I owe you some explanation of my conduct since leaving Sylvan, that dark day last year, and how I arrived on this remote shore.

As you know I took with me only a few shillings. My mood was one of self-contempt, Sir, and shame; determined to atone, I made my way by Light Rail to Liverpool and there enlisted into the 90 Regiment. I joined as an ordinary soldier; I had of course no means of purchasing a commission, and in any event I had determined to descend, to mix with the lowest of men, in order to cleanse myself of my sin.

A week after my arrival in Liverpool I was sent to Chatham, and spent some months there being shaped as a soldier of the Empire. Then, determined to submit my life to the will of the Lord, in February of this year I volunteered to join the 90 Light Infantry, in order to be brought out here, to the Turkish war.

As I waited for my transport, convinced that only death waited for me in the distant fields of the Crimea, I wanted most desperately to write to you; but my courage—which has sustained me through the most terrible carnage here—failed before such a trivial task, and so I left England without a word.

We were fifteen days coming to Balaclava; and then we faced some days’ march along the road north to the Allied encampments around Sebastopol.

I beg your indulgence to describe the situation I found here; while the campaign has evidently been reasonably well reported at home by such correspondents as Russell, perhaps the views of an ordinary infantryman of the Army—for such am I, and proud to be—will be of some interest.

Sir, you know why we are here.

Our Empire girdles the World. And our dominion is held together by the threads that are our lines of communication: roads, railways, Light Rail routes and sea lanes.