372 APPENDIX. year 1683 ; for it happily chanced that the General was then ' borne "ii Leave. ' From the only other combatant officer taking part in the fight, that is Lieutenant, now Major-General Simpson, I have also had the advantage of receiving indirect communications through Gen- eral Oldershaw. My great obligations to General Sir Gerald Graham, R.E. , V.C., K.C.B., who (then a Lieutenant) was pres- ent and wounded in the battery, are so amply made evident in the foregoing narrative that I here need hardly do more than re- peat to him my cordial thanks. Note 13. — Engaged under them. — In the teeth of official docu- ments, I am able to say this with certainty because having before me the report of Major (now Lieutenant-General) Bent, R.E. , with the words appended to it by Lord Raglan — words showing that he warmly adopted the Major's account, and made it the basis of the thanks and the praises next about to be mentioned. On the 15th of April, Lord Raglan wrote: 'Colonel Dacres ' will be so good as to communicate to Captains Henry and Wal- ' cott and express to them not only my approbation of their con- 4 duct and that of the officers and men under them, but my
- warmest thanks for their gallantry and steady perseverance in
' discharge of their duty:'* and on the 17th wrote thus in a despatch addressed to the Secretary of State: — 'The guns of the ' Russians have been turned upon some of our advanced works ' in vast numbers, and in [one particidar instance the injury 1 sustained by a particular battery] was so great that the unre- 4 nutting exertions of Captains Henry and Walcott, and the gal- 4 lantry and determination of the artillerymen under their orders,
- In the Ollicial Memorandum of the 28th of April which promul-
gated these thanks and praises to the army, the 'Brigadier-General 'commanding' the Artillery stated that they were 'Remarks made by ' Field-Marshal Lord Raglan on the conduct of Captains Henry and 'Walcott and the officers and men under their command whilst man- ' ning the guns in Nos. VII. and VIII. Batteries, Left Attack, on the 'mornings of the IBth and 14th April;' and, since neither Captain Henry nor Captain Walcott was engaged in either of the advanced batteries on the Zth, there must have been an official imbroglio. The Memorandum also promulgated officially a list of 'the officers referred ' to ; ' and at the head of it, as if he were an officer under Captain Henry or Captain Walcott, whom Lord Raglan had (by reference) thanked, there appears the name of — of all people in the world! — the name of Captain Oldershaw, who was not engaged in either of the advanced batteries on the 14th, but was engaged and, as we have seen, to some purpose — in the 'advanced No. VII.' on the Y-'Ah of April. The Memorandum is a singularly compact little parcel of official mis- takes. I count eight of them — and all of a seriously misleading sort — compressed with much neatness into the space of only an inch or two.
