THE LIGHT BRIGADE

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 57, 4 September 1926, Page 20

THE LIGHT BRIGADE

"WHILE ALL THE WORLD WON

DEEED."

One may wonder why "all the world wondered at that particular Balaclava incident and went almost untouched by the equally gallant charge of the heavy cavalry brigade in the same battle. It cannot be that Tennyson immortalised the Lancers and Hussars of the Light Brigade, for he was impartial in his praise of both brigades of cavalry. Yet, while every schoolboy will recite in praise of the Light Horse: — "Into the jaws of Death, Into the mouth of Hell Bode the Six Hundred," how many boys, or, for the matter of that, how many men, would even recognise as a description of the charge of the gallant Three Hundred of Scarlett's Brigade the following lines:— "Thro' the forest of lances and swords In the heart of the Russian hordes, They rode, or they stood at bay." Tennyson wrote of both Light and Heavy Brigades in words that stir the blood, but it is the Light Brigade which still holds place in public memory; their comrades of the Scots Greys and Inniskillings are almost forgotten. . That, perhaps, is why, says the London "Sunday Times,"' the Charge of the Light Brigade was reproduced in the historic pageant at Aldershot Military Tattoo I this year. Although the uniforms that, I helped the realism of the living picture of the charge were but copies of the handsome old Hussar and Lancer kits, there was one real and original relic .of the famous charge produced at the Tattoo. By the kindness of the president and committee of the Boyal United Services Institution, the very trumpet was used at Aldershot which at. Balaclava sounded: — "Forward the Light Brigade; charge for the guns." Lord' Cardigan's brigade trumpeter, Trumpeter-Major Britain, of tho 17th Lancers, sounded the "Charge" at Balaclava on that trumpet, which since has rested for many years in the, United Services Museum. . The trumpet he sounded then was used by a trumpeter of the same regiment, the 17th Lan-: ccrs.