Subsequently private Cray was orderly to the heroic Lieutenant Burke, R.E. With him he passed a few days at Silistria, and then took horse to a small town on the banks of the Danube nine miles from Rustchuk. Major Wellesley had given him a sword, but this was not considered sufficient for his defence, and he was provided from the Turkish armoury with a Minié rifle and revolver. Thus armed, he joined the Ottoman forces in an action against the Russians, who under cover of a fusillade from a strong body of riflemen, were endeavouring to cross the river. Met by a fire it was impossible to stand against, they faced about and retreated in their boats to land. Cray was thus the first soldier of the British army engaged in the common cause, and for his conduct on the occasion was presented by Lieutenant Burke to Omar Pacha. His next ride was to Sistova. At the time the party entered the town an engagement was going on, and the Turks were again victorious. Journeying onwards they crossed to an island, where Lieutenant Burke and his orderly at imminent risk laid out new works, and traced batteries to complete the defences of the place. On that occasion private Cray exchanged between twenty and thirty shots with the enemy, who kept up a sharp fire upon the party from the opposite bank. In all his tours of inspection and survey, from the Danube, across the Balkan chain to Adrianople, and back again by another route to Constantinople, private Cray accompanied Lieutenant Burke, and for his usefulness and spirited conduct was made lance-corporal and afterwards attached as orderly to the Brigade-Major. The detachment at Gallipoli erected piers at the port, for landing stores, guns, &c., and prepared hospitals for the sick. The companies at Boulair assisted to form the lines on the left of the position allotted to the British troops to execute. About 1,500 men of the infantry were daily distributed for some months to the trenches and roads, and performed their tasks with ardour and cheerfulness. One man detached to Ibridgi, about fifty miles distant on the north side of the gulf of Saros, superintended the Greeks in felling and collecting brushwood and timber, for the construction of magazines, platforms, log-huts, &c. A fluctuating party, numbering at one time nine men under a corporal, was afterwards detached on this duty. When Sir George Brown, who commanded the division, took his departure for the frontier, he communicated in orders of the 6th May “his entire approbation of the general conduct, zeal, and industry of the royal sappers and miners on the works, both at Gallipoli and the camp at Boulair.”