| Description | "Every day now beginning to toll and as the cold increases so does the sickness. Amongst those who came out at first none are now left but the strong and those whose constitutions can bear all the hardships they have to undergo. The sickly men, poor fellows, have died off long ago, but all the new reinforcements that come out suffer dreadfully to the rate of 80 a day. In his own Regiment only 300 men left out the thousand that left Manchester..... and only 4 officers out of 24" Now spending 9 out of 10 nights in the trenches "where sleep would be fatal." Sebastopol "a pretty town" but now in a dreadful state "dead lying about unburied and cholera raging as well." "I hear that some Militia Regiments are ordered to do duty at Gibraltar and Malta. I wonder how they will like leaving their homes. The officers particularly who, I should not think ever bargained for such a service." "Poor Colonel Yorke (General John Yorke, CB, of Plas Newydd, Llangollen, Denbighshire (1814 - 1890), General in the Army, and Colonel of the 11th Hussars, late Lt. Colonel 1st Royal Dragoon Guards, which Regiment he commanded in the Crimea, where he was severely wounded at Balaclava when the Heavy Brigade held back in support of the Light Brigade, came under heavy Russian artillery fire. Colonel Yorke "received a wound which cruelly shattered his leg, and he was disabled for life." (Kinglake, "The Invasion of the Crimea," vol 5, p.292 - 293) Mr Yorke (Simon Yorke of Erdigg, 1811 - 94) of Erdiggs brother, was very badly wounded the other day (He commanded the Dragoon Regiment at Manchester last year) in such a charge of cavalry. It would have done your heart good to have seen it. Those fine fellows! Tho' they were galloping to certain death nothing could stop them, but out of 800 only 300 ever came back. Nothing worse than to see the suffering of the horses. "I saw one at Alma that had its hind leg taken completely off by a shell, it was just hanging on by a bit of skin. The poor beast kept looking round every minute and it made an effort to move as if it could not make out what had happened. I took out a pistol and shot him through the heart as the most merciful thing I could do." Horses "now living on a pound and a half a barley a day, not a bit of hay to be had for love or money. The poor beasts are nothing more than ribs and a tail and can barely carry their own weight." "I am very glad that I did not take the sword that you have in your house with me; it is not strong enough. It requires something tolerably stiff to go right through a man up to the hilt." |