Steve Charters

While gardening today the phrase 'into the valley of death rode the six hundred' came to mind. I remembered snatches of the poem from school sixty years ago but couldn't recall if it was taught as patriotic jingoism appropriate and inspiring for teenage boys, or because of the variety of poetic techniques used. Probably the former, since we also learnt 'How Horatio Kept the Bridge', 'Young Lochinvar,' 'How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix,' and 'The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold'. I subsequently learned of course that the Crimean debacle was, as is often the case, caused by the stupidity of those in command who viewed their brainwashed troops as, quite literally, lambs to the slaughter. I wondered too, how Tennyson as Poet Laureate, had managed to write a poem that glorified war, and sacrifice of the masses for Imperial glory if it perhaps ran counter to his own feelings. So later I reviewed the poem. I'f forgotten the galloping rhythm of the first lines: half-a-league, half-a-league, half-a league onward. And I noted the religious invocation in the term 'Valley of Death'. i.e God's on our side. I was relieved to see in Stanza 2, lines 3 and 4, the clear inference that the soldiers knew 'someone had blundered'. Of course the penalty for desertion was death so for the Light Brigade, comprised largely of lower class men, the charge was the lesser of two evils - at least they had a chance of survival. The other point that drew my attention was the repetition and ambiguity of the phrase 'all the world wondered': did the world question the stupidity of the order, or was it awed by the valour of the sacrifice? It's a tear-jerker of a poem, all flash and dazzle, designed to confirm the moral rectitude of those in power, stimulate patriotic fervour and justify a miltary blunder.