Brave British soldiers and the Victoria Cross / a general account of the regiments and men of the British Army, and stories of the brave deeds which won the prize "for valour"

by Unknown

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT.

	PAGE
BUSHIRE	[167]
FINIAL, DEATH DEFENDING THE RAMPARTS	[53]
GIBRALTAR	[24]
GLENCOE	[113]
GRENADIER, COLDSTREAM, AND SCOTS FUSILIER GUARDS	[23]
NEW ZEALAND ARMS	[285]
OFFICERS, EMBROIDERY ON UNIFORM OF	[349, 350]
ROYAL ARTILLERY, BADGES OF NON-COMMISSIONED OFFICERS OF THE	[356, 357]
ROYAL WELSH, INITIAL LETTER TO THE CHAPTER ON THE	[40]
VICTORIA CROSS, THE	[1]

OUR SOLDIERS AND THE VICTORIA CROSS.

CHAPTER I.
OUR SOLDIERS AND THE VICTORIA CROSS.

It has been our lot in life to live very much among soldiers, and we like to write and talk about them. We hope that our readers will not be averse from hearing something of a class in whom we have all a common interest. It is true that English boys are not quite so warlike in their tendencies as French; they neither worship la gloire nor dress like manikin soldats. Swords and guns are not their only playthings, nor are feeble imitations of sanguinary contests their only pastimes. We here delight in all manly games and sports, for which French men and boys have little taste, and we thus acquire a muscular development and hardiness of frame which enable us to bear any amount of fatigue. It was a saying of the grand old Iron Duke that all his battles were won on the playground at Eton; by which we suppose he meant that his officers, most of whom were Eton boys, received there such a physical training as fitted them to be heroes in the strife. Still, it is one of those epigrammatic sayings in which truth is sacrificed for effect; for what could the duke, with all his officers, have done without the brave privates who composed his forces, and to whom he rendered justice on another occasion by saying that with such an army he could go anywhere and do anything?