As soon as the men rose from their lying positions on the ground, the Russian Cossack skirmishers, who had been hiding in the vineyards, set alight the village of Burliuk to obstruct their advance – though in fact all this did was raise a cloud of smoke, which made it more difficult for the Russian gunners to hit them. The British advanced in thin lines to maximize their rifle power, although in this formation it was hard to keep the men together over rough terrain without effective commanders of the line. The Russians were amazed by the sight of the thin red line emerging from the smoke. ‘This was the most extraordinary thing to us,’ recalled Chodasiewicz; ‘we had never before seen troops fight in lines of two deep, nor did we think it possible for men to be found with sufficient firmness of morale to be able to attack in this apparently weak formation our massive columns.’
The advancing lines broke up as they passed through the burning village and vineyards. A greyhound ran around them chasing hares. Moving forward in small groups, the British cleared the village of the Russian skirmishers and drove them out of the vineyards. ‘We rushed on driving the enemy’s skirmishers before us,’ recalled Private Bloomfield of the Derbyshire Regiment. ‘Some of these skirmishers even got up trees, so they could get a good shot at us, but we saw them and brought them off their perch. Some of these when falling from the trees … would catch their feet or clothes in some parts of the tree and hang there for hours.’ As they neared the river, the British came within firing range of the Russian guns. Men fell silently as they were hit but the rest of the line kept moving forward. ‘The most striking thing to me’, recalled Lieutenant General Brown of the Light Division, ‘was the silent way in which death did its work. No sight or sound betrayed the cause; a man dropped, rolled over, or fell out of ranks to the dust. One knew the little bullet had found its destination, but it seemed to happen in mysterious silence – they disappeared, were left, as we went past them.’22
Under heavy fire, the men reached the river, collecting in groups at the water’s edge to unload their equipment, unsure of the water’s depth. Holding their rifles and ammunition pouches above their heads, some men managed to wade across, but others had to swim, and some drowned in the fast current. All the time, the Russians fired at them with grape-shot and shell. There were 14 Russian guns in the earthworks and 24 on either side of the road bridge. By the time Private Bloomfield reached the Alma near the bridge, ‘the river was red with blood’. Many men were too frightened to get into the water, which was full of dead bodies. They hugged the ground on the riverbank while mounted officers galloped up and down, shouting at the men to swim across, and sometimes even threatening to cut them with their swords. Once they had crossed the river, all order was lost. Companies and regiments became jumbled together, and where there had been lines two men deep there was now just a crowd. The Russians began to advance down the hill from either side of the Great Redoubt, firing on the British down below, where mounted officers galloped round their men, urging them to reform lines; but it was impossible, the men were exhausted from crossing the river, and happy to be in the shelter of the riverbank where they could not be seen from the heights. Some sat down and took out their water cans; others got out bread and meat and began to eat.
Aware of the danger of the situation, Major-General Codrington, in command of the 1st Brigade of the Light Division, made a desperate effort to regroup his men. Spurring his white Arab charger up the hill, he bellowed at the crowd of infantry: ‘Fix bayonets! Get up the bank and advance to the attack!’ Soon the whole of Codrington’s brigade – the regiments all jumbled up – began scrambling up the Kurgan Hill in a thick crowd. Junior commanders gave up forming lines – there was no time – but urged their men to ‘Come on anyhow!’ Once they had climbed onto the open slopes, most of the men began to charge with yells and screams towards the Russian guns in the Great Redoubt, 500 metres up the slope. The Russian gunners were astonished by the sight of this British mob – 2,000 men running up the hill – and found easy targets. Some of the Light Division’s advance guard reached the entrenchments of the Great Redoubt. Soldiers clambered over the parapets and through the embrasures, only to be shot or cut down by the Russians, who hurriedly withdrew their guns. Within a few minutes, the Great Redoubt was a swarm of men, pockets of them fighting on the parapets, others cheering and waving their colours, as two Russian guns were captured in the confusion.
