[170] A small rounded hillock, not to be confused with “the Mamelon,” the outwork to the Malakoff.
[171] Russell’s ‘The War,’ vol. i. pp. 490 et seq.
[172] According to a tradition in the regiment, the men found the breakfast-tables laid for the Russians whom they had so rudely dispossessed, and promptly availed themselves of the hospitality of their enemies!
[173] The Victoria Cross was instituted in 1856. Before that time the only way in which a non-commissioned officer or private soldier was rewarded for conduct meriting higher recognition than a medal for meritorious conduct in the field was by a dole of money. For officers there was no decoration to commemorate a deed of remarkable courage.
[174] Eyre’s capture of the cemetery and suburb was officially included in the attack on the Redan.
[175] See [Appendix 2 (I)].
[176] Early in 1855 the Government realised that tents were unsuitable quarters for the besieging army: and wooden huts were sent off to the Crimea, not of one, but of several sizes and patterns. This want of uniformity in design caused great confusion, and the XVIIIth had not received its full complement of huts at the time of the attack on the Redan.
[177] Since the Russian War no subjects of a foreign power have been enlisted in a body to serve under the British flag. At the end of the Crimean War a considerable number of the German legion were sent at their own request to South Africa as settlers, where they became useful members of the white population. During the last war with the Boers, the author met in a Free State town an old German cobbler, who, after proudly dilating on his services in the Legion, explained that though he was too old again to shoulder a rifle with the British, he would be proud to mend their boots!
[178] These numbers, which are taken from official documents in the Record Office, do not agree completely with those on the Crimean “Memorial” in St Patrick’s.
[179] One of the drafts had a narrow escape from shipwreck in the Sea of Marmora. Their transport, the s.s. Cleopatra, in the middle of the night of August 15th was in collision with another steamer, the Simla, which was so badly injured that her captain ran her ashore to prevent her from sinking in deep water; the Cleopatra was cut down to the water’s edge, but managed to reach the Golden Horn, where the troops were at once transhipped and sent on to Balaclava.