When it had fallen to him to write other such letters to the families of his special friends, his pen had faltered. ‘We are all in great affliction at the present time, Death having snatched from us one whom we all loved. We struggle to conceive how the sad news of such a loss will be met at home, by those whom poor so-and-so held in the dearest regard … Your son, from the day he joined the 23rd, proved himself to be a credit to us, and a most determined soldier. I have every reason to believe that he is now in that place where you would not wish to have him back from.’

But how to lessen the great blow to a father or a widow when a man had died not from gallantry, not among the flash of bayonets and the terrible glory of battle, but from cold or sickness, lying groaning like a beast in his own ordure? This was how his dear friend Lockwood had met his end. The cholera. He had known that his time was coming: he handed his pocket watch to Gale. It had been his last wish that William should visit his widow and the two little daughters he was to leave behind, to offer them some crumb of comfort. It was a meeting William did not anticipate with any gladness, for how could he in honesty convey the facts of Lockwood’s death in such a way as to ameliorate their loss? They would ask questions and how was he to answer so as to preserve the honour of his friend? The press were heartless, listing the cause of death next to a fellow’s name: debris, dysentery, diarrhoea. Did the men who compiled these cruel lists never consider the mothers, the sisters, the wives whose dreadful shock and sorrow were by their cruel enumeration made so much the heavier? If their men were to be taken from them, would it not be kinder to allow them to cherish the hope that each had died a hero? Small wonder the press were not popular here.

Algie had done his best, but his brother knew that he had not shown dauntless intrepidity. His face had often had the look of fright upon it. The sight of blood had always alarmed him, from his boyhood. When at home as a lad of eleven or twelve he had cut his hand while whittling he had cried out: ‘Don’t let me see!’ and shut his eyes, holding out his arm for their nurse to attend. The boy had come as one of some two hundred and thirty reinforcements, many of them too young to be of much use. They were not hardy. One officer had joined straight from his lessons at Winchester School, having asked leave of his headmaster. More than forty of their number were dead of cholera before Christmas.