Edward Knight's Family
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Cecil Rice continued.
In my father's words, - 'Yes sir,' I said, though I didn't really like it at all, it was a gruesome job!
'Very well,' Sir Collin said, 'take twenty men with you, ten from the 72nd and ten from the 93rd.
My father said afterwards, 'I have always wondered, and I wondered then, why he told me to take twenty men. I thought to myself, if I take them with me, the Russians will think it an attack and kill us all. If I go alone and say 'I have come to see if you are still here,' they will only send me to Moscow and that would be better than being bayonetted. So, after I had chosen the twenty men, I told them what I was going to do - but ordered them to stay below and look after the wounded.
It was a gruesome sight. The ditch was full of dead men: I turned one or two of them over, thinking I might find Maxy Hammond - but it is very difficult to recognise a dead man like that in the dark. So then I went on, as I thought alone, and crawled slowly up the side of the Redan, through the scrub. But when I was nearly at the top, I heard a voice say, 'Would none of them come with you, Sir? I am not going to let you go alone.' And there was one of the 93rd. I think his name was McGiven.
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