Chapter Twenty Seven.
Follow, follow!
Grapple your minds to steerage of this navy,
And leave your England as dead midnight still,
Guarded with grandsires, babes, and old women,
Either past or not arrived at pith and puissance;
For who is he whose chin is but encircled,
With one appearing hair, that will not follow
These cull’d and choice drum cavaliers?
Shakespeare.
While the detachment in which I had honour to serve was in camp at Aladyn, the 5th Dragoon Guards, familiarly called the “Green Horse,” from the colour of their facings (cuffs and collars) being of green cloth, arrived at Varna, having come direct from Ireland in the Himalaya. The heavy brass helmets worn by all the Heavy Dragoon regiments were so distressing to the men, that white calico covers were issued in order to counteract the effects of the blazing sun, for which the men were deeply thankful. Some companies of the Grenadiers arrived about the same time, and so much dissatisfaction prevailed among the men in reference to the choking stock, that an order was issued for them to march without wearing them. As regards my own regiment no such order was given, as we only wear stocks when on duty even in barracks, and not having to walk and carry our own kit, like even the most crack regiments of infantry, we were content and happy enough to ride through a beautiful tract of country from our encampment at Aladyn to Devna, a little village chiefly inhabited by small farmers, who, failing to keep their pigs and turkeys without the boundary of the camp, as a natural consequence they lost many of them, and, as another natural consequence, they were constantly complaining that the soldiers stole them. The turkeys being small, and the pigs queer little creatures, all at large, and far away from the village, feeding upon grass and acorns in such places, and under such circumstances, as naturally led our men to suppose they were running wild, and that they had as much right to them as any one else, they hunted them as much for the fun of catching as for that of eating them.
A pig is a difficult animal to catch in an open place, and these pigs being in all but a wild state, run very fast—much faster than any I ever saw in my life. The turkeys were brought to grass with short sticks, but they were scarcely worth the trouble, as there was very little meat on their bones worth the trouble of picking off, when killed in this state before having been taken up to fatten. We had a man from the neighbourhood of Chowbent, in Lancashire, who, it was said, once, when coming off picket duty, ate one of these Bulgarian turkeys, bones, feathers, and all; but of course I cannot vouch for its truth. Of one thing I am, however, quite certain—that soldiers, when campaigning, can eat nearly twice as much victuals as is allowed them in barracks, and therefore it need not be wondered that a turkey, a goose, fowl, or pretty little grunter should mysteriously disappear at times when a regiment is stationed so near to farm villages.
The weather during the middle of the day was intensely hot while we lay at Devna; but the nights being cold, we made fires of wood, which was easily obtainable, as many of the inhabitants of cabins isolated from the village, being frightened at our approach, went away with their families, and left their stores behind them, and it was better for us to burn them than leave them for the benefit of the enemy.
Many men were punished for appropriating this deserted property, especially in the victualling line; but when it is considered that we were frequently short of food, the meat being wretchedly fed, no beer or porter could be got, and not a sight of a potato or a bit of vegetable was seen in camp for weeks, the men could not be blamed for helping themselves to those necessaries which the imbecility of our Government had failed to supply them with. We could get tobacco and tea, but our meat was frequently eaten without the essential flavour of salt.
About the middle of June a detachment of the 6th “Green Horse” and a troop of the 13th Light Dragoons joined us at Devna. They had suffered much from the sun during their march, and scarcely one of them had a bit of skin left on his lips. The hot weather was, however, frequently tempered by heavy showers of rain, and the thunder-storms were awfully grand, and sufficient to terrify our outlying pickets on the hills, in the dead of the night; but the men braved it out, returning to camp drenched to the skin, and almost hungry enough to eat an iron bedstead.
In the early part of July we were joined by the Light Division (infantry), and the remainder of the cavalry regiments, consisting of detachments of the 8th and 11th Hussars, the 13th Light Dragoons, and the 1st and remainder of the 5th Dragoon Guards. They gave us an awful account of the march, the roads, or rather track, being sandy; every vestige of the vegetation with which it was covered at the time we marched over it from Varna was destroyed by the immense traffic of infantry, cavalry, guns, ammunition waggons, and arabas containing stores and baggage. It was, therefore, as cheerless and uncomfortable as a cavalry march would be across the deserts of Arabia, and the men suffered much inconvenience and pain from the particles of fine sand getting into their eyes, which was so intense that they instinctively rubbed them with their hands, which augmented their agony, and the scorching rays of the sun completed their misery. There was, however, plenty of pure water in the lake not far distant from the camp, and a thorough washing alleviated their sufferings, and kept them to their duty.
A few days after the arrival of these additional troops at Devna, Omar Pasha, the Turkish Commander-in-Chief, arrived on his way from Silistria, the Russians having evacuated their position in front of that fortress, and set the garrison at liberty. He was on his way to Varna, attended by a brilliant escort of English and Turkish officers. The troops were turned out to present arms. Only a few squadrons of cavalry, however, took part in the salute; these were from the 8th and 11th Hussars and the 17th Lancers, the Heavy and Light Dragoons, with the artillery, having gone down to the lake in watering order.