69. October 25th 1854: 'Into the Valley of Death...' NZ Connection to the Charge of the Light Brigade

'Stormed at with shot and shell, White horse and hero fell.'  [From 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.]

They turned out at 4am and, as the sun rose, dissolving the mist in the valley ahead, James realised that the trap would be sprung that day. He retraced mentally the steps followed, the directions agreed upon, wanting to spot the mistakes, to know what might be, should be, learned from their collective madness. If not for himself and those with him – it was patently too late for that - then for others who might follow. For others would follow, that he knew. Perhaps for generations to come. Even if only for the sake of the historical record. They would want to pick over the entrails and know how he, of all people, had contributed to such a disaster, remembering him, not by his many victories but by this one cataclysmic defeat. Jealous rivals for preferment, journalists with bloodhound noses for bad news, political nobodies seeking electoral advantage, emotional voyeurs who, like uninvited funeral guests, took vicarious delight in the misfortunes and distress of others, all would give their verdicts. Reconstructing that day. Inventing stories. Grand stories of hubris and folly, and vignettes of cowardice and bravery in the face of death. Second-guessing motivation. Allocating blame. Wise after the event.

If it was to be defeat, James thought saddling up, then let it be one last glorious defeat that would be immortalised in history and poetry for generations to come. How would he be remembered, he wondered? Would only his mother mourn? Would he provide the lead his troop of dragoons expected? Disappointed that Joshua, his favourite charger, was lame and had to be left in the camp, and fearing his own cowardice, he reluctantly mounted Boadicea, his tetchy white mare, and led A troop to their allotted place at the right of the line. A mile away at the end of the valley the Cossack battery was waiting. When the order was given they advanced at a trot but within a few hundred yards came under fire and broke into a gallop.

His mother was never to know that it was that tetchy white mare Boadicea who made James a hero that day. Frightened by the shells bursting around her, she bolted. Straight at the Russian guns.

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Captain J.A. Oldham was the first of the Light Brigade to get among the Russian guns at Balaclava on October 25^th 1854. He was last seen wounded and bleeding in the smoke that hung in clouds over the battlefield, standing by a legless Boadicea, ‘his sword in one hand and his pistol in the other… His dead body was never found, and his grave is therefore unknown.’ After the battle a Russian officer came to the British camp under a flag of truce to arrange for the burial of the dead. “Who was the brave officer who rode a white horse and led the charge?” he asked.

The story of Captain Oldham’s horse is told in the 1911 regimental history of the 13^th Hussars in these words: ‘This white mare was notoriously a brute, and on the occasion of the charge bolted – luckily, straight at the Russian guns.’ I particularly like the ‘luckily’! I invented the names of the horses but that is all. Captain Oldham’s brother was killed in New Zealand in an attack on a Maori pa. Wounded, he pressed on ‘in spite of all suggestions that his wound should be attended to; a few minutes later a second shot killed him.’ Who would be a mother?