[BITList] The Charge of the Light Brigade

[John Feltham]

Remember Tennyson's poem about the ill-fated Light Brigade that followed orders given by someone who made a mistake and were cut down for their obedience during the Crimean war? Tennyson was then the Poet Laureate and apparently composed the poem in a matter of hours after reading an account of the event. 
The poem of course went down in history as a glorious pean to the courage of the British soldier, though the same cant be said of their commanders. Monuments were erected to the Brigade and anniversaries celebrated regularly until as recently as 2004. 
At the time, the Russian commanders who fought against the British in Balaclava thought the British soldiers must have been drunk. The French Marshal Pierre Bosquet said "C'est magnifique mais ce n'est pas la guerre. C'est de la folie." (Its mangnificent but its not war. It is madness.)
The charge continues to be studied by military historians today as an example of bad military intelligence and communication. 
The charge was led by the Earl of Cardigan who charged so hard he reached the Russian guns without looking back to see what was happening behind him. He fought till the end of the battle, avoided capture, considered he had done all he could and left the field to board his yacht in Balaclava harbour where he had a champagne dinner. He returned to England a hero and was promoted to Inspector General of the Cavalry.
The army commander Lord Raglan, who'd given the order, blamed the Lieutenant General Lucan for misunderstanding it and not using his own discretion. 
Lucan said he had no independence in the matter. He did not see active duty again but was made a member of the Order of Bath the same year. He went on to reach the rank of General and even became Field Marshal just before he died. 
Thanks in large part to Tennyson, the focus was much more on the glory of the cavalrymen rather than the blunders of the commanders, with the perverse result that it reinforced blind traditions and created a stranglehold on military enterprise for the next 80+ years, until the First World War 
Forty years after the charge, Rudyard Kipling wrote a sequel to the poem* in 1890 called "The Last of the Light Brigade" to highlight the hardships being faced by the last 20 soldiers left alive. He addressed it to Tennyson, who was by then close to 80, and basically it laments the way that the country continues to glorify the act while ignoring the actors of the charge. The last survivor died in 1927 at the age of 96.
Unlike Tennyson's poem, Kipling's effort was largely ignored.
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*The Last of the Light Brigade
~Rudyard Kipling
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!
They laid their heads together that were scarred and lined and grey;
Keen were the Russian sabres, but want was keener than they;
And an old Troop-Sergeant muttered, "Let us go to the man who writes
The things on Balaclava the kiddies at school recites."
They went without bands or colours, a regiment ten-file strong,
To look for the Master-singer who had crowned them all in his song;
And, waiting his servant's order, by the garden gate they stayed,
A desolate little cluster, the last of the Light Brigade.
They strove to stand to attention, to straighten the toil-bowed back;
They drilled on an empty stomach, the loose-knit files fell slack;
With stooping of weary shoulders, in garments tattered and frayed,
They shambled into his presence, the last of the Light Brigade.
The old Troop-Sergeant was spokesman, and "Beggin' your pardon," he said,
"You wrote o' the Light Brigade, sir. Here's all that isn't dead.
An' it's all come true what you wrote, sir, regardin' the mouth of hell;
For we're all of us nigh to the workhouse, an' we thought we'd call an' tell.
"No, thank you, we don't want food, sir; but couldn't you take an' write
A sort of 'to be continued' and 'see next page' o' the fight?
We think that someone has blundered, an' couldn't you tell 'em how?
You wrote we were heroes once, sir. Please, write we are starving now."
The poor little army departed, limping and lean and forlorn.
And the heart of the Master-singer grew hot with "the scorn of scorn."
And he wrote for them wonderful verses that swept the land like flame,
Till the fatted souls of the English were scourged with the thing called Shame.
They sent a cheque to the felon that sprang from an Irish bog;
They healed the spavined cab-horse; they housed the homeless dog;
And they sent (you may call me a liar), when felon and beast were paid,
A cheque, for enough to live on, to the last of the Light Brigade.*
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!
 
*this verse was present in the first collection but was removed from the later editions.