Posts Tagged ‘1st Division’

Uniform of Capt & LtCol Percy, VC, Grenadier Guards

The Grenadier Guards landed at Kalamita Bay in the Crimea in September 1854, as part of the Guards Brigade, 1^st Division, English Army of the East.  These were Her Majesty Queen Victoria’s elite personal guards.  In the Crimea, the Guards Brigade consisted of the Grenadier Guards, Coldstream Guards and Scots Fusilier Guards.  The Guards’ battle honours include Alma, Inkerman, and the Siege of Sevastopol.

Henry Percy was commissioned into the Grenadier Guards at age nineteen.  After almost twenty years of service, he embarked for the Crimea at age thirty-seven, as a Captain and Lieutenant Colonel (The dual rank system exclusive to Her Majesty’s Guards regiments).

At Alma he was wounded in the arm, but continued to lead his men in battle.  At Inkerman he led a charge into the Sandbag Battery, then held it against repeated Russian assaults by superior numbers.  Having run out of ammunition, he ordered his men to throw stones at the attacking enemy.  The Russians began doing the same, knocking Percy off the parapet once.  Upon his climbing back up, he was knocked senseless with another even larger stone.  He awoke bleeding badly and half blinded, but was able to join his men in a charge driving the enemy down the hill below the battery.  Out of ammunition and cut off, the wounded Percy led his men through dense brush to safety.  He received the Victoria Cross from Queen Victoria, personally, in Hyde Park on 26 June 1857.

This photograph shows his coatee, sash, and epaulettes under an officer’s greatcoat draped over the coatee in the manner commonly worn by officers in the Crimea.  Note that Percy had cut the standing collar from his coatee, no doubt to make it less restrictive on campaign.  The right sleeve of the coatee (not visible under the greatcoat) shows signs of rough field repair and dried blood.  The epaulettes show the grenade of the Grenadier Guards, and the braiding and crown of a Captain and Lieutenant Colonel.

This artifact was photographed courtesy of the Guards Museum, London, UK.