battalions. At the end were eight more cannon pointing directly at the Light Brigade and four full Russian regiments—the entire remaining army under Menshikov.
The Light Brigade cantered at first under heavy fire, slowly building to a full gallop toward the Russian guns. Men were torn from their saddles by rifle bullets and shell fragments. The Russians could not believe what they were seeing and reacted too slowly to protect the guns once it became clear the Lights were going to make it to the end of the valley. The Cossacks around the guns panicked and ran. The Light Brigade killed any remaining gunners and then charged the Russian cavalry, driving them back. They had taken the guns, but without support could not dream of holding them. The horses were exhausted and many of the surviving men were wounded. They turned then and began to make their way back to their starting place—and the cannon fire began once more as they rode.
It took only twenty minutes, start to finish. 195 survived out of 661. Six of the then new Victoria Crosses were awarded for bravery.
The charge should be put in context. The Crimean War had its fair share of horrors, from the silent terror of cholera, to the stench of men dying of dysentery and infected wounds. It was here that Florence Nightingale introduced the idea of nursing and the concept of sanitation to a British battlefield. There were few things to lift the spirits of the British public as they read the reports. The Battle of Balaclava provided one of the most extra-ordinary examples of courage in warfare—equal to the Spartans at Thermopylae. You must remember that the Russians had broken before the Thin Red Line—and again against a small number of heavy cavalry. The Light Brigade faced almost fifty cannons and literally thousands of rifles and yet did not falter. As one French officer said, “C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre.” “It is magnificent but it is not war.” Tennyson’s poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade” is still one of the most famous pieces in the English language.
3. RORKE’S DRIFT
January 22 and 23, 1879
The Boer Wars between Dutch and British forces were over control of lands in southern Africa, rich with diamonds, gold and timber. The Zulu armies of Shaka, then Cetewayo, fought against the encroachment on their lands by both sides. Britain attempted to arrange a “protectorate” with Cetewayo, but when he refused, they invaded Zulu lands, led by Lord Chelmsford. He entered Cetewayo’s territory with only 5,000 British troops and 8,000 natives. His objective was to occupy Cetewayo’s royal kraal (cattle enclosure or village), advancing on it from three directions. Accordingly, he split his force into three columns.
Chelmsford entered Zulu lands at Rorke’s Drift, a farm named after its deceased owner, James Rorke. They made the farm buildings into a supply depot and moved on.
The Battle of Isandlwana involved Chelmsford’s No. 3 central column, a mixed force of cavalry, infantry and Royal Engineers. They had made steady progress into Zulu land, attacking a minor cattle kraal and crossing a river. Mounted troops scouted ahead to Isipezi Hill and found no sign of a Zulu force in the area, so Chelmsford decided to make a camp at Isandlwana. Perhaps because of the stony ground, he did not give orders to fortify the camp in any way.
On the morning of January 22, Chelmsford went with about half his full force (2,500) in scouting parties, searching for signs of Zulu forces. There were many sightings as the area began to fill with Cetewayo’s warriors. A message came through from the camp at Isandlwana: “For God’s sake come with all your men; the camp is surrounded and will be taken unless helped.”
By the time Chelmsford made it back to Isandlwana, the camp had been overrun and 1,300 men killed. The defenders had fought bravely, but a Zulu force of 10,000 had attacked with ferocious energy, using their assegai spears to cut their way in, despite rifle fire and bayonets. They lost about 3,000 warriors in the attack.
Chelmsford did not believe this could have happened at first. Not everyone under his command had been killed—about 55 British and 300 natives survived, while the Zulus paraded in the red uniforms and raided the stores before moving off. The whole area was filled with hostile impis (attack groups), right back to Rorke’s Drift. Chelmsford chose to retreat back to the border. His small column formed a hostile camp for the night, and as darkness fell, they saw the flames of Rorke’s Drift in the distance. It too had been attacked by the warriors of Cetewayo that day.
The main house at Rorke’s Drift had been converted into a hospital as well as a supply store. It had eleven rooms, stone exterior walls and a thatched roof. There was also a stone-walled chapel being used as a store, and a few other outbuildings in the compound. When firing was heard on the morning of January 22, an evacuation was considered, but the extraordinary speed of the Zulu impis across open ground meant that any attempt to move the sick and injured would be thwarted. Although they only had a hundred men fit to fight, the decision was taken to fortify the compound and wait it out.
A Zulu impi of 4,500, under Prince Dabulamanzi kaMpande, attacked the compound late in the afternoon. Their ass
egais could not reach through the piled grain bags and biscuit boxes at first and they were thrown back by point-blank rifle fire. The initial attacks were unsuccessful before they managed to set fire to the hospital building, get in, and start killing the helpless patients. Private Alfred Henry Hook used his bayonet to hold them back while Private John Williams cut through an internal wall and pulled the sick and injured through to relative safety.
The battle raged on all day and long into the night before the Zulus finally moved on at dawn on the January 23. They left four to five hundred of their dead around the barricaded compound. The British had lost 17 dead and 10 seriously wounded. For the individual acts of bravery during the siege, eleven Victoria Crosses were awarded to the following: Lieutenants Chard and Bromhead, Privates Alfred Hook, Frederick Hitch, Robert Jones, William Jones, James Dalton, John Williams and Corporal Allen. Surgeon James Reynolds was awarded his VC for tending to the wounded under fire. Christian Schiess received the first VC awarded to a soldier serving in the Natal Native force. He was a Swiss volunteer and had killed three men in hand-to-hand fighting, preventing a break into the main house.
You could do a lot worse than seeing the film Zulu, with Michael Caine playing Lieutenant Bromhead. It gives an idea of the sort of extraordinary bravery witnessed on both sides of this conflict.
4. THE SOMME
July 1, 1916
One of the many and complex reasons that World War I began was that Germany invaded Belgium. Britain was bound by treaty to defend the country. Similar alliances across Europe drew in all the great powers one by one. It may have begun with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Serbia, but that was merely the spark that set the world on fire.
The Somme was the river in France that Edward III had crossed just before the battle of Crécy. The area has had a great deal of British blood soaking into its earth over the centuries, but never more than on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, July 1, 1916.
Before the British army marched into the machine-gun tracks crisscrossing the battlefield, General Sir Douglas Haig had ordered eight days of artillery bombardment. This had not proved to be a successful tactic over the previous two years and it did not on that day. One flaw was that the barrage had to stop to allow the Allies to advance, so as soon as it stopped, the Germans knew the attack was coming and made their preparations. They had solid, deep bunkers of concrete and wood that resisted the barrage very well indeed. Their barbed-wire emplacements were also still intact after the shells stopped.
At 7:28 in the morning, the British forces detonated two huge mines, then three smaller ones near German lines. The idea was probably to intimidate the enemy, but instead, they acted as a final confirmation of the attack.
The slaughter began at 7:30, when the British soldiers rose up out of their trenches and tried to cross 800 yards in the face of machine-gun fire. A few actually made it to the German front line in that first surge before they were cut down. There were 60,000 British casualties and 19,000 dead. An entire generation fell on a single morning, making it the worst disaster of British military history. Who can say what their lives would have meant and achieved had they survived?
There is a touching poem called “For the Fallen” written by Laurence Binyon in 1914 that is quoted at every Remembrance Day service. This is an extract from it, remembering those who gave their lives for their country. The second verse is particularly poignant.
They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted:
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
5. THE BATTLES OF LEXINGTON AND CONCORD
April 19, 1775
Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Paul Revere’s Ride”
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled;
Here once the embattled farmers stood;
And fired the shot heard round the world.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Concord Hymn”
Paul Revere’s Ride
The Battles of Lexington and Concord, fought on April 19, 1775, marked the beginning of the Revolutionary War. They were fought in Massachusetts, in a string of towns near Boston. The towns involved were Lexington, Concord, Lincoln, Menotony, which we now call Arlington, and Cambridge.
On April 18, the British army, led by Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith, left Boston for Concord. There were eight hundred soldiers on a mission to capture a cache of weapons and other supplies that the militia in Massachusetts had hidden in Concord. The British had no idea that the arsenal in question was no longer there. The Minutemen had received intelligence reports weeks before, giving them time to move the equipment to a secure location. The patriot militias were called Minutemen because, although they weren’t professional soldiers, these farmers and fathers still had to be ready at a minute’s notice.
Lucky for the patriots, they were about to receive another warning, this time of the imminent British advance. Schoolchildren everywhere are familiar with the name of Paul Revere because his midnight ride to warn the colonists was made legend by Longfellow’s poem, although not while the hero was alive. Really, though, there was more than one rider.
In Charlestown, a man named Dr. Joseph Warren paid two men to ride from to Lexington and Concord to notify the Minutemen that the British army was coming. The first men who rode to warn the militias were William Dawes and Paul Revere. As the story goes, as he rode, Paul Revere yelled, “The British are coming! The British are coming!” In actuality, what he called to the houses was “The regulars are out!”
On their way, Revere and Dawes met a doctor named Samuel Prescott, who joined their ride. They made Lexington at midnight, notifying John Hancock and Samuel Adams of the approach of the “regulars.”
Revere, Dawes, and Prescott were captured by the British at a roadblock in Lincoln. Prescott and Dawes were able to slip away and Prescott reached Concord to let them know that the British were on their way. Revere’s horse was taken away; when they released him, he had to walk back to Lexington. He arrived in Lexington in time to see the first shots of the battle.
The first shot fired is famously known as the “shot heard round the world,” written about by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his poem “Concord Hymn.” The gunfire launched the Battles of Lexington and Concord, touching off the war that would win the thirteen colonies of British North America their independence from Britain.
At Lexington, as the British army advanced, the Minutemen realized they were terribly outnumbered. They fled. In Concord, though, it was a different story. A group of patriots battled three companies of British soldiers; in this battle, it was the King’s men who turned and ran.
Over the next few hours, more patriots arrived. The colonists inflicted more punishment on the British soldiers marching back from Concord. Captain Smith’s group was saved at Lexington by British reinforcements commanded by Lord Percy Hugh, and both regiments, 1,900 men in total, withdrew to Charlestown.
Most of the British made it back safely, but they didn’t capture any important weapons or supplies. Their mission was unsuccessful.
6. THE ALAMO
February 23–March 8, 1836
Texas, the 28th state of the United States, was independent for almost ten years before joining the United States in 1845. Before 1836, Texas was part of New Spain, a Mexican colony. In order to gain independence from Mexico, the colonists in Texas f
ought the Texas Revolution, a battle that lasted from October 2, 1835, until April 21, 1836.
The Mexicans wanted to keep Texas as one of their territories. They had been independent themselves for only about fifteen years. Before that, Spain controlled Mexico and the Mexican territories. It was because of Spanish policy that there were so many colonists in the area now known as Texas. When Spain was in control of Mexico, immigration was encouraged because they Spanish needed colonists to populate the northern territories. When Mexico gained its independence in 1821, its government continued the Spanish immigration and colonization policies. Sales agents known as empresarios courted American citizens with promises of cheap land: in the United States, you had to pay $1.25 per acre, while if you went to Texas, an acre of land would only cost you 12 cents.
In 1835, the president of Mexico was General Antonio López de Santa Anna Perez de Lebron. He abolished the constitution that had been set up in 1824, taking the power away from the local governments, and making sure that control would be concentrated in his presidency. Santa Anna was nervous about the expansion of the United States, and he wanted to be sure that Texas would remain a part of Mexico.
The colonists in Texas didn’t feel the same way. While the colonies were very successful, they were writhing under the Mexican system. Under the Mexican laws, trade was very restricted and all official business was supposed to go through Mexico City, which encouraged smuggling, and meant that if you lived far from Mexico City, you’d had to deal with extra taxes and hassles. Texans had always gotten their goods from Louisiana, and this economic relationship served only to strengthen their ideological bonds with the United States.
There were a number of reasons why Texans wanted their independence, but the breaking point was a fight between a Mexican soldier and a colonist. Settler Jesse McCoy was beaten to death with a musket, and what had been a discussion reached a fever pitch. The first battle of the Texas Revolution was the Battle of Gonzalez, on October 1, 1835.
The Dangerous Book for Boys Page 14