| Description | Written from Sebastopol, to the Horse Guards.
Need of captains, being well off for boys, the two Janes's, Waller and Ld R Browne: "Waller is the merest child to look at with the heart of a Lion": his and 3-4 men following a column of retreating Russians in the repulse of the night attack on the Quarries, driving them with his shouting: "if the light had enabled the Muscovites to have seen what they were running away from, they would have seen a little Boy, followed by a few men, which boy any one of them could have held up in one hand": his coming out with the draft last November and never missing duty in the trenches during all the bad weather: the men calling him"little Waller" and telling each other stories of his behaviour: his getting a crack on the head from the splinter of a shell, but not seriously: a good mark to be made against his name, "he will do a good thing or two some day or I am mistaken".
Note at the end that Col. Yea was killed 3 days after, on 18 June, during the unsuccessful attack on the Redan.
[Colonel Lacy Walter Giles Yea, 1805-1855, was the commanding officer of the 7th Fusiliers.] |