THE life of Trumpet Major William Smith, late 11th Hussars, of Charge of the Light Brigade fame in 1854, was focused on during the Promenades event of Saturday, 4 July, last.

It gives me little pleasure to lay to rest the legend that Victorian local hero Smith sounded the trumpet call that initiated the fatal charge against the Russian guns at Balaclava in the Crimean War that led to the destruction of the Light Brigade.

The trumpet call, if it was made at all, would have been sounded on the order of Lord Cardigan, the brigade commander, by his orderly trumpeter William ‘Billy’ Brittain of the 17th Lancers. Trumpet calls ‘to horse and form up’ would have been made by Brittain and echoed by the trumpeters of the five regiments involved, including Smith. One call only was ordered by Lord Cardigan and sounded by Brittain for the brigade to advance, walk, march and trot.

The order to advance, disastrously misinterpreted by Lord Lucan, meant that the Light Brigade was to advance down the wrong north valley guarded by "cannons to the left" and "cannons to the right". It was at the ‘trot’ that the Light Brigade, in perfect formation, entered the mile and a quarter long ‘valley of death’. It proceeded at this pace for half the length of the valley despite being shot to pieces by cannon fire.

Then the regiments themselves, maddened by the cannon fire, quickened their pace to the gallop and then the charge. Most survivors said no trumpet call to charge was heard due to the noise and chaos. Some said "yes, they did", but it would have been sounded by Brittain.

‘Billy’ Brittain was himself badly wounded but was carried back by his comrades, still clutching his trumpet. He was sent to Scutari Hospital, where he was nursed by Florence Nightingale, with Lord Cardigan himself seeing to his every comfort. He died on the February 14, 1855 with his trumpet still at his side.

I have two good reasons for being interested in this episode. One is that when Trumpet Major Smith came to Knutsford in 1862, he lodged firstly in the Old Market Place near the long-demolished Forresters’ Arms, then owned by my maternal great great grandfather, Tom Lee. Of a similar age, they became friends. Smith soon joined the Knutsford/Tatton troop of the Cheshire Yeomanry as their trumpet major, where he encouraged Tom Lee’s son, George, (my great uncle) to join the yeomanry as a trooper and eventually serve with him. George Lee went to South Africa in 1900, to serve as a sergeant with the Imperial Yeomanry in the Boer War.

Secondly, and by chance, the cavalry came into my family focus again when I was called up in 1954 to serve as a National Service trooper with the 4th Queen’s Own Hussars, who were stationed at Bergen/Belsen in Germany as part of the British Army of the Rhine, this in the so-called Cold War against Russia.

By a strange quirk of fate this was exactly 100 years after the Charge of the Light Brigade, of which the 4th Queen’s Own Hussars (4th Light Dragoons) were one of the five regiments who charged that day in 1854, ironically again against the Russians. I quite naturally became imbued with the Balaclava Day tradition which the Regiment celebrates every 25th October.

All this might appear to glorify war but, to spend off-duty weekend afternoon walks through the nearby former Nazi concentration camp at Bergen/Belsen was to be reminded of the horror, waste and pity of war by the long mounds of earth containing the bodies of 250,000 Jews and European minorities. This was the ultimate ‘valley of death’.

By John Howard