The British Expedition to the CrimeaRussell, William Howard, Sir
History
The British Expedition to the Crimea
Russell, William Howard, Sir
Crimean War, 1853-1856
On Sunday, the 28th of May, Sir George Brown left the barracks at
Scutari, and proceeded to Varna in the _Banshee_. Before his departure
orders were issued that the men belonging to the Light Division under
his command should embark early the following morning--the baggage to be
on board at six o'clock, the men at nine o'clock. At daylight on the
29th of May the _réveillé_ woke up the camp of the Light Division, and
the regiments were ready for inspection at five o'clock. The Light
Division, which was destined to play an important part in this campaign,
and whose highest glory was to emulate the successes of the famous
legion of the Peninsula whose name they bore, consisted of the following
regiments:--The 7th Fusileers, the 23rd Fusileers, the 19th Foot, the
33rd or Wellington's Regiment, the 77th Foot, the 88th Connaught
Rangers, and the Rifle Brigade, 2nd Battalion. They formed in front of
their tents, and after a rapid inspection were ordered to strike tents.
In a moment or two file after file of canvas cones collapsed and fell to
the earth, the poles were unspliced and packed up, the canvas rolled up
and placed in layers on bullock carts, the various articles of
regimental baggage collected into the same vehicles,--ants in a swarm
could not have been more active and bustling than the men; they formed
into masses, broke up again, moved in single files in little companies,
in broken groups all over the ground, while the araba drivers looked
stupidly on, exhibiting the most perfect indifference to the
appropriation of their carts, and evidently regarding the Giaours as
unpleasant demons, by whose preternatural energies they were to be
agitated and perturbed as punishment for their sins. It would seem,
indeed, very difficult to re-form this shifting, diffusive crowd of
red-coats into the steady columns which were drawn up so rigidly a short
time previously along the canvas walls, now fluttering in the dust or
packed helplessly in bales. Their labours were, however, decisive, and
in some half-hour or so they had transformed the scene completely, and
had left nothing behind them but the bare circles of baked earth,
marking where tents had stood, the blackened spot where once the
camp-fires blazed, tethering sticks, and a curious _débris_ of jam-pots,
preserved meat cases, bottles, sweetmeat boxes, sardine tins, broken
delf, bones of fowl and ham, pomatum pots, and tobacco pipes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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