CAMP NEAR SEBASTOPOL, _December 28, 1854_.
The British army has suffered more from sickness than from the sword.
Our men drag on in the trenches when they can scarcely stand. It is
very wearisome trying to walk about for twelve hours in slush; the
young hands cannot stand it. They sit down, get cramps, are carried to
hospital, and die. The old soldiers know their only chance is to keep
moving about.... Some arrangements must be made about firewood; there
is none within two miles of us. We have no animals of any sort, or we
might lay in a supply.
_January 2._
A hundred or a thousand men, as the case may be, wet through and
through, and up to the tips of their shakos in mud, sometimes without
blankets, often without tents, take up their ground at a late hour, and
there they lie. If they have something to eat, they are lucky. If they
have not, they go without. Their frightful exposure brings on certain
disease, and in a few days the dying and sick are the exclamation of
every one. Lord Raglan (if Lord Raglan be really here, and not in
London) is never seen.
_January 4._
The contrast between the French organisation and the working of our own
system is painful in the extreme. The French regiments all have their
huts, instead of our decaying tents, and can at least keep dry when
off duty. The streets of their camp are cleanly kept, and free of the
intolerable mire of ours. Their transport was so well supplied from
home that they have been able to bring up plenty of forage, with the
result that they have kept alive a great number of horses, while we
are reduced to a mere handful of beasts, which are stabled near Lord
Raglan’s quarters. We have hardly any animals to bring up supplies from
the harbour, and none to fetch us firewood. The army has simply been
deposited here by the people in London, and left to shift for itself.
Have we any War Department at all?
_January 12._
You will be surprised to hear me talk of hunger, but it is true. Our
Commissariat is so badly organised that the men often have had no meat
for twenty-four hours, often short supply even of biscuit and coffee.
We are very badly off for fuel, the men having to go a long way for the
most miserable twigs. Often we have had to march fatigue parties to
port (Balaclava), some miles through mud, to bring up their rations in
their haversacks—cruel work for men overworked in the trenches. Their
boots are sucked off their feet in mud, they have no change of clothes,
and how any man can stand it I know not.