On January 12, 1855, the Royal Irish received orders to join Major-General Sir William Eyre’s brigade, then composed of the 4th, 38th, and 50th regiments, which formed part of the third division under Lieutenant-General Sir Richard England; and leaving a guard over such of their property as they could not carry with them, they started for the Upland. Their introduction to campaigning in the Crimea was a rude one; a blizzard raged as they floundered through deep snow along a track, marked by the bodies of transport animals killed by starvation and overwork; and when late in the afternoon they reached Eyre’s camp, they were told off by companies to find shelter in the lines of other corps, for their own tents had been left standing at Balaclava from want of transport to move them. When the Royal Irish succeeded in bringing up their tents from Balaclava, they settled down in camp with the handiness of seasoned troops. Most of the officers dug out the earth inside their tents to a depth of eighteen inches, piling the soil on the curtains to keep out the wind. There was no means of draining the inside of these habitations, “holes in the ground, roofed over with canvas,” as they were well described, but as the camp of the third division was pitched on dry and porous ground the XVIIIth were not troubled with water inside their tents, nor outside had they the miseries of mud and standing pools which made the camps on low ground so wretched. As for “warming the tents,” continues Captain Kemp’s[167] statement, “in mine we improvised a stove out of an old square biscuit-tin; we let part of it into the earthen wall of the dug-out tent, and made a chimney-pipe out of round meat tins, slipped one inside the other. This chimney passing through the soil, came out clear of the canvas and was then turned upwards for a couple of feet. It answered well, though we were at times half smothered with the smoke. Wood for fuel was very scarce. A small quantity was served out for the soldiers’ cooking places, but the men had to carry it into camp on their shoulders for a distance of two miles or more. Their cooking was done in the usual trench in the open, but in very severe weather--rain, wind or snow--it was impossible to keep the fires going: this was one of the great hardships of the campaign. The cooking for the officers was done close to their tents, in holes or trenches dug by the servants, who used to throw the earth round the kitchen, and cover it with any bits of canvas they could find. Our servants had to forage for firewood, and generally brought back nothing but the wet roots of vines which they had grubbed up.”