by V. A. Stuart
The true reason for Nolan’s action will never be known. A shell burst to Lord Cardigan’s right and a splinter from it struck Nolan in the chest, killing him instantly so that—by an ironic twist of Fate—he who was the cause of the tragic misinterpretation of Lord Raglan’s order, became the first to pay the price of it. The sword fell from his hand but the hand remained raised, high above his head, and a ghastly scream broke from him, echoing above the thunder of cannon-fire and the crackle of musketry. Yet, even in death, he did not fall from his horse. The animal wheeled round in terror and, although his body slumped, it was still in the saddle as his charger passed through the ranks of the oncoming 13th Light Dragoons, only slipping from it when, at last, the Light Brigade had passed him by.
The advance continued, its pace quickening a little now as, from three sides, the awful hail of fire opened great gaps in the ranks, mowing down men and horses, who had no defense against it. Alex, at Phillip’s side, felt his heart turn to stone as the shells burst among the men of the 11th. Every man’s instinct was to end the unendurable ordeal by speeding up the advance but Lord Cardigan sternly restrained them, aware that to do so now would be disastrous. They still had nearly three quarters of a mile to cover before they reached the guns they had been ordered to charge . . . .
To the shocked and helpless spectators on the Sapouné Ridge, it now appeared certain that the five splendid regiments under Lord Cardigan’s command were riding to their doom. Men wept and cried out in horrified protest. General Bosquet, deeply moved by such a display of disciplined courage, was heard to exclaim, “C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre . . .” and an old French general, tears streaming down his cheeks, gripped the arm of General Buller’s A.D.D. “Pauvre garçon!” he said, as if seeking to comfort him, “Mon Dieu, j’ai vu des batailles, mais ceci est trop. Que vont-ils faire?”
The dreadful advance went on. The Light Brigade were within the range of the guns which were their objective now and, in a frenzy to come, at last, to grips with the gunners who were wreaking such terrible havoc amongst them, the 17th Lancers began to press forward. Lord Cardigan, without looking round, laid his sword across Captain Morris’s chest and called out, above the din, “Steady . . . steady, the 17th Lancers!” Abashed, Morris dropped back.
“Close to your centre!” “Look to your dressing on the left there!” The troop commanders shouted. “Close in! Close in to the centre!”
This was now the most frequently repeated order and both Alex and Phillip echoed it, as the toll taken in men and horses increased and the charging line narrowed, became more ragged and unevenly spaced. Riderless horses added to the confusion; instinct and training impelled them to seek the familiar formation, to return to the squadron lines, after their riders had been killed. Wounded men, too brave to seek safety in retreat, endeavored to keep up with their unwounded comrades and found that their bravery was not enough . . . they fell back, bringing disorder to the line behind them.
Compared with the Heavy Brigade charge in which he had taken part that morning, Alex realized that this slow advance under such an inferno of fire was the greatest ordeal which he, or the men with him, could ever be called upon to endure. The Heavies’ charge had taken ten minutes; it had been short, they had come almost instantly to grips with the enemy and had been able to meet that enemy on equal terms, man for man, if not in equal numbers. And they had won a significant victory.
But the Light Brigade could not achieve victory. Here, in this mile-long advance along the North Valley, they had no weapons with which to answer the hail of shot and shell which rained down upon them. Only British discipline kept the men of the Light Brigade from breaking ranks and dashing forward, in disorder, to attack the guns. Only British courage kept the men of the Light Brigade, the men of his old regiment, in their rapidly shrinking lines, still moving forward. It was a matchless courage which, he knew from experience, few other troops possessed and, as he watched the men about him fall and the rest continue to advance, Alex Sheridan felt a glow of heartbreaking pride in these splendid soldiers who were his countrymen, his flesh and blood, to whom he had returned, after the long years of exile.
The wheel had turned full circle, he thought. He was back, once more, with the 11th Hussars. With them, he had learnt his trade and with them, as a boy of seventeen, he had begun his military career . .. this was his regiment. Now he expected death as, he supposed, they all did—they were soldiers, they could recognize the odds against them. Now he was afraid as, no doubt, they all were—yet he was proud to think that, if death must come to him, it would come in such company as theirs. He was back where he belonged.
For a fleeting moment, he let his thoughts stray to Emmy and he saw her face, as he had seen it earlier that morning, floating before him. But he knew it was a vision, a dream existing only in his imagination . . . a long way from reality.
Reality lay ahead. Reality for him, and for the pitifully few survivors of the Light Brigade, was the guns, shrouded in smoke, belching forth flames. The guns were quite close to them now and the charge became a wild gallop, as the Russian gunners fired their last salvo and then, in terror, when the depleted first line of the 17th Lancers charged them, crawled beneath their guns.
The 17th were followed by the 11th Hussars. Alex, conscious neither of fear nor of pity, found himself at Lord Cardigan’s heels, passing right through the battery, hacking and slashing at the gunners as he went, with Phillip, shouting a stirring “View Hulloa!” at his side.
Behind the line of guns were ranged the great, unmoving mass of Russian cavalry. A group of these, in blue Lancer uniform, started to form up to their right and Colonel Douglas, expecting reinforcements and having no orders to retire, shouted to Phillip that they must charge. Wearily, the eighty men of the 11th—all that were left of them—realigned themselves and charged. The Russians broke and retreated before them and they galloped on, still in the belief that reinforcements from the Heavy Brigade must be following behind them.
But none came. Lord Lucan had halted the Heavy Brigade when, coming under even heavier fire from the Fedioukine Hills than the Light Brigade had done, they suffered very severe casualties, Lucan himself was wounded in the leg, one of his staff killed and two others wounded. He said bitterly, to Lord William Paulet riding at his side,“They have sacrificed the Light Brigade—they shall not have the Heavy, if I can help it.” He ordered his trumpeter to sound the halt and withdrew the Heavy Brigade out of range of the Russian guns, but he held it, as close as he could, with the intention of covering the Light Brigade’s retreat.
Unaware of this, the 11th drove the Russian Lancers back until, realizing at last that the expected reinforcements had not appeared, Colonel Douglas decided that the time had come to break off the attack and retire. But now Cossacks attacked them on the flank, firing their pistols with deadly effect and a second regiment of Lancers loomed up on their left, to harass their retreat.
Joined by Lord George Paget, with the remnants of the 4th Light Dragoons, the 11th continued to fall back, until Alex saw that they were about to be taken in the rear. He shouted a warning and Lord George called on his small, exhausted handful of men to make a stand. “Halt—front!” he bade them hoarsely. “If you don’t halt front, my boys we’re done.”
The men of both regiments obeyed as coolly as if they had been on parade. Faced by a resolute line, the Lancers and Cossacks who had been pursuing them, also halted and finally—inexplicably—drew off. There remained the newly arrived squadrons of Lancers in their rear, which now started to form up, as if with the intention of taking the offensive and cutting off their retreat. Alex glanced at Phillip and said grimly, “We are going to have to fight our way out of this, I fear.”
“Yes.” Phillip’s smoke-blackened face twisted into a rueful smile, which swiftly faded. “I fear you are right.”
In response to the urging of their few surviving officers and Lord George Paget, the men of the 11th and the 4th, now reduced to a total stre
ngth of less than fifty, again formed as compact a line as they could. They faced about and, as fast as their tired horses could carry them, charged the Lancers who were seeking to cut them off. Their charge met with little resistance. The Lancers wheeled, evidently afraid to meet it and they galloped past almost unscathed, only halting when they reached the silent line of guns against which their original charge had been made.
And now they, with the other shattered regiments of the Light Brigade, had the mile-long gauntlet of the North Valley to run a second time. Now, weary and wounded, many of them on foot, others leading lamed and bleeding horses, they must once again brave the Russian guns—although these had been rendered less effective by the magnificent attack of the French Chasseurs d’Afrique on the Fedioukine batteries, which they had charged and silenced to aid their British allies’ retreat.
Nevertheless, for Alex, as for a great many others, the return through the valley was the worst part of the ordeal.
The guns on the Causeway Heights still dealt out their awful carnage; the riflemen massed on the slopes above them poured down a hail of Minié balls from safe concealment, and roving bands of vengeful Cossacks rode down the lame and the unhorsed, the wounded and the disarmed, showing them no mercy.
The whole valley was a shambles, the ground strewn with dead and dying men and hideously mutilated horses. Ahead of them, as the 11th began their painful retreat to their own lines, small groups of men, their uniforms so spattered with mud and blood as to be almost unrecognizable, straggled back, some walking, some leading a horse, miraculously unscathed, on which a badly injured man clung weakly to the saddle. Others, barely able to hobble themselves, dragged a dying charger which they refused to abandon and sought, even in their own extremity, to save.
Alex dismounted beside a wounded sergeant of the 8th and, with difficulty—for there seemed to be no strength in his arms—picked him up and got him, somehow, on to his animal’s back. It was then that he realized, for the first time, that he had been wounded himself. His right arm was stiff and soaked in blood and he staggered along, clinging to his horse’s stirrup, in a state of dazed half-consciousness and well-nigh unendurable pain.
Phillip, too, was walking now, having yielded his horse to another wounded man and their pace got gradually slower, with Phillip dropping behind. Alex did not see the Cossacks who attacked him, did not hear their approach but he heard Phillip’s voice call his name and turning, saw that his brother-in-law was surrounded. He lurched towards them, lunging blindly with his sword-point and, by a lucky chance rather than skill, succeeded in unhorsing the nearest of Phillip’s attackers. The rest closed in on them both with the object, he supposed dully—since they did not use their lances—of taking them prisoner.
Phillip was fighting them valiantly but his own efforts, Alex realized, were slow and ineffectual. They ceased altogether when a Cossack lance struck his sword-arm, knocking his weapon from his grasp and he went down under a blow from a pistol butt. Then, recovering consciousness, he was aware of an English voice, close to his ear, begging him to lie still.
“We drove them Cossack swine off, sir, don’t you worry. And we’ll get you back . . . it’s not more’n another quarter of a mile now and there’s a regiment of the Heavies coming out to meet us. If you can sit a horse, sir . . . .”
But Alex knew he could no longer sit a horse. He tried to shake his head, to tell these troopers of the 11th who had saved him that they must leave him and go on to seek safety themselves. But seemingly they did not hear him, for he found himself being bundled into the saddle of a big bay and held there by two of them, since he could not sit upright. He tried to look round for Phillip but he was nowhere to be seen and one of the troopers, in answer to his faintly croaked question, shook his head regretfully
“Them Cossacks got his lordship, sir. I’m sorry, we done what we could. We’ll bring his body back, sir, if we can manage it.”
After that, their voices and the continued roar of the guns became a meaningless blur of sound, drowned in his pain . . . .
On 6 November the first of the ships bringing the wounded from Balaclava began to unload at Scutari.
Emmy Sheridan stood on the rickety landing stage, a shawl wrapped about her against the cold, and watched apprehensively as the men were lowered into caiques and rowed to shore. Behind her, the great, imposing bulk of the Barrack Hospital loomed majestically, looking from the outside like a sultan’s palace. But Emmy, who had been a frequent visitor there during the weeks which had followed her return to Constantinople, was aware that, from the inside, it presented a very different picture. It was dank and dark, a maze of long, echoing corridors and huge, badly ventilated rooms, the floors cracked, the walls streaming with damp. The whole place was filthy and verminous and, as a hospital, it was deplorably inadequate to care for the thousands of sick and wounded men who were now crowded into it. Destitute of furniture, lacking medical supplies, drugs, comforts and proper cooking facilities, it was also short of doctors and surgeons and staffed by untrained, overworked orderlies.
There were no beds; the sick lay in long lines, half naked, on the floor, the majority without bedding, and it was often days and sometimes weeks before they were examined or had their wounds dressed by a surgeon. In addition, there was a shortage of water.
Emmy had been appalled when, coming from Therapia to await the expected arrival of Miss Nightingale and her band of forty, officially-appointed nurses, she had paid her first visit to the hospital.
She had done what she could—little enough, in all conscience —to ease the lot of the unfortunate sufferers who occupied its dark and foul-smelling wards. As a guest of the British ambassador, Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, her visits had been tolerated by Dr Menzies and Major Sillery, who were in charge of the Barrack Hospital . . . but they had not been welcome. And when Emmy had told Dr Menzies of her nursing training and experience and offered her services to him, he had told her flatly that she must wait until Miss Nightingale arrived and make application to her.
“Miss Florence Nightingale,” he had said, with restrained coldness, “has been appointed Superintendent of the Female Nursing Establishment of the English General Hospitals in Turkey by the Secretary at War. I cannot authorize you to nurse here. And frankly, Mrs Sheridan, as a lady of quality and the wife of an officer, I can’t imagine why you should have any desire to do so. You’ve seen the conditions under which we are compelled to work . . . how can anyone of gentle birth possibly want to share them?”
So . . .she had waited, with growing impatience and despair, Emmy recalled, and the most she had been able to do for the sick and suffering had been to provide them with a few comforts, paid for out of her own pocket. More than once, she had been tempted to give up the idea of waiting for Miss Nightingale’s arrival and return to Therapia, where Charlotte and Arthur Cassell were comfortably established at the ambassador’s summer residence, while the latter enjoyed a lengthy convalescence.
But then had come the news of the Battle of Balaclava and she had learned of the terrible casualties suffered by the Cavalry Division. Anxiety for Alex had kept her where she was, waiting, hoping . . . and losing. A hope. She had received a second letter from him, and one from Phillip, both almost a month old by the time they reached her and, since then, she had heard nothing, save a host of rumors—each more alarming than the last.
Emmy shivered, as she watched the first batch of wounded being loaded on to stretchers, for the painful, jolting climb up to the Barrack Hospital, praying that neither her husband nor her brother might be among them. More caiques were now coming up to the landing stage and she peered down, searching for a familiar face, yet dreading to see one.
Miss Nightingale and 38 nurses, who had also heard the news of Balaclava, had arrived the previous day. The nurses included fourteen hospital nurses but the remaining 24, she had been pleased to see, were Catholic and Anglican Sisters. They had been formally and courteously received by Dr Menzies and Major Sillery, but both doct
ors had made it abundantly clear to Miss Nightingale, as Emmy had since learned, that they considered female nurses in a military hospital “an unwise indulgence, unfavourable to military discipline and to the recovery of the patients.”
Miss Nightingale had listened to them with dignified politeness, offering no comment. She had received Emmy’s offer of her services at first with a certain understandable mistrust but finally, when she learned more about the new recruit, with gratitude.Yet even this did not mean that Emmy had gained entry to the wards as anything but a visitor. Miss Nightingale, having settled her party into five cramped, virtually unfurnished rooms—which were all that had been provided for them—soon found that in spite of the courteous welcome they had been accorded few, if any, of the doctors intended to make use of their services. “The doctors do not want us,” she explained to Emmy. “Therefore we must wait. No nurse is to enter a ward, unless at the express invitation of a doctor. But when they do call on us—as eventually they will have to—we will be ready. Go back to your lodgings, Mrs Sheridan. I will send for you, I give you my word, as soon as there is work for you to do.”
And so, it seemed, she must continue to wait, Emmy thought sadly, as she watched another line of stretchers wending its way up the precipitous slope, the Turkish bearers frequently pausing for breath. They set down their burdens roughly, indifferent to the agonized cries of the unfortunate men to whom this rough handling was torture.
Suddenly unable to endure the sight and sound of this suffering any longer, she approached one of the litters and, kneeling in the mud beside it, sought to ease the cramped position of the man who lay huddled upon it. Then, to her horror, she recognized him and smothered a cry.