Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 8.djvu/201

THE APRIL BOMBARDMENT. 169 —by the order bluntly enjoining him to work his chap. guns to ' extremity ' ; but one does not very easily — see how the long keeping up of a tight by an advanced, weak, isolated, and commanded battery engaged at close quarters against enormous odds, could have well been an object so vital as to warrant indefinite sacrifices; and accordingly, there is room for surmising that Captain Oldfield —an excellent officer — did not mean to have his words construed literally when he gave the direc- tion to 01dershaw.( 7 ) If the sanction of ' command ' had been want- ing, one perhaps would be forced to confess that throughout the latter half of this conflct of five hours' duration, the persistency of Oldershaw and his gunners was Chivalry rather than War. battery. The losses sustained by our gunners in this The losses sustained in Ions, unequal fismt were, of course, very great ; oidershaw's and indeed, when people compared the original strength of the detachment with that of the little remnant which came out unscathed at the close of the action, they thought there was ground for saying that the force had been almost ' annihil- ' ated ' ; but, happily, that simple plan of testing the loss involved a material error, because some of those who had entered the battery in the morn- ing were sent on duty elsewhere before the fight came to an end.( s ) The numbers seem to stand thus : The detach- ment at first comprised 65 gunners. Of these, at the close of the fight, 18 had been moved by