He arrived in the Crimea on New Year's Day 1855, when all the celebrated historical battles were over. His martial ardour had doubtless been stirred by hearing how bravely our men swarmed up the heights at Alma, charged the Russian gunners at Balaklava, and drove back the sortie at Inkerman. When he arrived, the siege of Sebastopol had commenced in earnest, and for some time it was an engineer's campaign, in which the spade did more than the rifle, or, to speak more correctly, the musket; for very few of our men had rifles then. Disease and exhaustion from hardship slew far more than the bullet. Altogether, it was rather a trying time for a young officer full of fire and spirit, anxious to see service of that more dashing kind that appeals to the imagination. The slow advance of the trenches must have tried his somewhat impatient spirit, which, even in later years, when it might have been modified by time, was always more ready for a rapid march, a brilliant flank movement, or something of that kind. But though the trench-work must have been wearisome and distasteful to a degree, he threw himself heart and soul into it, meriting the following praise from Colonel Chesney, an eminent engineer officer: "In his humble position as an engineer subaltern he had attracted the notice of his superiors, not merely by his energy and activity (for these are not, it may be asserted, uncommon characteristics of his class), but by an extraordinary aptitude for war, developing itself amid the trench-work before Sebastopol in a personal knowledge of the enemy's movements such as no other officer attained. 'We always used to send him out to find what new move the Russians were making,' was the testimony given to his genius by one of the most distinguished officers he served under." He not only exhibited the "aptitude for war" of which Colonel Chesney speaks, but it appears that he also displayed on several occasions a great deal of that personal courage for which he afterwards became so renowned. A single incident may be taken as a specimen of many. One day as he was passing along the trenches, he overheard a heated altercation between a sapper and a corporal, both belonging to his own corps. On inquiring into the cause, he discovered that the corporal had ordered a man to stand on the parapet, where he was exposed to the enemy's fire, while the corporal, under cover, was going to hand him some gabions for repairing the parapet. Gordon at once jumped on to the parapet himself and called the corporal to join him, letting the sapper hand up the gabions from a place of safety. Gordon remained until the work was completed, in spite of the fire of the Russians, and then turning to the corporal said, "Never order a man to do anything you are afraid to do yourself."