164 
THE BRITISH ARMY ON THE CONTINENT OE EUROPE. 
went down on the 13th to man those batteries which were now armed with four 
32-pounders. They had been engaged with the enemy the previous day, but had 
not accomplished very much nor suffered a great deal. When Oldershaw, how¬ 
ever, went down with these 65 men, after a cannonade of about two hours, he 
silenced the “ Crow’s nest ” and “ Garden ” batteries. Then the Bussians 
concentrated about 30 guns, very many of them of very heavy calibre upon his 
and he fought this great preponderance of Bussian guns for three hours more. 
Of the 65 men who went into the battery, Oldershaw took 18 to act as stretcher 
bearers and carry away the wounded, so that there were only 47 men left to 
actually fight the guns. At the end of the five hours of these 47 men, 44 had 
been killed or wounded, and even then Oldershaw and the three men that were 
left did not show any intention of quitting the battery until an order was sent 
them to do so. Three of their guns meanwhile had been dismounted some time 
previously and at last the fourth was disabled also. When Oldershaw and his 
little band were at length ordered to leave this scene of destruction, the three 
guns that had been knocked over by the Bussian shot were lying on the ground 
with their muzzles in the air; they loaded up those guns and the last thing they 
did was to fire a salvo of defiance from them to the enemy. Well, that was a 
very gallant performance indeed, but it was eclipsed the next day when Captain 
Oldershaw was ordered in error to take in fresh gun detachments and go into 
those wrecked batteries and fight them again. The men who had been with him 
the day before happened to hear what was going on, and, when Captain Oldershaw 
went on parade on the morning of the 14th, the 18 men, who had been stretcher 
bearers the day before, and the three other survivors of the fight fell out, and they in¬ 
sisted upon their right to go with him and fight the guns over again. Now the 
action of the men in making this claim brought to light the circumstance that 
Oldershaw had been detailed for the duty through a mistake, and as, I suppose, 
it was hardly fair to ask the men to go again, another officer was sent down 
with the new detachments. It was no use, however, to persevere in the contest 
and both those batteries were eventually again silenced and were not subsequently 
manned. As I said before I personally knew nothing whatever about this brilliant 
exploit until comparatively recently, and when I read it I was quite astonished. 
The other day, however, 1 came across it again in another book by Sir Evelyn 
Wood, who las published his memories of the Crimea, and he tells the whole 
of the story much to the same effect as Kinglake. He was present at the siege, 
and he tells it from his personal knowledge, and I would like to read you an 
extract about this episode which I made to-night out of Sir Evelyn’s book. He 
says : “ The British soldier does not often require speeches to raise his courage 
on going into action, but every one of us is the better for the contemplation of 
heroic deeds, and were I a Boyal Artilleryman I should try so to record this 
achievement that young gunners might learn the names of those three survivors 
of the five hours’ artillery duel on the 13th April, who, having seen 93 per cent, 
of their comrades fall, begged for permission to re-commence with their Captain 
the same deadly work on the following day. Several speakers have dwelt upon 
the value there is to be derived from leading gallant deeds such as this. I 
think it is time that the attention of our officers in garrison batteries was directed 
to this one in particular. I do not undei stand why it is not more celebrated in our 
annals, for, so far as I am aware, no braver or more honorable achievement is to be 
found in the whole of our military history. Nor for the matter of that do I believe 
that it can be surpassed in the history of any nation. We hear over and over 
again of Norman Bamsay, we are all at home about Mercer’s battery at Waterloo 
and we have had that scene painted for the mess at Aldershot, we have heard too of 
the ‘‘battery of the dead” that so unselfishly covered the Austrian retreat at 
