While stationed here, the Earl of Cardigan, who was then lieutenant-colonel of the 11th Hussars, frequently came down from London to be present at our reviews and field-days on Hounslow Heath. The gallant earl, when Lord Brudenell, held a commission in our regiment, and he had ever taken a great interest in the corps; indeed, it was said that soon after his duel with Captain Tucket, which occurred about the period of which I write, he had offered our colonel 8000 pounds to exchange commissions. Much has been written and said in reference to the public conduct of this distinguished officer, namely, “that he did not perform his duty at the battle of Balaklava as became a general.” To these scandalous and scurrilous assertions I am in a position to give a decided and most emphatic contradiction. The many incidents connected with the war in the Crimea, and that action in particular, will form the subject of the concluding portion of these chapters; but I may here observe that the Earl of Cardigan rode as far and fought as well as any other man engaged. The truth is, he never was a particular favourite with the officers of his own regiment, or any other corps collectively, although individually he has ever had many friends. The reason is plain: he invariably kept young officers to their duty. Officers and men must be thorough soldiers – not “Miss Nancy” sort of fellows – to please him at a field-day, through which he can, in my opinion, put a regiment or a brigade with more quickness and precision than any other officer in Her Majesty’s service.
But it is time to return to my story. One of our officers had a very large monkey of the baboon species, which he kept chained in a kennel in rear of the stables set apart for officers’ horses. It was a favourite diversion with some of our men to turn “Jocko” loose, and let him scamper all over the barrack-yard; and this he decidedly enjoyed, until perceived by the dogs, of which there were always a great number of all sorts about the barracks. When once these got sight or scent of Jocko, they would quickly unite themselves into a pack, and, followed by a motley crowd of partly-dressed men and the children of the married soldiers (the most mischievous of all children), Jocko would lead them a chase round and round the yard, until some of the dogs got unpleasantly near, when he would turn round on his pursuers and chatter in the most laughable manner, which mostly kept them at bay until he had got second wind, and off he would go again. On one of these occasions he was more than usually pressed by a new arrival in barracks – a very large Scotch deerhound, a complete stranger to Jocko. The monkey dashed round the barrack-yard at a tremendous pace, looking behind him and chattering to his enemies at every bound. It was during the mid-day stable hour, a period of the day when all the men and officers are supposed to be in barracks. On came Jocko at a tearing pace, with the jaws of Bos, the Highland deerhound, within a yard of his tail, and the rest of the pack scattered a long way behind, at distances according to their ability to keep up the pace. The sergeant-major of my troop, who had been promoted partly in consequence of his growing too fat to serve in the ranks, stood at a stable-door, which was open; and Jocko, being more anxious for a friendly shelter than ever I had before seen him, darted between the fat non-commissioned officer’s legs, followed by Bos through the same opening into the stable. The sudden collision sent the sergeant-major plump on his back. Jocko jumped on to the back of the first horse he came near, from whence he sent such a tirade of chatter as set every horse in the stable capering and kicking at the unusual row. Bos was bundled out of the stable, but how to get at Jocko was quite another thing. He evidently thought Bos was waiting for him outside, and, determined not to be moved without a struggle, he stuck his sharp claws into the back of the horse, who, suffering from the acute pain and affright of his novel rider, was nearly mad; now rearing with his fore-feet in the manger, and then lashing out with his hind-feet, it was dangerous to approach him. In vain was Jocko pommelled with the handle of a stable-fork; it only made him stick the faster. At last we hit upon the idea of leading out the horse to the side of Jocko’s kennel, which he no sooner perceived than he jumped from the horse’s back and entered it.
Chapter Nine
Who has done this deed? All are suspect,
While yet the guilty one is undiscovered:
We stand alike condemn’d, alike acquitted —
The guilty innocent, the innocent guilty.
Let rigid search be straightway made.
Amidst all the scenes of wild fun which even the life of a private soldier is at times enlivened, events occasionally occur that have a depressing effect upon the mind. We had a “sergeant shoemaker” who was at the head of the bootmaking department of the regiment; he was the very soul of “element, divarshun, and fun,” as my Irish comrades would say. It was his custom to visit the barrack-rooms every morning, generally while at breakfast, for the purpose of ascertaining whether any boots wanted repairing, or if any of us required a new pair. He always had a kindly word and a joke for such as he was well acquainted with, having served as a private in the ranks until promoted to his lucrative position. Going up to each of our beds, he would take down the boots from the shelf, and turn them soles upwards with as much diligence as the troop-farrier daily examined the shoes of our horses. “Pat,” he would say, “you want a new pair of heels on these boots.”
“Fred, you are born to be a rich man: your boot-soles are worn out in the middle, and the sides are scarcely touched.”
“Terry, I must speak to Sergeant Williams,” (the drill sergeant); “you are growing Sheffield-knee’d; the soles of your boots are worn down on the inside and not touched on the outside.”
“Denny Smith, your mother must have reared you, for shure you must have been bow-legged from an infant; your boot-soles are worn as much on the outside as Terry’s are on the inside.”
“Arrah, now, Tim O’Leary, I wonder you’re not ashamed of yourself for bringing disgrace on our illegant corps by wearing these thundering ould crab shells wid a patch on the side of each. Shure I’ll go bail there’s never a man in the regiment would wear a patch on his boots but yourself; I’ll report you to your captain, so I will, for the sergeant-major told me your account has been quite clear these four months, and there’s never a betther-looking dragoon in the service: pity that you should be spoiled entirely for the matther of a pair of illegant boots.” In this fashion he would rattle away with his tongue while examining our boots, and, slinging such as wanted repairs over his arm, bustle out of one room into another.
The barrack-rooms are approached by a flight of stone steps leading from the yard, and one morning when our poor sergeant-shoemaker had been more than usually jocular, he unfortunately missed his footing at the top of one of these flights of steps, and falling headlong to the bottom, broke his neck and died on the spot. There he lay, poor fellow, with his face turned upwards, until the surgeon was summoned and pronounced him dead, when he was carried to the hospital. He was buried in the little churchyard at Heston with military honours, of which he was richly deserving.
Soon after this unfortunate incident, another occurred that caused some commotion in the corps. There is a powder-mill on Hounslow Heath, where we went through all our field-drill. On one occasion, during a field-day, a waggon was being loaded with powder, to which was attached a team of four horses: we had just thrown out a party of skirmishers, who were firing away some distance from the mill. It was then the custom for the “squad-sergeants” to visit the barrack-rooms for the purpose of serving out blank ammunition prior to the troops marching out to a field-day, and the men were supposed to take their ball-cartridges from their pouches and replace them with blank, leaving the ball-ammunition on the shelf above their beds. On the day to which I allude, the skirmishers were keeping up a brisk fire on an imaginary enemy, when one of the horses attached to the waggon standing at the powder-mill was seen to drop suddenly,