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'Remember, Remember...' - Page 2

© John Barham

Campbell realised this and having been granted six weeks leave, left on the 3rd November, having made no secret of his intention to present his resignation to Lord Hardinge. The French were filled with regret. 'I never see this man without wanting to embrace him' said Pelissier. 'They are sending away their best general and their most courageous soldier' was General Vinoy's comment. But the British establishment had Campbell in their sights. A leading article in the Times derided 'Sir Colin Campbell, who has been laid up in lavender all the winter with his Highlanders, and whose military talents, if we may judge of them by his exploits in the Punjab, do not entitle him to aspire to a great command.' Both assertions were complete calumnies - the Highland Brigade had suffered hardships equal to any during the previous winter, and Campbell had covered himself with glory in the Punjab - but the Times editor was happy to gamble on his instinct that his readership would either not know or would have forgotten the true facts. The 'Thunderer's' tabloid type approach was well to the fore when Campbell's intention to resign became public; the General suddenly had become an 'irreparable loss', and was taken to task for refusing to serve under a junior officer; the fact that this was not the main issue, Campbell already having been offered the Malta governorship, was conveniently overlooked.

In the end after vigorous efforts from both Lord Hardinge and Lord Panmure had been rebuffed, it was the Queen who virtually commanded Campbell to return to the Crimea. To soften the pill, he was promoted local full General, with the promise of command of a Corps - typically composed of three divisions - under a reorganisation that was scheduled to divide the Crimea army into two Corps d'Armee - Earle was slated for the other. In fact this was never fully put in place, understandably; Codrington, finally confirmed as Commander-in-Chief on 11th November, was reluctant to see so much concentration of command into the hands of two such respected generals previously senior to him.

For the Allied armies, there was still plenty to keep everyone occupied. By the end of October the nights were getting colder and it became a priority to get winter quarters completed. Huts were available in more than sufficient quantity to house the British force, but there were still significant logistics problems to overcome before they could be inhabited, as Captain Clifford of the Rifle Brigade, now on the Quartermaster General's Staff in the Light Division, was finding out. 'I am very tired' he confessed in a letter to his father 'for I am obliged to get up every morning at five and go down to Balaklava to superintend the disembarkation of the Huts for the Division; and as men's double Huts, seventy six feet by sixteen, and Officers' double Huts, seventy two by sixteen, and Men's single Huts and Officers' single Huts have been put into the 'Tonning' transport steamer bit by bit and all mixed up together, and the names given to each bit are Hebrew to me and no-one out here understands anything about them, and as I have to distribute these huts to the Light Division, when I get the total number of 'bits' up, and forty of all sorts of Huts are handed over to me, and as I have to superintend two thousand workmen on the Public road from Balaklava furnished by the Regiments in the Light Division, and look over their returns for pay, the greater number of which come in wrong, and as I have other duties too numerous to enumerate, to try and get through, I.....think I am justified in being tired' Do we detect a note of desperation here? And this from an Inkerman V.C!!!

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