[216] Letter of January 17, 1875. For the account of the affair at Berea, I am indebted to Major-General the Hon. Leicester Smyth, with some information gathered from Captain W. R. King’s ‘Campaigning in Kaffir-Land,’ and from the ‘Correspondence of Lieutenant-General the Hon. Sir George Cathcart, K.C.B.,’ published (after his death) in 1856. And a remarkable letter of Sir William Eyre which appeared in the ‘Morning Herald’ of October 23, 1856 (to which my attention was kindly drawn by General Smyth), commenting on some statements in the ‘Cathcart Correspondence’ as to the action at Berea, has also afforded me important information.
[217] A full-page engraving of the Battalion marching along Piccadilly is in the ‘Illustrated London News,’ vol. xxi. p. 477.
[CHAPTER X.]
The Service companies of the 1st Battalion arrived in Cowes Roads on January 7, 1854, and disembarking on the 10th at Portsmouth, proceeded direct by South Coast and South Eastern Railways to Dover, where they joined the Depôt companies and occupied the Western Heights barracks.
On March 12 and 13 the Battalion moved, by railroad, to Portsmouth in two divisions and occupied Clarence barracks.
Previous to this move an order was received that a hundred men should be transferred to the 2nd Battalion, then under orders to embark for Turkey. The men readily volunteered for this service, and many veterans who had served through both Kaffir wars were thus added to the 2nd Battalion, and formed a valuable nucleus of old soldiers in that Battalion, which since Waterloo had not been engaged in the field. The 1st Battalion being subsequently ordered to hold itself in readiness for embarkation, received an augmentation of 1 staff sergeant, 10 sergeants, 10 corporals, 1 bugler and 240 rank and file. These numbers were made up by a hundred volunteers from the 60th, and many from other regiments. Most of these were very young soldiers; many of them not dismissed drill.
On May 16 the Battalion was augmented to twelve companies, which were to be distributed as follows:—
Augmentation, dated May 16, 1854.