But in the meantime, I was just thanking my stars for safety, and rubbing my inflamed guts. (Someone said later that Flashman was more anxious about his bowels than he was about the Russians, and had taken part in all the charges to try to ease his wind.) I sat there with the staff, gulping and massaging, happy to be out of the battle, and taking a quiet interest while Lord Raglan and his team of idiots continued to direct the fortunes of the day.
Now, of that morning at Balaclava I've told you what I remember, as faithfully as I can, and if it doesn't tally with what you read elsewhere, I can't help it. Maybe I'm wrong, or maybe the military historians are: you must make your own choice. For example, I've read since that there were Turks on both flanks of Campbell's Highlanders, whereas I remember 'em only on the left flank; again, my impression of the Heavy Brigade action is that it began and ended in a flash, but I gather it must have taken Scarlett some little time to turn and dress his squadrons. I don't remember that. It's certain that Lucan was on hand when the charge began, and I've been told he actually gave the word to advance—well, I never even saw him. So there you are; it just shows that no one can see everything.17
I mention this because, while my impressions of the early morning are fairly vague, and consist of a series of coloured and horrid pictures, I'm in no doubt about what took place in the late forenoon. That is etched forever; I can shut my eyes and see it all, and feel the griping pain ebbing and clawing at my guts—perhaps that sharpened my senses, who knows? Anyway, I have it all clear; not only what happened, but what caused it to happen. I know, better than anyone else who ever lived, why the Light Brigade was launched on its famous charge, because I was the man responsible, and it wasn't wholly an accident. That's not to say I'm to blame—if blame there is, it belongs to Raglan, the kind, honourable, vain old man. Not to Lucan, or to Cardigan, or to Nolan, or to Airey, or even to my humble self: we just played our little parts. But blame? I can't even hold it against Raglan, not now. Of course, your historians and critics and hypocrites are full of virtuous zeal to find out who was "at fault", and wag their heads and say "Ah, you see," and tell him what should have been done, from the safety of their studies and lecture-rooms—but I was there, you see, and while I could have wrung Raglan's neck, or blown him from the muzzle of a gun, at the time—well, it's all by now, and we either survived it or we didn't. Proving someone guilty won't bring the six hundred to life again—most of 'em would be dead by now anyway. And they wouldn't blame anyone. What did that trooper of the 17th say afterwards: "We're ready to go in again." Good luck to him, I say; once was enough for me—but, don't you understand, nobody else has the right to talk of blame, or blunders? Just us, the living and the dead. It was our indaba. Mind you, I could kick Raglan's arse for him, and my own.
I sat up there on the Sapoune crest, feeling bloody sick and tired, refusing the sandwiches that Billy Russell offered me, and listening to Lew Nolan's muttered tirade about the misconduct of the battle so far. I hadn't much patience with him—he hadn't been risking his neck along with Campbell and Scarlett, although he no doubt wished he had—but in my shaken state I wasn't ready to argue. Anyway, he was fulminating against Lucan and Cardigan and Raglan mostly, which was all right by me.
"If Cardigan had taken in the Lights, when the Heavies were breaking up the Ruskis, we'd have smashed 'em all by this," says he. "But he wouldn't budge, damn him—he's as bad as Lucan. Won't budge without orders, delivered in the proper form, with nice salutes, and 'Yes, m'lord' an' 'if your lordship pleases'. Christ—cavalry leaders! Cromwell'd turn in his grave, bad cess to him. And look at Raglan yonder—does he know what to do? He's got two brigades o' the best horsemen in Europe, itchin' to use their sabres, an' in front of 'em a Russian army that's shakin' in its boots after the maulin' Campbell an' Scarlett have given 'em—but he sits there sendin' messages to the infantry! The infantry, bigod, that're still gettin' out of their beds somewhere. Jaysus, it makes me sick!"
He was in a fine taking, but I didn't mind him much. At the same time, looking down on the panorama beneath us, I could see there was something in what he said. I'm not Hannibal, but I've picked up a wrinkle or two in my time, about ground and movement, and it looked to me as though Raglan had it in his grasp to do the Russians some no-good, and maybe even hand them a splendid licking, if he felt like it. Not that I cared, you understand; I'd had enough, and was all for a quiet life for everybody. But anyway, this is how the land lay.
The Sapoune, on which we stood, is a great bluff rising hundreds of feet above the plain. Looking east from it, you see below you a shallow valley, perhaps two miles long and half a mile broad; to the north, there is a little clump of heights on which the Russians had established guns to command that side of the valley. On the south the valley is bounded by the long spine of the Causeway Heights, running east from the Sapoune for two or three miles. The far end of the valley was fairly hazy, even with the strong sunlight, but you could see the Russians there as thick as fleas on a dog's back—guns, infantry, cavalry, everything except Tsar Nick himself, tiny puppets in the distance, just holding their ground. They had guns on the Causeway, too, pointing north; as I watched I saw the nearest team of them unlimbering just beside the spot where the Heavies' charge had ended.
So there it was, plain as a pool table—a fine empty valley with the main force of the Russians at the far end of it, and us at the near end, but with Ruskis on the heights to either side, guns and sharpshooters both—you could see the grey uniforms of their infantry moving among their cannon down on the Causeway, not a mile and a half away. Directly beneath where I stood, at the near end of the valley, our cavalry had taken up station just north of the Causeway, the Heavies slightly nearer the Sapoune and to the right, the Lights just ahead of them and slightly left. They looked as though you could have lobbed a stone into the middle of them—I could easily make out Cardigan, threading his way behind the ranks of the 17th, and Lucan with his gallopers, and old Scarlett, with his bright scarf thrown over one shoulder of his coat—they were all sitting out there waiting, tiny figures in blue and scarlet and green, with here and there a plumed hat, and an occasional bandage: I noticed one trooper of the Skins binding a stocking on to the forefoot of his charger, the little dark-green figure crouched down at the horse's hooves. The distant pipe of voices drifted up from the plain, and from the far end of the Causeway a popping of musketry; for the rest it was all calm and still, and it was this tranquillity that was driving Lew to a frenzy, the bloodthirsty young imbecile.
Well, thinks I, there they all are, doing nothing and taking no harm; let 'em be, and let's go home. For it was plain to see the Ruskis were going to make no advance up the valley towards the Sapoune; they'd had their fill for the day, and were content to hold the far end of the valley and the heights either side. But Raglan and Airey were forever turning their glasses on the Causeway, at the Russian artillery and infantry moving among the redoubts they'd captured from the Turks; I gathered both our infantry and cavalry down in the plain should have been moving to push them out, but nothing was happening, and Raglan was getting the frets.
"Why does not Lord Lucan move?" I heard him say once, and again: "He has the order; what delays him now?" Knowing Look-on, I could guess he was huffing and puffing and laying the blame on someone else. Raglan kept sending gallopers down—Lew among them—to tell Lucan, and the infantry commanders, to get on with it, but they seemed maddeningly obtuse about his orders, and wanted to wait for our infantry to come up, and it was this delay that was fretting Raglan and sending Lew half-crazy.