[Jack Archer by G. A. Henty]@TWC D-Link bookJack Archer CHAPTER XXII 14/18
And what would have been the good if we had, when there were about 50,000 Russians inside a-shouting and yelling at the top of their voices, and a-firing away tons of ammunition? We stopped there five minutes, it may be, waiting to see if any one else was coming, and then when four of us was killed and the captain wounded, I thought it time to be laving; so I lifted him up and carried him in, and got an ugly baste of a Russian bullet into my shoulder as I did so.
Ye may call it fightin', but it's just murder I call it meself." Something like this was the tale told by scores of wounded men, and it is little wonder that, sore with defeat and disappointment, and heart-sick at the loss which had been suffered, the feelings of the army found vent in deep grumblings at the generals who had sent out a handful of men to assault a fortress. The next day there was another truce to allow of the burial of the dead and the collection of the wounded who lay thickly on the ground between the rival trenches.
It did not take place, however, till four in the afternoon, by which time the wounded had been lying for thirty hours without water or aid, the greater portion of the time exposed to the heat of a burning sun. Ten days later Lord Raglan died.
He was a brave soldier, an honorable man, a most courteous and perfect English gentleman, but he was most certainly not a great general.
He was succeeded by General Simpson, who appears to have been chosen solely because he had, as a lad, served in the Peninsula; the authorities seeming to forget that for the work upon which the army was engaged, no school of war could compare with that of the Crimea itself, and that generals who had received their training there were incomparably fitter for the task than any others could be. Two days after the repulse at the Redan, Jack was delighted by the entry of his brother into his tent.
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