With the cavalry, the great battle had been Balaclava, and for Jack’s unique experience in having ridden in both charges, and for having, as all the survivors of the 17th asserted, ‘brought the regiment out of action,’ to say nothing of him and Barrymore having rescued Captain Norreys, he had won the name of ‘Blair of Balaclava,’ which had ever since stuck to him. So he was one of those selected for the French war medal, which was presented to him at the same time as the Sardinian one.
‘I shall be decorated all over soon,’ he laughed to Will as he surveyed the three glittering medals on his breast. ‘I’m carrying quite a weight of metal.’
‘And I only wish that every man who carried metal,’ said Will with a laugh, ‘deserved it half as much as you do.’
One day, when Jack was reading in his quarters, he heard a tremendous cheering from some men of the regiment. He went out, book in hand, to see what was the matter.
‘What’s the row?’ he asked of a private who had been out only six months.
‘We’re under orders for home,’ shouted the lad; ‘we start in three days.’
‘Well,’ growled a grizzled veteran named Penn—who had nearly twenty years’ service, and who, besides having ridden beside Jack in the ‘death ride,’ wore five medals on his breast—‘well, you needn’t open your mouth so wide. If you had come out with us two years ago you’d perhaps think more of the chums you were leaving out here than the mincing miss you think’s waiting for you at home.’ And somehow the old soldier’s words found an answering echo in Jack’s heart.
Nevertheless, all was joyous bustle and excitement, and when three days later they embarked for home all were in high spirits. They had a comfortable voyage, and the few survivors, only a handful who had come out from England with the regiment, used to gather on the deck in the evening, and while they smoked their pipes fight their battles over again, and relate to one another the adventures they had passed through with comrades, alas! no more.
‘You and I, Will, of all the trumpeters who came out are the only two left,’ said Jack one magnificent evening as he and Will leant over the taffrail watching the sunset. ‘Napper dead of cholera, Brittain and Parkes killed at Balaclava, poor old Linham and the trumpet-major invalided, and Tom Callon discharged with one arm.’
‘Don’t talk about it, Jack; we’ve added new honours to the regiment, but we’ve paid the full price.’