A Soldier's Experience; or, A Voice from the Ranks: Showing the Cost of War in Blood and Treasure. A Personal Narrative of the Crimean Campaign, from the Standpoint of the Ranks; the Indian Mutiny, and Some of its Atrocities; the Afghan Campaigns of 1863Gowing, T. (Timothy)
History
A Soldier's Experience; or, A Voice from the Ranks: Showing the Cost of War in Blood and Treasure. A Personal Narrative of the Crimean Campaign, from the Standpoint of the Ranks; the Indian Mutiny, and Some of its Atrocities; the Afghan Campaigns of 1863
Gowing, T. (Timothy)
Crimean War, 1853-1856 -- Personal narratives
The following facts may be of interest. According to the statement of
one in high position just after the war was over, Russia lost
half-a-million of men by sword, sickness, and fatigue, in forced marches
through the inhospitable regions they had to traverse. The expense of
the war that England had to bear, up to February, 1856, exceeded sixty
millions sterling; the British had to convey nearly the whole of the
French and Sardinian Armies to and fro, and nearly 400,000 tons of
military stores. Without our transports our Allies would have been
powerless--and yet our own men were dying like rotten sheep for the want
of a few tents! The Turks might well say afterwards that our Government
looked to others and forgot their own! It was not the fault of the
Government, but there was a great deal too much red tape. If men were
dying by wholesale, and the requisition for stores or necessaries was
not properly made out, or in accordance with some intricate form that
some old maid had been driven nearly mad in trying to bring out during
the forty years' peace, the articles, it mattered not what they were,
could not be had; "the return was incorrectly filled up," the men that
would go anywhere and do any thing might die! The cold was so bitter
that one could hardly feel the pen, but the return must be correct or no
stores would be sent! Thousands of tons of food, clothing, blankets, and
everything that could be thought of by a kind-hearted people at home,
were, as I have stated in an earlier chapter, lying rotting at
Balaclava, and could not be brought up to the front, for the want of a
few hundred mules, that could be procured in Asia Minor and elsewhere
for about £5 each. But I will leave this painful subject, as the deeper
we go into it, the more offensive it becomes.
AFTER THE PEACE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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