This official record is not the only testimony to the good behaviour of the Royal Irish while they worked like navvies in the docks. General C. G. Gordon, who as a young officer of Royal Engineers had served in the Crimea, replied to a request for information about the doings of the XVIIIth at the siege of Sebastopol in a characteristic letter:--
“MY DEAR MAJOR SAVILE,--Thanks for your note received to-day. I am afraid I cannot write anything which would be of value about the 18th Royal Irish, as it is now 28 years ago or nearly so, since the Crimea. I know that they were a favourite regiment with the R.E. for work, both in the trenches and in the destruction of the docks, from the energy and pluck of the officers and men, and it was then that I formed my opinion of Irishmen being of a different nature than other Britishers inasmuch as they required a certain management and consideration, which, if given them, would enable you, so to speak, to hold their lives in your hand. The officers liked the men and the men liked the officers; they were a jovial lot altogether, but they would do anything if you spoke and treated them as if you liked them, which I certainly did. You know what great hardships they went through in the Docks in working at the shafts which, 30 feet deep, were often full of water, if left, unpumped out, for 12 hours. Poor devils! wet, draggled, in their low ammunition boots, I used to feel much for them, for the Generals used to be down on them because they were troublesome, which they were when people did not know how to manage them.
“Kindest regards to General Edwards, a fine, clever old officer who had all our respect.
“I am sorry I can write you no details.--Believe me, yours sincerely,
It will be noticed that neither in the official expression of thanks nor in Gordon’s letter is there any reference to the fact that the Russians frequently shelled the working parties at the docks. The troops were so used to being under fire that they looked upon it as an everyday occurrence, and a few casualties were considered unworthy of notice. Thanks, however, to Colonel Elliot’s diary, we know that rheumatic fever and frost-bite were not the only dangers to which the Royal Irish were exposed. On December 3, 1855, the Russians fired two hundred and fifty shells, wounding four men of the regiment; on the 21st they dropped three shells into a barrack-room, luckily without hitting any one, but smashing beds, knapsacks, and rifles in every direction; on the last day of the year a shell carried away the arm of a private, ---- Fitzgerald.