Massacre at Balaclava
Survivor of Charge of the Light Brigade buried in graveyard in Pinetown
TUCKED away under the shady trees of a 19th century cemetery in Pinetown, west of Durban, is the grave of one of the survivors of the famous Charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War.
His name was Joseph Malone and the citation on his tombstone declares that he won the Victoria Cross for bravery at the Battle of Balaclava.
The courage of Britain’s cavalrymen was immortalised by the poet laureate of the time, Lord Tennyson, but the action was actually a major military blunder that led to Russian artillery killing 118 men and 300 horses of the Light Brigade, and wounding 127 Britons.
Balaclava was just one battle in the war of 1854-55 when the armies of Britain and France joined Turkey to prevent Imperial Russia’s expansion into the Ottoman Empire. It was fought on October 25, 1854 when advancing Russian forces seized some British cannons in the opening engagement.
When Earl Lucan, the commander of the British cavalry, was ordered by his superior, Lord Raglan, to prevent the Russians from capturing the guns, Lucan sent in the Light Brigade – commanded by Earl Cardigan.
Among the cavalrymen of the 13th Light Dragoons in the Brigade was Sergeant Joseph Malone, 21, who enlisted in 1851 at 18 and learnt how to wield lances and sabres while mounted on a light, fast horse.
The Dragoons were skilled in cutting down retreating infantry and artillery units so their superior speed should have ensured that the Russians would quickly abandon the cumbersome British guns.
From his elevated vantage point on Causeway Heights, Raglan had a good view of what was happening, but the lie of the land around Lucan and his cavalry obscured the Russians, who were on both sides and at the far end of the valley.
The order for the cavalry to attack was taken to Lucan by Captain Louis Nolan. When Lucan asked where the guns were, Nolan indicated with a wide sweep of his arm, not the Causeway redoubts, but the mass of Russian guns hidden at the end of another valley about 1.6km away.
In response to Raglan’s order, Lucan instructed Cardigan to lead his 670 mounted troopers of the Light Brigade straight into the valley, the hollow later described by Tennyson as “the Valley of Death”.
Lucan planned to follow with the Heavy Brigade, whose troopers wore metal helmets and carried cavalry swords for close combat.
But neither force was equipped for a frontal assault on a fully-dug-in and alerted artillery battery with an excellent line of sight and supported on two sides by guns providing enfilading fire.
The semi-suicidal nature of the charge was evident to Malone and his fellow troopers, but if anyone objected to the orders they were never recorded.
When the Light Brigade charged with Cardigan leading, Nolan suddenly rode forward and galloped in front of Cardigan. Nolan had probably realised that the charge was aimed at the wrong target and was attempting to turn the brigade. But this was never confirmed because, almost immediately, he was blown apart and the cavalry continued on its fatal course.
Malone afterwards described how the British cavalry sped down a gradual descent of more than 5km with the Russian batteries vomiting shells and shot upon them.
“One battery was on our right flank and another on the left, and the intermediate ground between the guns was filled with Russian riflemen,” he said.
“When we were within 50m of the artillery hurling destruction upon us, we were encircled by a blaze of fire, in addition to the bullets of the riflemen upon our flanks.”
The brigade charged through the gun battery and cut down a great number of Russian gunners.
As the officers of the leading regiments were either killed or wounded or had their horses shot from under them, they were immediately followed by the second and third lines of troopers who continued to slash at the enemy and break through the mass of 5 000-strong Russian cavalry.
After breaching the Russian defences, the Light Brigade turned “threes about” and the remaining 195 troopers who were still mounted retired in the same way, doing as much execution on the enemy’s cavalry as they could.
Returning along the same route they took on attack, the brigade ran the identical frightening gauntlet of artillery fire from both sides of the valley, and more troopers and their horses fell.
Malone, who was in the vanguard with Cardigan, had his horse shot from under him and he was walking back to the British lines under heavy fire when, without regard for his own safety, he stopped to assist a wounded British officer, Captain William Webb. Malone and two other dismounted cavalrymen were delayed for some time by the hail of bullets but eventually managed to carry Webb to a field hospital, where he later died of his wounds.
Lucan and his Heavy Brigade failed to provide the promised support for Cardigan after cantering into the valley behind the Light Brigade.
Lucan’s subsequent explanation was that he saw no point in having a second brigade mown down by the Russians and argued that his men were best positioned to assist troopers returning from the charge.
War correspondent William Russell, who described the battle, declared: “Our Light Brigade was annihilated by their own rashness and the brutality of a ferocious enemy.”
Tennyson’s stirring prose, however, ignored the incompetence of the generals to impress the militarist society of Victorian England: “Into the Valley of Death Rode the six hundred. Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, The headstone on Malone’s grave in a Pinetown cemetery states: In memory of Captain J Malone VC, Riding Master, Inniskilling Dragoons, who died at Pinetown on June 28, 1883 aged 50 years. He was one of the six hundred in the Charge of Balaclava on October 25, 1854. Boldly they rode and well, Into the Jaws of Death, Into the Mouth of Hell, Rode the six hundred.” The futility of the action and its reckless bravery prompted the French commander, Marshal Pierre Bosquet, to state: “It is magnificent, but it is not war – it is madness.”
As for the Russian commanders, they believed the British troopers galloping to their deaths were drunk.
But the real cause of the disaster was inaccurate military intelligence and vague orders.
Malone and the remaining survivors attended a reunion in London in October 1875 to celebrate the 21st anniversary of the famous charge.
He was the 20th recipient of the newly-introduced Victoria Cross for his bravery in rescuing Webb.
After the war he served in India until 1867 with the Inniskilling Dragoons. He was promoted to captain in 1881 and then came to South Africa as his regiment’s Riding Master in November 1882.
On June 18, 1883, Malone died suddenly of a suspected heart attack in the officers’ mess at the Rugby Hotel in Pinetown. He was 50 years old.
A noticeboard at the entrance to St Andrew’s Church cemetery states that, during the Anglo-zulu War period from 1879 until the annexation of Zululand in December 1897, several regiments were stationed in Pinetown and some of their members were buried in the churchyard, including Captain Joseph Malone VC.