Let not ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys and destiny obscure,
Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the poor
-Thomas Gray
From the diary of William Jowett 1854 Dec 18th -31st
| Weather very wet since my last. We are in a most deplorable condition. Reinforcements go into trench, so the fresh troops make no difference; duty very hard. A little snow fell yesterday; to-day rather fine, but very dirty. Served out to-day with comforters and gloves. The most disgraceful thing imaginable, I am now almost barefoot and cannot get a pair of boots; and even if I did get the boots that our Government serves out to us, they would be but of little use; for during this weather, we cannot step without going six or eight inches deep in mid or water and then our stockings get wet and in that condition we have to remain until the weather clears up and the sun comes out to dry them. We still have to carry our meat and biscuits up from Balaclava; we are in a miserable plight when we return to camp and perhaps for duty that night. Some days we get quarter of a pound of pork and about six ounces of biscuits. I am at this moment fit to eat my fingers’ ends. | |
| 19th. | Very miserable yesterday. To-day rather fine. Obliged to report myself to the Doctor, being very ill; having caught a severe cold. I am scarcely able to walk. The Doctor gave me some medicine and sent me to my tent. |
| 20th. | To-day is very fine and, thank God, I feel a little better. Nothing more than usual to-day; that is, men dying very fast from dysentery and the severity of the weather. |
| 24th. | Very wet since my last date; nothing but continual rain – rain – rain. On the morning of the 21st, the enemy made a sortie on our advanced, in front of the 21-gun battery; they drove our men out and held possession of the work for an hour and a half. The Company I belong to went on duty there next morning; five of our men lay dead in the work, stripped of almost everything they had on; they were bayoneted while asleep. The enemy came on them quite by surprise. The poor fellows, being tired and worn out with heavy duty, were nearly all asleep. The enemy took away all our wounded as well as their own and everything else they could lay their hands on. It was a most disgraceful affair on our part; there was certainly some neglect of duty somewhere, but it cannot be made out where. Two companies of our regiment were on at the time and several others. Our men were commanded by an Officer of the 34th regiment, who was taken prisoner; the 34th are all young hands. It is both snowing and raining at this time and is bitter cold. |
| 25th. | Christmas-day. Last night was a beautiful frosty night; to-day it is also very fine; the frosty weather appears to have set in. Such a Christmas-day I never passed in my life before,. I cam from the trenches this morning, so managed to get a bottle of brandy and intended having a bit of a spree, but I was taken in for the Company for the trenches this evening; so I left my bottle for to-morrow and contented myself with my grog. My Christmas dinner consisted of a little salt pork and hard biscuit. |
| 26th. | A very sharp frost last night; very fine to-day and very little firing going on. I happened rather lucky last night, after I got into the 21-gun battery. I was walking about on the platform of one of the guns; the night was beautiful and I alone, thinking about the place where I spent my last Christmas-day, when a young sailor came up to me and said, “Well Corporal, how did you enjoy your Christmas dinner?” “Well,” said I, “I enjoyed it pretty well, because I had good reason for doing so,” “Why,” said Jack, “had you something extra, then?” “No,” I said; “nothing but our regular rations and very little of that; but I knew that I could get nothing else, therefore I enjoyed it.” “Well,” says Jack, “will you have a bit of plum pudding?” I said “I should like to have some; for if I pass to-day over without any, it will be the first time since I have been able to eat any.” So Jack handed me “a lump of dough,” as he called it. I took it and you may depend I was pleased with it. In return, I gave Jack a drop out of my grog bottle, which I always used to carry with me; so I and Jack passed the night in talking about Old England and the merry Christmas they were spending there. Little does a man think, when seated by his fire-side at home, what hardships his own countrymen are enduring for his sake. I often wonder if a soldier will be treated the same in England as he used to be. Orders issued last night and read to us to-day, that the Queen had been pleased to allow every soldier that serves in the Crimea to have a medal; and those who were in the bloody battles of the Alma and Inkermann to wear two clasps; one for each engagement. |
| 27th. | Nothing particular to-day. No firing. Weather fine. |
| 28th. | Came off duty this morning. Rather fine, but very cold. |
| 30th. | Cold and miserable. |
| 31st. | Came off the advanced works, Gordon’s battery. Very cold; a little snow fell in the night. Went down to Balaclava to-day; returned very tired and weary. |
Queen’s Regulations provided that each soldier should receive 1½ lb. of leaven bread or 1 lb. of biscuit and 1 lb. of fresh or salt meat a day. For this his pay was stopped 3½d. Anything else he needed he was expected to buy. Lord Raglan recognised that this system was unworkable in Turkey and the Crimea and had ordered that, for the stoppage of a further penny, each soldier should receive an ounce of coffee and 1¾ ounces of sugar. Later on he ordered that two ounces of rice or barley should be added to the daily ration, an extra half-pound of meat and a free issue of a quarter of a pint of spirits. But transport difficulties had made it impossible to get these rations up to the men. For three or four days at a time they sometimes had nothing to eat but biscuit. The fresh meat that came up perhaps once in ten days was ‘seldom eatable’. On Christmas Day Colonel Bell’s men got no rations at all. ‘I kicked up a dust’, he noted in his diary. ‘At the close of the day the Commissary did serve out a small portion of fresh meat. Too late! no fires, or means of cooking!’
The men, in any event, had little appetite and often when the full rations did come they were too exhausted to collect them. They were more concerned in getting their coffee and rum than anything else; and they went to great trouble with their green coffee-berries, using cannon-balls and shell-cases to grind them with, and anything they could lay their hands on to cook with. When only four bags of fuel were served out to the three thousand men of the 3rd Division’s 1st Brigade, on 31 December, they were issued with one pound of coal each. A few days later they were using old broken boots instead.
‘Well, my lads,’ said their brigadier, ‘this is a sort of fuel I never saw tried before.’
‘Oh! indeed, sir, they burn very well. If only we had more of them and they were a bit drier.’
An officer of the 46th saw his men cutting up their dried meat into little strips and using that as fuel to cook their coffee with. Men pilfered bits of gabions and even pick and shovel handles and chopped them up before they could be recognised.
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