Drama in Crimea - historic dispatches from the father of war reporting

William Howard Russell is the journalist widely regarded as the father of modern war reporting, which began with his remarkable dispatches from the Crimean war in 1854.

The "vulgar, low Irishman", as one soldier called him, won lasting fame for revealing the poor medical facilities for wounded troops and for his report about the charge of the light brigade during the battle of Balaclava.

"They swept proudly past, glittering in the morning sun in all the pride and splendour of war. At the distance of 1,200 yards the whole line of the enemy belched forth, from thirty iron mouths, a flood of smoke and flame.

The flight was marked by instant gaps in our ranks, by dead men and horses, by steeds flying wounded or riderless across the plain. In diminished ranks, with a halo of steel above their heads, and with a cheer which was many a noble fellow's death-cry, they flew into the smoke of the batteries."

Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,

All in the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

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