Drunk’s medal for auction

Press, 11 February 1986, Page 4

Drunk’s medal for auction

From ROBIN CHARTERIS, in London

A Distinguished Conduct Medal awarded to a drunk who joined the charge of the Light Brigade is expected to sell for more than £2OOO ($5200) at auction at Sotheby’s, in London, next month. It was won by Trooper “Butcher Jack” Fahey, of the 17th Lancers, who escaped from the guard tent where he had been imprisoned for drunkenness, caught a riderless Russian horse, and joined the charge into the “Valley Of Death.” Fahey was the regimental butcher. He was covered in blood and carrying a butcher’s axe when arrested for drunkenness. He was still drunk when

he joined the charge, wielding the axe.

“What with the drink in me,” he was reported as saying later, “and the excitement of the headlong charge, I went stark mad ... I with one blow of my axe brained a Russian gunner, with another split open the head of an officer, and kept whirling the axe about me, thrashing about like a windmill.”

When he retuned safely to the British lines he was "as sober as a Bishop,” but was arrested again and brought before his commanding officer, Lord Lucan, the next day. Trooper Fahey was released — and later decorated — he said, “in consideration of the use I had made of the liberty I had taken.”