“A heavy torpor hung about the camp, voices rarely to be heard, except when the sergeants warned the duties, or summoned a funeral party to turn out. The poor men lounged about pallid, gloomy, depressed, and, worst of signs, their appetites were remarkably affected; not half of their daily portion of pork or beef could they consume; and yet, with strange perversity, the authorities chose this moment as the apt time for superadding an extra half pound of meat to the rations—the original allowance being overmuch for our feeble digestions, we were to get still more!”[212] ----- Footnote 212: _Our Veterans, etc._, 81. At length the stricken troops were moved out of the pestilential place in which they were stationed; a new decision was made, and the British army was to be taken back to Varna. The Brigade left Gevreklek early on the 16th of August, and such was the condition to which they were reduced, that three days were required to accomplish a distance of less than fifteen miles; the health of the men was so entirely broken down, that they were unable to carry their packs during the short stages of five miles each. “Seldom has there been a more dismal march. The men, very ghosts of the rosy giants who, but six short months before, had stepped so cheerily across Waterloo Bridge, now plodded along in gloomy silence. Not the most tremulous version of a song, not the feeblest effort at a joke proceeded from the haggard ranks; and, worst sign of all, even tobacco had fallen to a discount; ... and yet 'twas the flesh alone that ailed, the spirit was willing as ever; ay, that it was!”[213] ----- Footnote 213: _Our Veterans, etc._, p. 91 ----- During the period the Battalion was stationed in Bulgaria, 57 men died in the camp hospital, 28 of them from cholera and 25 from typhus fever. The chief mortality occurred among the men lately arrived from England, who appear to have been very young, with an average age and service of 21¾ and less than 2 years respectively. Many Officers were also affected by the pestilence, and the Regiment had to mourn the loss of two among them—Colonel Trevelyan, and Lieut.-Colonel Hon. R. Boyle, M.P. Five others were invalided.[214] ----- Footnote 214: Wyatt, p. 15. Lieut.-Colonels Tierney and Crombie, Lieutenants Wyndham and Fremantle, and Assistant-Surgeon Wildbore. Lieut.-Colonel Cumming had been invalided from Scutari in May, and Captain Hon. H. Byng, Aide-de-camp to General Bentinck, was sent home in July, on account of ill-health. -----