"Inglis bono!" says the Russian.
"Russky bono!" says the Britisher
"Francis bono!"
"Bono!" all agreed
"Oslem no bono!"
"Oh? Ah! Yes, Turk no bono!"
The Russian pulls a face, and the Britisher mimes running away. They laugh, shake hands, and get back in their trenches.
Since their defeat in the redoubts in the first phase of the Battle of Balaklava, the Turks had been despised by the French and British, and appallingly badly treated and routinely brutalised. What was worse was that they had defended stoutly in the main redoubt, gaining valuable time for the British Cavalry and Scottish infantry. Once it had inevitably fallen, had it been British or French troops, either ally would have evacuated the other three redoubts as the most sensible tactical course - yet the whole Turkish Army had been vilified because the Tunisian camp workers who had been pressed into action as untrained infantry had taken to their heels.
The problem with the Turkish Army was that everyone tried to generalise about it - negatively of course - when it was impossible to do so. In a recent article we read Fanny Duberly's poignant description of famished helpless Turks dying by hundreds in Balaklava. But then we have Captain Fred Dallas' diary observation on 26th January: 'I passed through the Turks' camp yesterday and positively they were considerably more comfortable than our men, each tent having a stove smoking away like fun.'
With troops emanating from the four corners of the still vast Ottoman empire, (see dedicated article) performance was bound to be patchy. But this proved too subtle a concept to be taken in by Turkey's allies in the Crimea. When the Turkish government sent a converted cruiser as a 300 bed fully equipped hospital ship to the Crimea, the three allied port authorities refused it entry despite the fact that room could easily have been made. After 10 days it was forced to return empty to Constantinople, with its four surgeons, two pharmacists and team of trained nurses.
One voice cried in the wilderness. 'Why do we not use the Turks more?' pondered Midshipman Evelyn Wood. 'On the Danube their courage and resignation were remarkable, even under sufferings beyond description.' He would go far, of course.
The ill usage and bad reputation of their troops in the Crimea was fully reported in Constantinople to the understandable indignation of the Turks. Who did their allies think was coping with the Balkan front, after they had upped sticks and left them to get on with it? In fact 23 infantry battalions, 8 cavalry regiments and 11 gun batteries were deployed along the Danube, with a further 28 infantry battalions were held in reserve at Shumla. If the object of the 50,000 strong Austrian occupation of Walachia and Moldavia had been to preserve the status quo there, it hadn't happened. They not only allowed Russians attacks across the Danube and then prevented the Turks from pursuing them over the river, but they actually profited from being on the Sultan's territory to plunder and maraud on their own account. This did not stop the Turks in Roumelia under Ismail Pasha, and in Bessarabia under Yaya Pasha and Achmet Pasha from soundly defeating repeated determined assaults from the Russian expeditionary force.
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