Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 8.djvu/189

 THE APRIL BOMBARDMENT. 157 ' were perhaps the most formidable, being armed CHAP, ' with guns equal to our 68-pounders, and having 1 a considerable command over our advanced bat- ' tery, of which, as events showed, they — the ' enemy — knew the range very accurately. ' To the best of my recollection, owing to dif- ' ficulties in transporting the guns across the ' trenches by night, only four guns were ready • to open fire in No. VII. battery on that morning ' under Oldershaw and Simpson of the Eoyal ' Artillery. I placed myself on the right of the ' battery in the advanced trench ' [i.e., the trench of the 3d Parallel] 'so as to note the effects of ' our fire, and if possible, to assist the artillery ' officers in getting their range.' * 6' Morning came without yet rousing fire from either the Allies or the Eussians ; and, so far as concerned his own battery, Captain Oldershaw was not at liberty to break the general silence ; for, as we saw, he had been peremptorily in- structed that he must not let his men open fire without having mantlets before them to guard against the enemy's rifle-balls, and no mantlets were found in the battery.! altitudes (one firing over the other), they were distinguished as the ' Upper Garden ' and the ' Lower Garden ' batteries. It was to those last that the ' Crow's Nest ' battery belonged. t They had been duly placed in the battery by our Engineers on the 12th (Journal, vol. ii. p. 135), but were afterwards destroyed.
 * Letter to me, August 19, 1883.