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288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1953
Theirs not to reason why,Pursuing a friend's question about the lack of fiction set during the Crimean War (1854–56) I have read Tolstoy's semi-autobiographical Sevastopol Sketches and Beryl Bainbridge's idiosyncratic Master Georgie. In terms of historical drama, I also refreshed my memory of Tony Richardson's 1968 movie, The Charge of the Light Brigade. Lacking any other fiction (except for the satirical Flashman at the Charge ), I thought it was time to turn to some real history. Cecil Woodham-Smith's 1953 study is a classic. It was also the inspiration for the Richardson film, although contractual obligations forced the makers to claim otherwise.
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
— Tennyson.
MILITARY GLORY! […] It was not a dream for the common man. War was an aristocratic trade, and military glory reserved for nobles and princes. Glittering squadrons of cavalry, long lines of infantry, wheeling obediently on the parade ground, ministered to the lust both for power and for display. Courage was esteemed the essential military quality and held to be a virtue exclusive to aristocrats. Were they not educated to courage, trained, as no common man was trained, by years of practice in dangerous sports? They glorified courage, called it valour and worshipped it, believed battles were won by valour, saw war in terms of valour as the supreme adventure.Wellington famously said that Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. Woodham-Smith implies that the Crimea was almost lost there. The war was led by middle-aged aristocrats who had purchased their commissions and promotions, had next to no battle experience, and who looked down on the professional officers who had actually fought in India and elsewhere as social inferiors who let down the tone. Lord Raglan was a slightly different case. As right-hand man to the Duke of Wellington upon his retirement from active command, he had developed fine skills in diplomacy, but had never commanded troops in battle. His personality was that of the ecclesiastic rather than a soldier; benevolent and urbane on the outside, fossilized in his views within, he would do anything to avoid personal conflict, and failed to address the simmering feud between the two brothers-in-law.
The great Russian mass swayed, rocked, gave a gigantic heave, broke, and, disintegrating it seemed in a moment, fled. A great shout went up: from the troops fighting the battle, from the Light Brigade looking on, from the heights, where the watchers hurrah-ed, flung their hats into the air, and clapped their hands; and Lord Raglan sent an aide-de-camp galloping down with the message "Well done, Scarlett." So great had been the tension, and so swift the change, that men who only a moment before had been fighting like madmen steeped in blood burst into tears.
[…]
Night fell on the camp—a miserable night. An order had been issued that no fires were to be lit and no noise made, since a further attack by the Russians was feared. The survivors of the Light Brigade stood about in groups talking about their dead comrades and the disasters of the day. The men were exhausted and over-wrought, the night was bitterly cold. Without fires nothing could be cooked, and most of them had still had nothing to eat beyond the dry biscuit in their haversacks and the afternoon dram of rum. They especially mourned their horses. Sergeant-Major Loy Smith of the 11th Hussars was "moved to tears by the thought of my beautiful horse; she was a light bay, nearly thoroughbred; I became her master nearly three years before."