Courage Under Fire E-Book

Tim Lynch

• Herausgeber: Elliott & Thompson
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Seitenzahl: 395

Beschreibung

Glorified and vilified, saint and sinner, everyone has an opinion about soldiers, but behind the headlines and heroism, who are they? Courage Under Fire is an intense and dramatic exploration of what life on the frontline is like for soldiers of all ranks. From the last man killed in The Great War to a young man running the risk of Improvised Explosive Devices in Afghanistan today, it looks at the pressures and fears, camaraderie and isolation of fighting battles. Filled with voices of veterans from conflicts from World War II to the Korean War, the Falklands, the Gulf wars and many others, it traces the journey of a soldier from enlistment, through training, arrival on the battlefield, facing enemy fire, the end of service and life after the military. Published in partnership with Combat Stress, the book also looks at the bravery of soldiers who have fought their own private battles after leaving the armed forces, seeking help for illnesses such as post-traumatic stress disorder.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE

FOREWORD BY GENERAL SIR RICHARD DANNATT

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1:THE MILITARY

CHAPTER 2:THE ‘TOMMY’

CHAPTER 3:START LINE

CHAPTER 4:CLOSE TO HOME

CHAPTER 5:THE COURAGE TO DO NOTHING

CHAPTER 6:FIX BAYONETS

CHAPTER 7:CASEVAC

CHAPTER 8:THE BATTLE OF GARMSIR

CHAPTER 9:BEHIND THE LINES

CHAPTER 10:HACKING IT

CHAPTER 11:RESETTLEMENT

CHAPTER 12:POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER

CHAPTER 13:LAST POST

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABOUT COMBAT STRESS

COPYRIGHT

FOREWORD

Imagine a young man today, going on patrol in Afghanistan, knowing that he will face Improvised Explosive Devices and that the chance of seeing one detonate is statistically very high. He is effectively walking through an unmarked minefield. He will have known, or at least heard of, comrades who will have lost limbs doing so. He will be doing that day in, day out. It is not uncommon to see a soldier vomit through fear when faced with that knowledge, but who is nonetheless able to take his life in his hands and do it anyway.

For me, the notion of ‘courage under fire’ can be split into two very distinct, but equally vital, parts. Physical courage is perhaps the most often considered form of courage, but moral courage is every bit as important. Under fire, you will behave instinctively. You need physical courage to put yourself in harm’s way, but you also need the moral courage to do the right thing, instinctively.

Courage is one of the six core values (outlined here) the army introduced around ten years ago. It has placed a greater emphasis on the need for moral courage in recent years. Physical courage has always been there, throughout history, and is very likely to remain, as it is not possible to fight wars without it. New service personnel are educated that there is a right thing and a wrong thing to do in any difficult situation and they are trained to choose the right thing, even under enormous pressure. Whether witnessing harassment of a female comrade or of an Iraqi civilian, for example, it takes great moral courage to speak out and stop it. It would be easy for them to do nothing or look the other way, but we should be proud that they do not, whether through this training or their own moral values.

Only a very small percentage of the population has served, or had a family member serve, in the military. Therefore, only a minority of people know first-hand the pressures that servicemen are under. This is why it’s more important than ever that the work of charities like Combat Stress is supported by the public. As an entity run specifically for veterans, they understand the behaviour, the language and the needs of servicemen in a way that a public service like the NHS cannot.

There is a greater understanding and acceptance of mental health issues in the Army than ever before. Soldiers are alert to members of their platoon or company who might be showing signs of distress and know how to deal with such signs. The problem can be addressed by getting someone who understands that these things are normal, talking to them, and addressing it very early on.

History shows an unequal balance between civilians and servicemen seeking help. The average time it takes for a serviceman to begin to look for treatment for mental health issues is fourteen years. Indeed, there are Falklands veterans only beginning to ask for support now. As more soldiers return from Iraq and Afghanistan help will be needed for years to come. Donations to charities like Combat Stress make a life-changing difference to these men and women who have risked their lives serving their country. They need all the help we can give them.

General Sir Richard Dannatt GCB CBE MC DL

NO HEROES

There were no heroes here

Amongst the men who tramped through

Rutted, quaking moor,

Or crawled, cat-silent,

Over skittering scree

To prove the way.

No heroes fought the blazing fires

Which sucked the very blood from

Ship and man alike.

Or braved knife cold

Without a thought

To save a life.

No heroes they, but ones who loved

Sweet life and children’s laugh,

And dreamt of home

When war allowed.

They were but men.

David Morgan DSC

800 Naval Air Squadron

Falkland Islands Task Force 1982

INTRODUCTION

There are no heroes in Afghanistan.

It’s not a word soldiers use about themselves. In the midst of a firefight, when the lives of your mates depend on your next move, two things – heroics and hysterics – will get you all killed. What matters most as the rounds come in is the ability to remember your training and do what has to be done. Medals are won in a few short minutes; wars are won by enduring day after endless day. It is in the long, grinding routine of fear, exhaustion and hunger that a soldier’s worth is measured and his true character revealed. To be called a hero by the press at home means nothing. To be called a good soldier by friends who have seen you at your best and at your worst is beyond price.

Navy Medical Assistant Kate Nesbitt was on her first tour of duty in Afghanistan, working as a patrol medic attached to the 1st Battalion, The Rifles when, as she later remembered, ‘Without warning Taliban fighters opened fire, having ambushed us. Within seconds I heard, ‘Man down, man down,’ on the radio and I knew I was needed. I got the location details and sprinted towards him while under fire. All I was thinking was, ‘There’s a casualty and I need to be there’. I just thought the quicker I get to him the more chance I have to save his life. It was adrenalin. Whenever I went on patrol I hoped I wouldn’t be needed – but when the call came I knew I had to step up to the mark.’

After crossing 70m of open ground to reach Corporal John List, she found him choking to death on his own blood. ‘When I first got there I didn’t think he was going to make it. He was struggling to breathe and I had to provide him with another airway. The round had gone through his top lip, ruptured his jaw and come out of his neck. He was so lucky it didn’t hit an artery.’ Nesbitt worked for 45 minutes to stabilise List’s injuries before he could be evacuated to hospital, working continuously with heavy fire all around her.

Her actions that day won her the Military Cross with a citation that read, ‘Her actions throughout a series of offensive operations were exemplary; under fire and under pressure her commitment and courage were inspirational and made the difference between life and death. She performed in the highest traditions of her service.’ When she received the award, Nesbitt told reporters that ‘being described as a hero is just too much. I did my job the best I could. It was just overwhelming to hear people say ‘well done’ and that he made it through.’ The praise was nice, but I would have been over the moon with a good [appraisal] report.’

Iain McRobbie survived the sinking of HMS Ardent during the Falklands War and recalls returning to a hero’s welcome. ‘I could have done without that, actually. “Hero” is a word that is used far too often. I was doing the job I was paid to do – it’s not something I would like to have to do again. To me, the heroes are the guys whose names are on all these cenotaphs all over Britain. The country is full of people who have done things like that – squaddies who served in Northern Ireland, old men who were at Monte Cassino.’ It was a sentiment echoed years later by 18-year-old Alex Kennedy, who won the Military Cross after only eight months in the army during his first tour of Afghanistan. He insisted, ‘I don’t feel like a hero – that title should really go to those who go out to Afghanistan and don’t make it back.’ No veteran, it seems, ever claims to be a hero, but every one of them knows someone else who was.

Journalists, though, like the word. To them it can mean someone who rescues a cat from a tree or a child from a blazing house. It can mean a highly paid sportsman who wins a game and finally earns his enormous salary, or it can mean the milkman who carried out his rounds when it snowed. It can mean whatever they choose it to mean. To the journalist, any soldier in wartime becomes a hero and any ex-serviceman with a campaign medal automatically becomes a ‘decorated war hero’ until the term is cheapened by casual use. Certainly, none of the veterans whose stories appear here would thank you for calling them heroic. Time and again, the common thread that links those whose outstanding bravery has earned them recognition is one of humility and embarrassment for being singled out for doing what they insist anyone would have done in their place.

The medals won by Kate and Alex were richly deserved. Medals are the visible means by which society measures and rewards bravery, though every holder of a gallantry award knows that they are only the tip of the iceberg. A hundred medals a day are being earned in Afghanistan as I write, but only a very few will ever be presented. For most of those who serve, the sole recognition for the months during which they survived daily firefights and terrors we at home could never dream of will be a campaign medal. Outwardly dismissed as the medal equivalent of haemorrhoids (‘any arsehole can get them’) and claimed by the rough, tough, world-weary and cynical recipients to be awards that are handed out with the rations, they are, nevertheless, secretly treasured as evidence that the wearer was there. Medal holders belong to an exclusive group, in Shakespeare’s words: ‘we few, we happy few, we band of brothers’. ‘A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of coloured ribbon,’ wrote Napoleon Bonaparte, knowing that for the men who have earned the right to wear that coloured ribbon, it will forever be a bond between them that sets them apart from other men. Most people at home tend to think of courage under fire only in terms of elite units and the presentation of medals for outstanding acts of heroism, but the unglamorous former army truck driver wearing a row of campaign medals whose memoirs will never be published may have spent far more time working under enemy fire than the commando with a gallantry award. Only the person wearing medals can ever really know what it took to win them.

In preparing this book I spoke to many veterans and I asked one, a former Special Forces soldier who had served with distinction in the Gulf, what he thought a book like this should be about. At a time when the British public is showing ever more support for their troops, what should I tell them about courage under fire? ‘Tell them the truth,’ he replied. ‘Tell them it’s nothing like they see on telly. Tell them that when those lads come back and the charity buckets disappear, they’ll still be fighting the war – day in, day out, night in, night out – until they get the help they deserve.’

This, then, is not a book about heroes, but one about courage under fire and what this means. It is not a catalogue of stirring deeds by an elite soldier whose adventures are described in action-packed bestsellers – men who fearlessly face the enemy with a stiff upper lip and a reckless disregard for danger. The tiny, unimaginative minority who truly are fearless have no need of courage. ‘An awful lot is talked about bravery,’ one World War II veteran said, ‘but I think there’s a hell of a difference between being brave and being fearless. People are fearless because they don’t feel any fear. People who are brave are probably shit-scared at the time but manage to do great things. There were one or two people I met who appeared to be fearless. Whether they were very intelligent or very sick, I don’t know. They had a very different outlook. Maybe they had no imagination? I don’t know if you should envy the fearless chap.’

Genuine courage comes from those who know what risks lay ahead, feel real fear, yet act anyway because it seems the right thing to do. Courage is not found with the John Waynes and Rambos of the world, but in the teenager who is terrified to the point of soiling himself but who goes on anyway because that is what has been asked of him. Former tennis champion and political activist Arthur Ashe once claimed that ‘true heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost.’ The stories in this book show how the British military’s reputation for determination and professionalism is founded in a million everyday acts of quiet, undramatic courage by men and women who believe that there are some things more important than themselves. Greatest of all these is the belief in the value of friendship. Rarely do soldiers fight and die for abstract causes. Few offer their lives for their country and its flag – but a great many have died for their friends. It is a measure of our society and the men and women who represent it that in any military operation, far more medals are awarded for saving lives than for taking them.

Without exception, the men and women who risk everything in the service of others are quick to dismiss any suggestion that they are somehow special. ‘I’m no hero,’ they say, ‘I was just doing my job.’ This is a book about that job. It shows how ordinary people face an extraordinary experience. At a time when young people are viewed with suspicion by the media and by their own communities, here is what ordinary young people are capable of.

The stories that follow are heavily slanted towards the experiences of soldiers. No slight is intended towards the contribution of other services – few of us who landed on the islands in the Falklands War envied our naval colleagues aboard ships which seemed little more than sitting targets as they rode at anchor, inviting attack, to draw the bombs away from the troopships. No one who lived through the Blitz could criticise the willingness of the young RAF pilots who, several times a day, rose to meet the seemingly unstoppable aerial armada intent on bombing Britain into submission. In an age of intercontinental missiles and laser-guided bombs, it is still the soldier on the ground with rifle and bayonet who takes and holds ground. ‘Let us be clear about three facts,’ wrote Field-Marshal Earl Wavell in 1945. ‘First, all battles and all wars are won in the end by the infantryman. Secondly, the infantryman always bears the brunt. His casualties are heavier, he suffers greater extremes of discomfort and fatigue than the other arms. Thirdly, the art of the infantryman is less stereotyped and far harder to acquire in modern war than that of any other arm … The infantryman has to use initiative and intelligence in almost every step he moves, every action he takes on the battlefield.’

Whatever the advances in weapons technology and tactics, the soldier’s existence today would broadly be recognisable to the veterans of Normandy, of the Somme, of Waterloo. The endless slogging along with rifle and pack; the cold, lonely vigil of the sentry at night; the misery; the hunger; the exhaustion; the comradeship; the terror and exhilaration of being under fire; the joy at survival; the dream of home.

Soldiers live in a world that the families and friends they leave behind can only begin to imagine. It’s a world of emotional highs and lows which can turn an idealistic teenager old and cynical in a matter of weeks, but even at its worst is still a world they would never want to forget. No matter how old the veteran, the memories of military service remain fresh in later years as they gather in ever dwindling bands of survivors to remember those they once marched beside. Each November at memorials around the country, for a little while they walk taller, straighter and with a sense of pride, remembering their lost youth and the friends they knew – young men who laughed and drank together, shared their hopes and dreams but who never came back. The veterans go home to a life that somehow never quite lived up to what they once dreamed it would be. A soldier who served in Vietnam summed up the quandary every veteran faces at some point: ‘Sometimes I wish I could be back there, just for a little while, just so I could wish I was back here.’

For those who survive, no war ends when the last bullet is fired. For good, for bad, war changes those who see it at close quarters. This is not merely a book about where courage under fire comes from – it is also about what that courage costs. We frequently hear our politicians speak of the debt we owe to our armed forces, but few of us know what that really means. Servicemen and women are told that their sacrifice will never be forgotten, but it too often is as we go about the safe, comfortable routine of our daily lives. Here, in their own words, are the voices of those to whom the debt is owed. Here is why we owe them a duty to remember what we once asked them to do.

CHAPTER ONE

THE MILITARY

The army sleep under the stars. The navy navigates by the stars. The RAF books into hotels using the stars.

Graffiti in a British base, Basra

People often talk about the military as a family, which is a good analogy. There are three siblings who, even if they squabble among themselves, will always help each other against outsiders.

Eldest of the three is the Royal Navy, founded in the reign of Henry VIII as the Navy Royal, Britain’s first full-time standing military force. As an island state, Britain depended on the English Channel to defend it against foreign threat, but it also needed to ensure the safety of its trading fleets. The existence of the navy was seen as vital to the country’s survival. Not that that gave it much status. Writing in the eighteenth century, Samuel Johnson claimed that ‘no man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in jail with the chance of being drowned’. So poor were the pay and conditions that by the time of Trafalgar, around five in every six men serving in the navy had been forcibly conscripted by the notorious press gangs who roamed the coastal ports and harbours abducting any man deemed fit to sail.

Things changed during Queen Victoria’s reign. The growth of the Empire and the expansion of foreign trade made it vital that Britannia should rule the waves. It was an era of gunboat diplomacy in which the Royal Navy imposed peace through the superior firepower of the world’s largest fleet. Technological advances made the old, labour-intensive sailing ships a thing of the past and recruits were now needed for smaller, more skilled, crews. Consequently, from the middle of the nineteenth century, better pay, uniforms, conditions and terms of service began to make a career in the navy an attractive prospect, especially since at the same time the public perception of the navy became increasingly positive: Nelson had become a cult figure and Trafalgar Day was widely celebrated across the Empire in parades, dinners and other events. In newspapers, books, plays and songs the image of the ‘Jolly Jack Tar’ had become well established as the man who made Britain great. By the turn of the twentieth century, music-hall crowds happily sang along as entertainers sang ‘All the nice girls love a sailor …’ and even that great champion of the common soldier, Rudyard Kipling, argued in a school textbook of 1911 that ‘to serve King and Country in the Army is the second best profession for Englishmen of all classes; to serve in the Navy, I suppose we all admit, is the best’.

The Royal Air Force is the baby of the family. Formed as the world’s first independent air force in 1918 (on April Fool’s Day, as their colleagues in other services gleefully point out), from the outset the RAF enjoyed an exciting reputation. In 1918, four years of muddy stalemate were coming to an end. In sharp contrast to the filthy infantryman far below, the aviator was seen as a romantic figure, a true ‘knight of the air’ fighting chivalrous duels in the sky, one man against another in a new and glamorous type of warfare.

In the years following World War I, the belief grew that ‘the bomber will always get through’. Strategic bombing, it was thought, would be a war-winning weapon. No longer was the English Channel enough – bombers would be able to cross it in minutes from airfields in France and Belgium. The navy might be Britain’s first line of defence, but aircraft would come a close second. In 1940 the RAF achieved its greatest success by holding back the Luftwaffe in a battle against the odds that has become a symbol of all that is considered best about Britain. In the popular imagination, the RAF is still the home of dashing young men from good schools who work far from the squalid reality of war in the world of the top guns.

And in between is the army. Not royal, not senior, not popular, but the classic example of the middle child. It’s said that the middle child is constantly reminded of the achievements of its elder and younger siblings but always missing out on attention for itself until it feels like an outsider in the family. For most of its existence, the army has indeed been treated as very much the outsider.

From Anglo Saxon times, every man had been expected to be available to defend his homeland. By the Middle Ages, Posse Comitatus required the Shire Reeve (or Sheriff) of a county to keep a register of men he could call upon in the event of attack or civil emergency. The Act was passed into US law in 1871 and led to the Sheriff ’s Posse of western fame. Forced service in times of crisis, though, was widely seen as a due that had to be paid, however unpopular it might be. When Civil War broke out in England in 1642, both sides used Posse Comitatus to conscript every able-bodied man they could find. They were expected to fight far beyond the borders of their home county, seen by critics as a breach of the unspoken rule of service only to defend one’s home, which cast a long shadow across the army and the society it serves. In the series of battles that rocked the country between 1642 and 1651 it has been estimated that around a quarter of the male population of Britain was coerced into military service at some point and, of those conscripted, a conservative estimate of around 190,000 are believed to have died as a result of wounds or disease directly linked to their service – 3.7 per cent of the population of England and Wales. In Scotland, 6 per cent died and in Ireland 41 per cent, leaving a bitter legacy. By comparison, the slaughter of World War I cost Britain as a whole 1.53 per cent of its population.

With the end of the Civil War came the start of a military dictatorship under Cromwell’s Protectorate that placed zealous Puritan generals in control of the counties of England and Wales. Though brief, the memory of their rule has traditionally been remembered as one of tyrannical despots ruling over their regions with an iron fist, crushing any vestige of royalist support and imposing fanatical religious ideology on the masses. ‘Unfortunately,’ wrote Kipling in his history of Britain, ‘this reign of the Sword left on Men’s minds an unreasonable hatred and fear, not only of this Puritan army, but of all armies, and that hatred and fear has too often paralysed the arm of England, and is not wholly dead today.’

The restoration of the monarchy in 1660 came at a time when distrust of the power of the army was at its height. Charles II disbanded it entirely only to immediately face the threat of rebellion, which forced him to review the decision. Four regiments – two of infantry, two of cavalry – would be retained as a personal security force for the King’s Household. The modern British army was born but it would be almost a century before the force was recognised as an army, Parliament referring only to ‘our guards and garrisons’ in its annual defence spending estimates until the mid-eighteenth century. Fear of any future attempt by the army to overthrow the government and king meant that measures had been put in place to prevent it becoming too powerful. Its appointed officers were men selected for their vested interest in maintaining the status quo and conditions for the lower ranks kept poor to ensure that it attracted only men who lacked ambition. Enlistment was for life and discipline sometimes fatally harsh.

Alone among the European powers, the shadow of the Civil War losses meant Britain remained determined to avoid the need to introduce conscription. Where other countries faced the threat of land invasion, Britain relied on its naval power to ensure that no other navy could reach its shores. Its army was, by and large, an expeditionary force to be transported by the navy to wherever it was needed abroad. Its sole purpose was to enforce British might and its men did not need to be bright, the government demanded, just cheap and disposable. Quality was unimportant. The Duke of Wellington campaigned for a form of National Service, arguing that in other countries generals had men of every class and rank among their troops, bringing intelligence and initiative to even the newest recruit, whilst the British, he said, made do with an army ‘composed of the scum of the earth – the mere scum of the earth. It is only wonderful that we should be able to make so much out of them afterwards.’

And scum they were. By the time of Waterloo the army had earned a reputation as the last refuge for rogues, drunkards and ne’er-do-wells. They were men who had frequently faced the choice to serve in the army or be sent to prison, men who would not be missed if anything should happen to them. In the years following Wellington’s great victory, ‘Waterloo Teeth’ became a fashionable item among the wealthy. As the corpses cooled on the battlefield, they were stripped of their weapons, valuables, clothing and equipment. Then came men with pliers to pull out their teeth to make high-class dentures. Finally, long after the celebrations had ended, the fallen heroes of Waterloo came home – their ground-up bones transported in barrels as cheap fertilizer, such was the lack of esteem for the fallen soldiers.

Forty years later, another war was under way. In 1853 British troops were sent to the Crimea as part of an alliance that also included French, Turkish, Sardinian and German troops attempting to block the expansion of the Russian Empire. It was to become a campaign famous for its catastrophic failures, but one which would also see tremendous feats of courage and endurance. One action, above all others, became a legend.

Just after 11.00am on 25 October 1854, James Thomas Brudenell, the 7th Lord Cardigan, received orders from the army commander that the 670 men under his command were ‘to advance rapidly to the front, follow the enemy, and try to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns’. The message ended with a terse ‘Immediate’.

The order referred to naval artillery being moved from a British redoubt captured by the Russians on a hill nearby. From where he sat, Cardigan could see only one set of guns, at the far end of the valley between the Fedyukhin Heights and the Causeway Heights. Ahead of him were around fifty artillery pieces and twenty battalions of Russian troops spread along the high ground on each side. The orders were suicidal and Cardigan knew it, but when he asked for clarification, he was again ordered to advance.

With little choice but to obey, Cardigan gave the order to ‘Draw Swords’. Then he led his men forward, swords and lances held upright, pennons snapping in the breeze. Private Robert Farquharson overheard someone comment that many of them would not be returning from this attack. Private William Pennington recalled that he ‘had no hope of life’. ‘Every private soldier could see what a mistake was being made,’ wrote Private John Richardson of the 11th Hussars, ‘but all we had to do was obey orders.’

Then, at 11.10am, Cardigan gave his second order: ‘The brigade will advance. First squadron of the 17th Lancers direct.’ Beside him, Bugler Billy Brittain of the 17th sounded the command, ‘Walk’. As the brigade moved forward, Cardigan said quietly, ‘Here goes the last of the Brudenells.’

As the brigade opened up into attack formation, Cardigan gave the order, ‘Trot’. The horses increased their speed to the textbook eight and a half miles per hour. They would move at this speed until they were 250 yards from their objective before launching into a gallop. The final, headlong charge would begin just forty yards from the enemy. Across the lines, the men were silent. Experienced cavalrymen knew that it would take seven minutes to reach the enemy guns – but seven minutes is a long time under fire.

At 11.11am the first Russian guns opened up from a battery on the brigade’s left flank. Almost immediately Captain Nolan, the man who had brought the order and who many would later blame for misdirecting Cardigan, was killed. ‘I shall never forget the shriek that he gave,’ said Private Henry Naylor of the 13th Dragoons, ‘it rung in my ears above the roaring of the cannon.’ As the brigade advanced, the Russian fire seemed directed only at Cardigan, riding ahead of his men. The first crashing volley was followed by an ominous silence as the gunners reloaded.

From their vantage point high on the nearby hills, the British commander Lord Raglan and his staff watched the brigade move forward and gasped in horror as, instead of turning towards the Causeway Heights redoubt as expected, they instead trotted straight forward. Then came the second volley.

As enemy cannonballs ripped into the riders, some attempted to quicken the pace. Then, at 11.15, the guns on the right flank also opened up. Still the brigade moved forward at a steady trot with Cardigan setting the pace. Around them, the cavalrymen saw their comrades blasted to pieces. James Wightman watched the headless body of his troop sergeant ride on for thirty yards before tumbling to the ground. William Pennington recalled a man’s forearm hanging by its tendons and ‘brains protruding from a shattered skull’. Around them, the volume of fire increased as enemy infantrymen joined in with volleys of musketry. Still they trotted.

By now the leading line was about halfway down the valley and under fire from both flanks. Wightman felt a twitch on his arm. Beside him his friend John Lee had been ‘all but smashed by a shell’. With a strange smile, Lee bid him goodbye and fell out of the saddle, his horse keeping pace as her entrails fell from her. Men who had been wounded clung to their saddles and pressed on, knowing that Russian sharpshooters would soon pick off stragglers. Men whose horses were killed were also at risk, their only hope to mount a riderless horse and catch up with their units. Still the brigade kept the same pace.

At 11.16, the remaining riders had advanced to within 250 yards of the guns and Cardigan ordered the gallop. Ahead, the line of Russian guns directly in front of them began to load canister rounds – a packed container of small balls making the cannons into deadly shotguns. Some used double loads of a cannonball and a canister round to maximise the damage they could do at close quarters. Captain Godfrey Morgan was close enough to see the gunner light the fuse of one gun. ‘I shut my eyes for I thought that settled the question as far as I was concerned, but the shot missed me and struck the man on my right full on the chest.’

At last, Cardigan shouted ‘Charge!’ but few could have heard it. Along the line, lances were lowered as the remaining horsemen smashed into the eight Russian guns positioned at the head of the valley, hacking down the crews as they finally struck home. Their desperate momentum carried the Lancers through the gun lines and into a thick cloud of smoke that hung over the Russian battery. When Captain Morris of the 17th Lancers pulled his horse to a halt, he found just twenty men still with him from the regiment he had led into action seven minutes before. Worse, as the smoke thinned, he saw a complete regiment of Russian Hussars waiting for him.

Their orders had been to prevent the Russians carrying off the guns but the survivors of the charge now knew that whether or not they attempted to retrieve the guns, the massed Russian cavalry would slaughter them as they withdrew down the valley. Their only hope lay in attack. In the confusion, Colonel Mayow, the brigade’s second in command, attempted to rally what men he could – just fifteen Lancers and twelve Dragoons.

The Russian cavalry had lined up about 100 yards behind the guns and, believing that no one could survive the firepower they had faced, were as surprised to see the British emerge from the smoke as the British were to see the Russian cavalry waiting for them. Morris seized the initiative and immediately plunged his small force directly into the enemy. The shock of an attack by this small band of apparent madmen created a psychological impact out of all proportion to the size of the force. The Russians scattered.

Nearby, Colonel Mayow also led his 27 men directly into the front ranks of a massed Cossack cavalry regiment. Even though they had watched the charge and knew that there would be no reinforcements to support this tiny force, the Cossacks fled the furious onslaught.

But not all the Russians fled. As the bands of British cavalrymen gathered at the head of the valley, it became clear that Russian Lancers had positioned themselves along the heights. The Light Brigade was cut off from the British lines. The shattered brigade regrouped – and charged yet again.

Once again, they managed to battle their way through the enemy but it was not over yet. Ahead lay almost a mile of open ground littered with dead and dying men and horses. Both flanks remained in the control of the Russians, and bands of Cossacks were waiting to pick off stragglers.

The first riders reached British lines just twenty minutes after Cardigan had ordered them forward. Of the 670 men who had set out, just 195 had made it back unwounded and still mounted. Sergeant Frederick Short recalled what happened next: ‘On returning to the place we had originally started from I saw, for the first time since we had departed, the Earl of Cardigan, who must have arrived before us, and he came up and said, “Men, it was a hare-brained trick, but it was no fault of mine.” I heard some of the men, who were naturally still rather excited, say, “Never mind my Lord, we are ready to go again.’”

Watching from a nearby hill, French Marshal Pierre Bosquet is famously quoted as having said of the charge: ‘C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre’ – ‘It is magnificent, but it is not war.’ Less well known is the rest of his comment: ‘C’est de la folie’ – ‘It is madness.’ It was, though, a magnificent madness for reporter William Russell, whose dispatch appeared in The Times on 14 November:

HEIGHTS BEFORE SEBASTOPOL, OCTOBER 25[end small caps] – If the exhibition of the most brilliant valour, of the excess of courage, and of a daring which would have reflected lustre on the best days of chivalry can afford full consolation for the disaster of today, we can have no reason to regret the melancholy loss which we sustained in a contest with a savage and barbarian enemy.

It is a journalistic maxim that when faced with a choice between the truth and a story, the public will always want the story. A critic of the army’s management of the war, Russell later claimed that ‘our Light Brigade was annihilated by their own rashness, and by the brutality of a ferocious enemy’ but for the time being, the story was not one of military incompetence but of a courage and devotion to duty that fit the buoyant mood of the nation. Just three years before, the huge glass and iron hall of the Great Exhibition had provided a showcase of Victorian power and prestige. Britain, it seemed, could achieve anything and Russell’s report seemed to confirm that Britons feared nothing but failure to do their best. After reading Russell’s piece, the Poet Laureate, Alfred Lord Tennyson, immediately set to work on a poem and in minutes had created a legend. Published in the Examiner on 9 December, his hymn of praise would set the tone for representations of the military for generations to come:

Theirs not to make reply,

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die:

The poem quickly became a huge success, even reaching the survivors of the charge in the Crimea itself, and thousands of copies were sold. Disastrous as the charge may have been, Tennyson’s picture of the British soldier as brave, chivalrous, unquestioningly loyal and destined for glory fitted perfectly with the image of the ideal Briton. It would be these qualities that would demonstrate the moral and physical superiority of the British people as the Empire expanded.

Over the coming decades, the public were thrilled to hear stories of the heroic deeds of their army in the far-flung reaches of the world, and generations of schoolchildren learned Tennyson’s poem by heart, yet the men who won those victories never found themselves accepted by the public at home. To serve in the lower ranks of the army remained an admission of failure to find a more respectable path and, for any ‘decent’ young man, enlistment would bring shame on his family. Although William ‘Wully’ Robertson had a spectacular career in which he advanced through every rank from private soldier to Field Marshal, when he first joined the 16th Lancers as a private in 1877 his horrified mother had declared, ‘There are plenty of things steady young men can do when they can read and write as well as you can. I will name it to no one, I would rather bury you than see you in a red coat.’ A year later, when Private Donald McDonald joined the 2nd Battalion, 21st Royal Scots Fusiliers he wrote to his brother asking him to ‘let my poor mother know about it privately and not to let anyone know about it except our own family’.

In 1890 Rudyard Kipling became angry over a state of affairs he felt was hugely hypocritical. A strong supporter of the Empire, he was one of those who felt the army was suffering as a result of the negative image held by those at home. National Service, Kipling believed, would raise both the quality of the army as a whole and the status of the soldier within it. ‘Tommy’ was an attempt to highlight the yawning gap between the soldier as seen in wartime and the man who wore the uniform in garrison towns at home. The poem became popular, but attitudes were so entrenched that the following year an appeal to raise funds to help the veterans of the Light Brigade, now reduced to living in workhouses, raised just £24 – most of it rumoured to be the remnants of collections made by the Liberal Party to aid Irish Republican prisoners and for animal cruelty charities. Bitterly, Kipling wrote:

There were thirty million English who talked of England’s might,

There were twenty broken troopers who lacked a bed for the night.

They had neither food nor money, they had neither service nor trade;

They were only shiftless soldiers, the last of the Light Brigade.

They felt that life was fleeting; they knew not that art was long,

That though they were dying of famine, they lived in deathless song.

They asked for a little money to keep the wolf from the door;

And the thirty million English sent twenty pounds and four!

O thirty million English that babble of England’s might,

Behold there are twenty heroes who lack their food to-night;

Our children’s children are lisping to ‘honour the charge they made’

And we leave to the streets and the workhouse the charge of the Light Brigade!

Within a decade, the Boer War had brought home to the public that the British army was equipped for small-scale tribal wars against poorly armed Indians and Africans but it could not compete with even the small but well-equipped Boers who, supported by Germany, used the latest rifles as they fought a fast-moving guerrilla war and inflicted humiliatingly heavy casualties on the British. The press and the public were furious, demanding that the army be given the proper training and equipment to fight this new enemy. Over the coming decade, reforms were brought in to improve standards.

The declaration of war against Germany in 1914 was greeted by many with enthusiasm. For years since their support for the Boers, fears of a German invasion of Britain had been growing and here was a chance to end the threat. Thanks to its pool of trained reservists who had all undergone compulsory military training for at least two years, Germany had huge numbers of men it could bring into action. Britain’s small professional army was too small and ill-equipped at first to defeat the huge army Germany could field, so all its ‘contemptible little army’ could do was hold them off until the country could improvise another army of volunteers.

Although volunteering for the ranks was suddenly no longer a stigma and regarded as every man’s duty, the eager recruits to the ‘New Army’ were keen to ensure that they served with the ‘right’ sort of person. Battalions formed around professions with very clear rules about who should be allowed to serve with whom. No one, it seemed, wanted to serve alongside men of a different social class. The city of Hull, for example, created four of the famous Pals battalions, unofficially known respectively as the ‘Hull Commercials’ (for shop owners and their staffs), ‘Hull Tradesmen’, ‘Hull Sportsmen’ (for members of the local football and rugby teams or other athletically minded citizens) and, for those of a lesser social standing, a battalion simply known as ‘Hull t’others’.

Even the huge surge in enlistment that followed Kitchener’s call in 1914 could not keep pace with demand, and after much debate, conscription was introduced in early 1916. Men of all classes were now expected to serve together and some of those who might otherwise have shunned the military took to their unexpected career change in remarkable ways.

Wilfrith Elstob was the 25-year-old son of a clergyman and was working as a school teacher when war broke out. Along with thousands of other men, he volunteered for the local Pals battalion and by 1918 commanded it with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, having already been awarded the Distinguished Service Order and the Military Cross. In March of that year, the Germans were preparing a large offensive. The Bolshevik revolution had brought Russia’s part in the war to an end and freed Germany to shift its divisions to the Western Front. A final, overwhelming attack was planned to destroy the Allies before America entered the war. In readiness, the British had prepared a zonal system of defence with a series of fortified positions intended to act like breakwaters, disrupting and disorganising any large attack so that a counterattack could be launched. Elstob and the men of his 16th Battalion were given the task of defending a redoubt known as Manchester Hill, in the St. Quentin area (named in honour of its capture by the 2nd Battalion, the Manchester Regiment in 1917).

On 18 March, Colonel Elstob gathered his men together and fully explained to them the system of defence. It was known that a full-scale attack was imminent and that they had been selected to bear the brunt of the first onslaught. The Divisional Commander had told Elstob, ‘It must be impressed upon all troops allotted to the defence of any position, whether in the outpost system or the main battle position, that so far as they are concerned there is only one degree of resistance, and that is to the last round and to the last man.’ Looking around, Elstob could see the faces of men he had joined up with, men whose families he knew. Pointing to a blackboard showing the battalion’s positions he said, ‘This is Battalion Headquarters. Here we fight and here we die.’ That evening, the battalion began their march to the hill. Soon after they left camp, the band was ordered to turn back. Watching them go, Elstob commented, ‘Those are the only fellows that will come out alive.’

Three days later, at 6.30am, a furious gas and artillery barrage hit Manchester Hill. For two hours it pounded the positions until, shrouded by smoke and a fog that had formed around the hill, the enemy closed in. By 2.00pm most of the defenders of Manchester Hill were either dead or wounded and vicious hand-to-hand fighting was taking place all around. At 3.30pm, Colonel Elstob spoke on the phone to a Staff Officer saying that very few were left and that the end was nearly come. But, he insisted, ‘The Manchester Regiment will defend Manchester Hill to the last.’ With a final ‘goodbye’, he hung up. The 29-year-old colonel was killed soon after when he refused to surrender, firing his pistol into a group of Germans as they forced their way into the last trench on Manchester Hill. His actions that day won an obscure former schoolteacher the Victoria Cross and considerably delayed the German offensive, buying time for a counterattack to be prepared. It was just one of a series of similar actions taking place along the Western Front as the Kaiserschlacht (the 1918 Spring Offensive) hit. All along the line, men who had never dreamed of soldiering found themselves fighting to the last to hold ground.