Hell Riders

Book excerpt: On 25 October 1854, during the Crimean War, the Light Brigade of the British Cavalry Division made the most magnificent and most brutal charge in military history. Almost 700 men armed with sabre and lance, charged straight at the muzzles of Russian cannons. This vivid and extraordinarily detailed account of the charge and the bloody mêlée that followed, by an author with unique access to regimental archives, is told largely in the words of the survivors themselves. Terry Brighton takes the reader closer than ever before to the experience of charging down the Valley of Death.