King's Own Royal Regiment Museum

Captain James Paton, 4th King's Own, at Chatham, 1862
Accession Number: KO2590/394

Major James Paton

Recollection of the Crimean Campaign
Told by Major James Paton of Crailing on an evening in October 1921

This little account of a war fought in a bygone day will make us realise what a different age we now live in.

In the Crimea the poor soldiers spent the winter in such conditions that a large proportion of them died; not from wounds but from sickness brought on from actual want of the necessaries of life; from want of proper attention when ill and from lack of hospitals, nurses, medicine and surgeons.

Under what different circumstances our men fought in the Great War you will now realise.

If the war of 1914 had been fought under the same conditions as the war of 1854 I wonder how many of the men would have lived to return?

It is wonderful to think that this little account was told me by a man of ninety years of age. Who lived through the Crimean war & who came through it so fit and well that when it was over instead of coming home he went on to India to take part in quelling the Mutiny.

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I embarked with my regiment the 4th King’s Own on the 4th of March 1854.

It is one of the oldest Regiments in the Service as it was raised in the Reign of Charles the Second. The Royal Scots however is older.

I was quartered in Edinburgh when the war broke out and when the orders for active service came I marched in with my Company from Greenlaw (where I had been doing duty) to Granton where we embarked in a sailing vessel called “The Golden Fleece”.

Edinburgh was a very different place in those days and Princes Street was composed entirely of private houses. There was little or no traffic there, in fact it was just as quiet as ?not clear

At the beginning of the great war all the men went off singing “Tipperary” but in 1854 they all sang “Annie Laurie”. There was the greatest excitement you can imagine and large crowds collected to see us embarking fact there was more excitement shown than in August 1914.

In the great war we fought against the Turks but in the Crimea we fought with them.

Malta was our first stop and we were there for three weeks. We then proceeded to Gallipoli in the “Emu” and remained there for three months. The weather was very hot and we bathed every day and had battle in the sea – one Reg. against another.

Unfortunately that dreadful scurge – cholera – now broke out & we lost an officer and many men. We were then moved on to Varna in Bulgaria (Don’t some of these names bring back the great war to you?) “where the expeditionary force was collecting in the Bay. We were there for a month and cholera was very bad all the time. When the men died their bodies were sunk in the sea with shot but they used to bob up again.

We went on to the Crimea in a sailing ship called the “Diva” which is the Roman word for Die. A steamer used to tow two sailing vessels. There were very few steamers in those days. The sea was covered with ships taking a large army (Large in those days) – about 25,000 men.

We landed on the open beach on Sept the 14th and the weather was vary warm. I had dysentery and could not land with the Reg. The day after they landed I went ashore in a boat by myself without leave and joined the Reg though I was very weak. The result was that the next day I was sent on board a ship taking the sick to Constantinople.

There were two hundred men on board in all stages of cholera. They simply laid down on the bare boards on the deck and died there under the most shocking conditions possible with no nurses, no medicine and no sanitary conditions at all. I think there was one Surgeon with an assistant. Thus we went on to Constantinople throwing the dead overboard all the way.

I soon got well again (I think this was quite a miracle – Editor) and applied to the C.O. to return to my Regiment. He however refused as officers were wanted to look after the wounded coming from the Alma.

Then I saw a steamer in the Bospherous Taking the Royal Dragoons to the Crimea. Now was my chance. I asked the Officer commanding the Royal Dragoons to take me with them and he consented to do so (Without leave). So I went and joined my own Reg. on Oct. the 3rd.

The Siege of Sebastopol was just beginning. I walked six miles from Balaclava to Sebastopol and found the Reg. camped out in tents. We had plenty of salt junk, ship’s biscuit, and green coffee. This was the beginning of the most fearful winter imaginable. We had nothing but the clothes we stood up in.
We fought in anything we could find to keep out the cold.


I wore a sailor’s pea jacket. Winter started on Nov. the 14th. There was an awful storm which blew down all the tents and numbers of ships were wrecked. We were the nearest Reg. to Sebastopol near a valley called “The Shadow of Death”. We used to go into the trenches in turn for twenty four hours at a time and sometimes I used to go to sleep standing up.

The men were dying of disease every day – Cholera, Typhus and frost bite. There were no Nurses yet, no hospitals or medicine and very few Drs. There was just a tent pitched on the hill side on the bare ground where the sick men were laid and of course they usually died. The Army landed with no transport at all, if you can imagine such a thing. No one can really imagine the sufferings of the troops during that dreadful winter. As the men only had salt junk they soon got scurvy. At one time they were able to dig up some sort of roots they could eat gut when the frost and snow came this became impossible. We went out into the trenches and were so wretched that we did not care a rap whether we came back or not. The Reg. was reduced from 600 men to 70.

On Xmas Day the Commissariat had collected enough cattle to give us some fresh meat but as a matter of fact some French Souaves made the guard drunk and stole the dinner so we just had salt junk and biscuit.

There was not very much actual fighting. The Reg. was dreadfully reduced in numbers. The Russians made occasional sorties. The cold was awful and some of us just managed to live. The poor animals suffered dreadfully from hunger as little food could be procured for them. It was sad to see the gun horses trying to eat each other’s tails in their agony of hunger.

Then at last Spring came and things began to improve a little and sometimes there was a little fresh food but generally the same and the men with bad teeth died as they could bite the biscuit. One night in the trenches an Officer had been posting Sentries and said he had not enough men to communicate with the French Sentries who were next us. I was sent with Corp. Hutchins to investigate and I found that there were actually too many men so we proceeded back again. Just as we got to the Trench and were going over the parapet a shell came and killed the Corp. and the six men with us. Corp. Hutchins’ brains were all over my red tunic and pieces of bone were blown into my face and body. I laid there insensible for some time and then a brother Officer name “Cuddy Eccles” came and carried me in. The C.O. applied for a VC for him but did not get it. All that winter as I said before we fought in any clothes we could lay hands on but after that sheep skin coats were served out to us.

With the summer came good weather and more fighting and our Colonel – Cobbe – was killed. After that we took the Redan, and Sebastopol fell on Sept. the 8th 1855.

A day or two after this I went into a dugout in the town where the Russians had been all winter. A Middy came in with white trousers on. He went out again with dark brown legs nicely shaded up to white – Fleas – thousands of them! And there was worse than fleas.

I was the only man in the Reg. under the rank of Field Officer who received the Legion of Honour from the French. (His son who served the great war in the Royal Navy as a Captain got the same decoration from the French). After the place fell I took my Company down to the town of Sebastopol to get stones to build huts. One day when we were hard at work a hidden magazine exploded and killed 18 men. We built houses and roofed them in.

At this time six of us had a mess and were fairly comfortable. We had better food with a barrel of whiskey and one of sherry. Needless to relate we had a good many visitors! These had been sent out to us by the Sec. of State for war to one of my Brother Officers called Dowbiggin who was his – Lord Panmuir’s nephew. Lord Panmuir wired out to the Colonel “Remember Daub” and the Colonel did not understand and thought it must refer to some out post where the enemy might attack and did not realise he meant his nephew Daubiggin whom he wanted mentioned in dispatches. This caused many jokes I was looking at an old “Punch” of the period lately and saw something about “Daub”

My folk sent me out a barrel of raspberry jam which was much appreciated. Tin boxes were unknown in those days.

After the first attack of dysentery I did not miss a single trench duty except when I was wounded. Florence Nightingale came out to Scutari then. We could have done with her a little sooner!

During the first winter I bought a pair of socks from an officer’s kit who had been killed and paid 30/- for them! I heard of a man who had a sheet of notepaper but as he would only change it for some tobacco the deal did not come off!

During the second winter I was working on a road when a brother officer came to me and said my ears were quite white. I took off my glove and found they were frozen hard. I kept rubbing my ears with snow and fell out and returned to Camp where I found my hand was frozen too. I remember the great pain when they were doming round.

We left the Crimea in July 1856. When we returned to this country Queen Victoria received us on horseback in Edinburgh in a blue habit and wearing too a red coat.

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God Save the King
Scatter his Enemies
and make them fall

When the war was over he was sent to India instead of ? – was at an outpost after the Mutiny.