William Howard Russell was one of the first official War Correspondents who worked for both the Times Newspaper and the Illustrated London News. On 25 October 1854, he was witness to one of the most notorious blunders in military history when the Light Brigade under its commander James Thomas Brudenell, Lord Cardigan, charged the Russian guns. 
The Battle of Balaclava had begun that morning with a surprise Russian attack on the Allied positions. The fighting had already begun to peter out with little progress made on either side when late in the day Lord Lucan in command of the British Cavalry received the order to capture the enemy guns. But what enemy guns exactly? The only guns visible were those at the end of a clear featureless valley and they appeared to be manned and ready to fire. 
Clearly his orders required clarification but with Captain Nolan who had delivered the instructions pointing towards the guns adamant they were the ones in question and barely on speaking terms with his brother-in-law Cardigan, Lucan ordered the attack to go ahead. If it was a mistake then his idiot brother-in-law could take the blame. 
Russell’s watched events with a sense of disbelief and was eager that his dispatch be received in London as quickly as possible but it would take time and it wasn’t published in the Times editorial until 13 November, but when it was it caused a sensation; a moment of the utmost courage and sacrifice had been captured in Russell’s short but vivid account. It was something of which the country could be proud. Once the details of military incompetence and foolish pride emerged however, attitudes would modify somewhat towards those in charge but that the Light Brigade, were heroes would never change: 
Tagged as: Fact File, Victorian, War
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