ous, especially among the Guards and Welsh Fusiliers. The
wounded must at once be carried down to the shore; and remember, my
lads, that a wounded Russian is no longer an enemy, but a
fellow-sufferer with our own comrades, and must be treated as such."

We listened with attention to our brave general's address. A kinder
officer or a better soldier never lived.

Pick-axes and shovels were at once served out to some of us, while
others were provided with stretchers to carry the wounded down to the
beach, I belonged to the party who had to perform the saddest duty a
soldier has to go through after a battle, that of burying the dead.
Talk of glory, talk of the fun of fighting,--just let a man spend two
days on a hard-fought field, as we had to do, and it will be enough to
take out of him all love of fighting for fighting's sake. It was an
awful sight, to see the number of fine fellows who lay stretched on the
ground, never more to move. I had no idea that so many of our own
British had been killed. The most dreadful to look at were those who
had been struck by round-shot, some with their bodies almost torn to
pieces. One moment they had been full of life, rushing on to the fight;
the next there they lay, heaps of clay, their spirits far, far-off. I
could not help asking myself how it was that I was not in the place of
one of them. While some of the parties dug large holes in the ground,
others collected the dead, and threw them in--it was no time for
ceremony--thirty or forty in one hole; some fine young fellows, others
dark- or grey-bearded men, their last fight over.

"Ah," I thought, and I dare say others thought too, "if those who set
men to fight--the emperors and kings and governments--could but see this
sad sight, may be they would stop to think, and try and make up their
quarrels some other way."

Hundreds and hundreds we buried during those two days, our comrades by
themselves, the Russians in pits by themselves. We could tell how the
fight had gone by the way in which the bodies lay. In one place the
Russians had made a stand, and were piled up in heaps as the British
again and again charged them. In other parts the round-shot had torn
through whole ranks of men, cutting them down like corn before the
reaper's sickle.

I afterwards marked the spot where the Highlanders had poured in their
fire on the enemy, and made those who escaped our bullets turn and fly.
It was my first battle-field; it was th