4th August 1855, Camp before Sebastopol

My own dearest

Many thanks for your letter which I received this morning whilst playing a cricket match on the hill against the Cavalry, who by the way managed to beat us most sadly. We have got up a cricket club and when not in the trenches we play – there is to be a match of Etonians v. Harrovians next week. It has not been perfect cricket weather, for it has been very wet; however, we must not be downcast. Our valiant Lord Raglan would no doubt have said: ‘I have the honour to inform you that the Weather still continues favourable.’ I am sorry to hear you also have so much wet. I hope the harvest will be safely brought in.

The other great sport here is to ride out to see the villages, or to picnic at the Monastery. We start out at about 12 and each takes his share of food and drink – my own supplies lately augmented by your most welcome box, for which I thank you – and when we arrive we put the Hock and other pleasant drinks into a well to cool and wander about, having tethered our horses. We dine under a tree, looking out across the sea. Last week Derrington had a box he’d sent for from Fortnum and Mason, with chocolate and tea and preserved cherries and pâté, which he kindly shared at one such picnic. We are able now to get a few fowls and geese and various fruits, such a pleasure after the winter of ham and biscuit.

These diversions provide us with something to do, for a siege is a dreary thing and the trenches are not hospitable, albeit that we are not yet up to our knees in mud and water as we were in the winter, despite the recent rains. I have never in my life formed such a high appreciation of trees and vegetation as in this camp, where we want for green leaves, every bush and sapling having been uprooted or broken. I look vainly for a tree out of my tent door, but see only dust or bare, wet earth and soldiers, all of which I should like never to see again. If Providence brings me safe home to you, I shall plant trees.

The Tartars are very nice people, the most civil I ever met with. One meets them out in the villages and upon the roads. Their vines have been dreadfully depleted by our work and all the more so by the Russians. Some of their number are beginning to come back from Vermutka and Kutchut Miscomea, from which they were driven by the Cossacks in the winter. The road all day is covered with wagons and arabas of women, children and Tartars, bringing everything they had with them: a far more affecting sight than any trenches or Mamelons, because this is the effect of war on people who have nothing to do with it and are now probably beggars for ever. God forgive any man who having once seen it, wishes to take part in another War!

I will as you suggested in your last letter look out for your sister’s friend Brookes, though one might live in a vast camp like this for ten years without meeting a fellow. We can ride 20 miles through camp from one end to the other, and about the same distance back by the rear line. I would have a better chance of bumping into him on the streets of the city of Gloucester than I do hereabouts.

I remain your devoted husband

William Gale

The Grange, Weston-sub-Edge

12th August

My dearest William

I am just home from Cheltenham, where my aunt and myself went to a concert for the benefit of the nurses at Scutari, at the Pittville Pump Rooms. It was a lively programme, with piano duets and songs – as an encore they played The Girl I Left Behind Me, to great applause – and we much enjoyed the evening. Our friend Dr Nolan accompanied us, one on each arm, across the park. I can see why people choose to live in town, it is so agreeable to be able to stroll everywhere. You may imagine also how much I like to peer into people’s rooms, especially just as dusk is falling, when they have lit their lamps but before they have thought to draw their curtains – it is so interesting to see how their houses are furnished and to spot peculiarities, a caged parrot apparently gnawing its own foot in one window and a sad-looking lady dressed all in green framed in another, standing staring out as if lost.

Present at the concert was my aunt’s friend Miss Sanderson, who you may recall is a most independent soul. On a London sojourn earlier this summer she had been to a meeting of the new Administrative Reform Association, at the Drury Lane Theatre. Who do you think she heard give a speech there, but Charles Dickens! She told me all about it, during the interval. You will not approve, for the Association has been founded by that Radical Layard, but perhaps you will soften a little when I tell you that Mr Dickens was apparently moved to join by the failures of the Commissariat to our soldiers in the Crimea last winter. Miss Sanderson said that he spoke with great feeling about the thousands of thousands of the bravest men that ever England has bred, lying newly-buried. Apparently the Great Author had never given a political speech before, but my friend reported that he spoke with great authority, learnedness and wit. Everyone cheered throughout and shouted ‘hear’. His name will surely lend sway to the Association.

My sister is coming tomorrow and I shall be glad of her company, for I am lonely without my William. We thought to take a picnic up to Meon Hill if it goes on fine. Do you remember when we were there, four summers ago? When we lay on the soft turf, with the sweet smell of gorse all around us. What a glad day that was, under the June-blue Heaven.

How I wish this war would be over! I pray God will keep you safe and bring you back to your loving

Alice

12th August, Camp before Sebastopol

My dearest Wife

You must not be jealous, for I have a new and delightful companion and she is almost as pretty and quite as headstrong as yourself. She is the funniest kitten that ever was seen. Even now she is attempting to assist me by getting her tail in the ink.

One of the men was thoroughly spooked the other night. He fancied he saw a young woman – in a diaphanous dress the colour of pearls with long golden tresses, no less – gliding towards the river. He was convinced it was an apparition. The Tartars say there is a Nymph of the Tchernaya, who haunts those reaches by night and each morning returns to a tree before transforming herself into a serpent. I was reminded of Keats’ Lamia! In any case, there is much talk about the camp of this ghoulish lady and what she might portend. Some of the turns in the Tchernaya allow for a swim of a few yards and this has been an occasional pleasure of mine.

A few days ago I was riding with Herbert along the front of our camp, when up jumped a hare – away went Herbert, and away went I. We had not gone far when we saw a very smart-looking French officer with a beautiful dog; we gave him – the dog – a shout and off he went after the hare, leaving his master with his mouth open in utter astonishment. We crossed the ravine at the head of the camp and galloped away towards the Second Division in hot pursuit. Unfortunately the men saw the hare coming and ran out to head him. We shouted to them and got the hare safe away through the crowd, but our fine dog took fright and turned back. Still on went Herbert, on went I – we had a splendid run down the Inkerman Heights. At last the hare lay down, Herbert jumped off his horse and picked him up. Next day we gave a dinner-party and had delicious hare soup.

There are rumours that the Russians intend to attack us. They certainly seem to have more ammunition than ever.

Ever your loving

William Gale

28th August 1855, Camp before Sebastopol

Alice my dearest one

It is curious that you should write of Henry Layard, for just as our last letters were crossing – perhaps at Marseille, or at Malta – we heard of the death from disease here of his brother, Arthur Layard, of the 38th Regiment of Foot. It is true that for the surviving brother I have very little respect, albeit that his excavations at Nineveh proved so fruitful and of such interest; however I had rather he had kept his head buried in the sands of Persia and kept it out of politics. Particularly I do not thank him for his crass disdain for our poor Lord Raglan. It is said by people higher up than myself, with some cause to know of what they speak, that the Queen herself opposed his appointment to the War Office, on this very account. To incur the displeasure of the Monarch in whose name your own brother is at war is no cause for pride. Now that the poor boy has met his end, I should hope his brother will hang his head in shame. Certainly he would not have made a popular choice here. I am disappointed that so great an author as Mr Dickens would allow himself to be taken in by the prating of such an evident rabble-raiser as Layard. That your friend Miss Sanderson should swallow it all up like a goose thrown scraps in a farmyard comes as no surprise to me.

It is excessively hot here now and we are constantly under arms, for it is thought the Russes may make a further attempt at any time. Accordingly we turn out at two o’clock in the morning to receive them. You will have read in the papers about the French and Sardinian rebuff of their earlier attempt at the Valley of the Tchernaya, which it is now said resulted in some ten thousand dead. Our allies’ losses were light, the Russians slaughtered. Tell my father I will write to him about it in detail when I have more leisure. We have known for some little time of the arrival of large reinforcements in the Enemy’s Camp and have been expecting some attack on our trenches. When one gets up near to the wounded enemy one sees how ill clad and haggard they seem, altogether a worse sort than our foes at Alma and Inkerman. They are more like the peasantry of the countryside than soldiers; perhaps indeed that is what they were formerly.

There was a great mishap in these parts, which caused the loudest explosion I have yet heard here. A shell from the Russians blew up the principal magazine of the French, and I am sorry to report, all who were close by. The noise was so great it was as if Vulcan himself had set up his celestial forge directly above our heads.

Soyer who has set up here gave a demonstration to Generals and Staff &c the other day, showing us how to make our rations into delicious dishes. I was there and he certainly made very nice ragouts and soups, but I fear it will be a long time before we can do it for ourselves. His dishes had the additional advantage of being washed down with iced champagne.

Always your loving

William

10th September, Camp before Sebastopol

My dearest Alice

The Siege is over. You will I think have read that the French took the Malakoff and we followed suit by the storming of the Redan. Our loss was frightful, over one hundred Officers; and the bodies of men were five deep all around the Redan. The affair was so bloody and so difficult there were those – newer arrivals, mostly, and very young – who ran away, though I would entreat you not to advert to this to anyone except my parents. The papers love nothing more than to report on English drunkenness or desertion and by this they do a great disservice to the vast majority, who have worked nobly in the most trying circumstances imaginable. In any case, it is done. The Russes have sunk their remaining ships, all except the steamers and of course have destroyed their bridge across.

I got knocked over by a ball in my arm, mercifully not my right one or I should not be able to write you this letter. I have had no fever and the pain is bearable but it is not known thus far whether I shall regain the use of it. I attempt to wriggle my fingers but the hand is as still as a bunch of white radishes. If Peace will come it will be a small price, cheaper certainly than another winter in the open trenches.

The silence seems so odd now. Instead of the constant rattle of musketry and roar of cannon, everything is quite quiet, except an occasional boom of a gun from the north side to remind us they are still there. I doubt if they will stay the winter. Pray tell my father that I shall send him a fuller report of the Redan skirmish when time allows.

Ever your loving

William