WHO BLUNDERED?

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 57, 7 March 1936, Page 7 (Supplement)

WHO BLUNDERED?

CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE. GUNS NOT SPECIFIED. Everybody knows that the charge of the Light Brigade ought never to have happened, but Tennyson scorned to explain who had blundered, and most of us since then have never bothered to find out. An exhibition of Crimean relics which was opened on December 19 at the Royal United Service Museum, London, supplies the answer. It contains the original three dispatches which passed from Lord Raglan, the Commander in Chief, to Lord Lucan, who was in command of the cavalry. The wonder is (says tlio "Manchester Guardian") that Lord Lucan was able to understand any of them, for they were scribbled in a semi-illegible pencil scrawl by Airey, Raglan's quartermaster-general. The third and historic dispatch is: "Lord Raglan wishes the cavalry to advance rapidly to the front, follow the enemy, and try to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns." Airey did not trouble to specify the guns, which were in fact some captured British artillery and not the large body of strongly posted Russian artillery which the Light Brigade charged. The message was carried by Captain Nolan, who was killed on the field of Balaclava, and his cloak and bridle are to be seen in the exhibition within a yard of the fatal dispatch which he carried. Regimental museums have contributed old sets of medals, including some of the first V.C.'s and D.C.M.'s— both these decorations were instituted during the Crimean War —and the faded light blue and yellow of the Crimean medal and the white and red of the Mutiny. But the prettiest collection of medals —fourteen in all—belonged to William Howard Russell, the "Times" correspondent, whoso articles from the Crimea on the sufferings of the troops gave Florence Nightingale the incentive to do her great work.