I got back to my father’s house in Essex early in August, and immediately began to worry my mother about returning to the Crimea. Neither of us foresaw the initial expense of entering the Army, and I urged that I could live on £250 per annum, and as I had cost my parents £100 in the Navy, they would only have to find £150 more. There appeared to be no chance of my seeing more service in the Naval Brigade, for there were already questions of its being re-embarked, as had been the wish of the Admiralty for some months. It was known in London the French were not anxious to carry on the war, but that our Government thought a permanent peace could not be obtained until Russia had been further humbled, even after Sevastopol was in our hands. It was generally believed that when the fortress was taken, the British troops would go to Simferopol, and that this was not merely a fancy of my own is shown by the words of a letter written by Captain Sir William Peel from Whitehall Gardens to me the day I re-embarked for the East, _i.e._ 2nd January 1856, in which, after wishing me good luck, he says, “You will have a grand campaign this year.” My parents consented to my joining the Army,[46] and during the last week in August I wrote to the Commander-in-Chief asking for a Commission in any Light Cavalry regiment at the seat of war, forwarding a copy of the letter Lord Raglan had written to my uncle on the 21st June. My letter was posted on a Friday, and I was much disappointed when I did not receive an answer on the following Monday, and for a week made the house unbearable by my impatience. My father on the Friday promised if no answer had been received by the following Monday he would go to town and ask for an interview with Lord Hardinge; but next day, when we got the _Times_ at ten o’clock, I found I had been gazetted the previous evening to the 13th Light Dragoons, then in the Crimea. As it may seem strange that the Commander-in-Chief should accept the services of a person who had never been seen by any soldier in England, I mention Lord Raglan’s Despatch[47] on the Assault had then been received. [Illustration: CORNET WOOD, 13TH LIGHT DRAGOONS 1855] After I had been at home three weeks, I suffered pain in my arm. The inner wound, where a case-shot 5½ oz. in weight had been cut out, had healed up; but the outer wound, 2½ inches long, where the shot struck close to the joint, was painful, and I could feel something moving in it.