CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 439, 27 October 1908, Page 3

CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE.

A Survivor’s Recollections.

Christchuch, October 24,

It will be fifty-four years tomorrow since the Light Brigade made its world-famous charge at the battle of Balaclava, and Mr J. Wilson, one of the survivors of that awful day, gave a newspaper reporter recently a graphic account of the charge. Mr Wilson, who resides in Sydenham, was born in 1830, and served for eight years in the British Array, belonging to the 10th and nth Hussars. When the Crimean War broke out his regiment was quartered in India, and it marched from there across tbe deserts of Arabia to the scene of action. Mr Wilson has been in New Zealand for forty-nine years. He was in the Crimea from the battle of Balaclava until the fall of Sebastopol, and has a vivid recollection of all that took place during the war, in which 400,000 men were killed fighting and 373,000 died from starvation ond disease. His horse was shot as the remuauts of the brigade were retiring after the charge, and Mr Wilson received a severe blow from a splinter of a shell, which stunned him. He remounted mechanically, however, and when he reached the rear found that he was riding a horse from the nth Hussars with saddle and holsters covered with blood. The horse was killed soon afterwards by grape shot. Of all the glorious regiment that formed the Light Brigade there returned but one hundred and ninety-eight men. One hundred and fifty-seven were dead aud one hundred and nineteen wounded,, and three hundred aud thirty horses destroyed. More than oue hundred aud thirty men were never accounted for. Mr Wilson, who is 78 years of age, holds the Crimean, Turkish, aud Indian medals. He says the charge on October 25, 1854, has lived in his memory with vivid distinctness, overshadowing all the other battles that his soldiering career led him into.