Lieutenant ‘would not leave his men’
WHEN Britain and France declared war on Russia in 1854, Hugh Robert Hibbert was serving in the British Army after enlisting aged 19.
His father Thomas was a lieutenant and his mother’s family, the Cholmondeleys, were an important Cheshire family with military connections.
In 1850 he was commissioned lieutenant in the 7th Royal Fusiliers. Four years later Russia had infiltrated the Danubian Principalities. Hibbert and his regiment were shipped to Gallipoli to protect Istanbul but were rapidly moved north to the Bulgarian Black Sea Port of Varna. On August 24 orders were given for the invasion of the Crimea to target the port of Sevastopol. Lt. Hibbert was first engaged in the battle of the River Alma, where the French, British and Turkish armies defeated the Russians, suffering a wound to his ankle. The command was given to attack from the south. Though lame, Hibbert refused to leave his men and marched to the Crimean port of Balaklava.
He was in the battles of Balaklava, Inkerman and the storming of the Redan. Lt. Hibbert endured a horrendous winter and spent 90 days in the trenches where he suffered a severe wound but was the first to return to duty. He also suffered a compound fracture of the skull and had to return to England – the last Fusiliers officer still alive from the company which departed for Bulgaria.
The town council invited Major Hibbert to a parade and public dinner at the town hall to present a sword and scabbards from a gun and armaments maker in the Toledo Works, Birmingham. It was an incredible occasion with important military personnel and several members of the Cholmondeley family. They processed down Chester Road and along Chestergate where thousands of people and decorations lined the route. An initial presentation took place in the Roe Street Sunday School to allow the town’s ladies to be part of the proceedings. The evening banquet and presentation appeared as a lithograph in The Illustrated London News.
This is a remarkable story of a man who would not leave his troops. Out of 98,000 British soldiers, 20,813 died, 80 per cent from sickness and disease. It was a miracle that Hibbert survived.
As the editor of the Courier wrote, it was as though the Macclesfield people saw Major Hibbert as representative of all our brave British forces.