MEMORIES OF THE CRIMEA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19729, 31 August 1927, Page 12

MEMORIES OF THE CRIMEA.

A VETERAN OF 96 YEARS.

A HAPPY OLD WARRIOR.

In a bed in the Wanganui Hospital there is a cheerful old man of 96 summers, Thomas Skelly, who served in the Crimean campaign, and afterwards m the Maori War.

in L 854. Private Skeliy, ol the Second 25th Bengals, an upstanding young soldier in ins early twenties,, set out with his comrades to tight the Russians, little imagining the terrors of the Crimean wintei in the trenches below Sebastopol Lie well remembers the day he took the Queen's shilling, and he can remember even the name of the recruiting sergeant who enlisted him. Lying in his neat bed in a ward decked with flowers, where all the aids of science are called in to comfort the sick, says the Wanganui Chronicle, Private Skeliy remembers another hospital—one at Scutari, where pain-racked, broken bodies tossed on straw, and where at niglt a Lady with a Lamp stole, silent, and softhanded from bed to bed to comfort where she could not heal. But his memories of Florence Nightingale are few. Asked about the charge of the Light Brigade, the old soldier said: "There was a mistake A wrong order But I can't remember now - All my mates are dead now They've all gone." . ~ Out in New Zealand, Mr bkelly saw service in the Wanganui district and fought at Nukumaru and Okehu among other engagements Despite his vearr, he is a happy old warrior, and as his visitors shook hands before they left he crack2d a joke