Catalogue description Camp before Sebastopol

Recounts loss of another officer in a night action - "total officers lost in one year now 6 dead and 20 wounded and sent home. Two nights ago we took some Rifle Pits that were annoying us. Colonel Egerton of the 77th was killed, a relation of Wilbrahams, also two other officers ... We have a new invention to annoy our friends in their pits. It consists in filling empty soda water bottles full of powder, old twisted nails and any other sharp or cutting thing we can find at the time, sticking a bit of tow in for a fuse then lighting it and throwing it quickly into our neighbours pit where it bursts, to their great annoyance. You may imagine their rage at seeing a soda water bottle come tumbling into a hole full of men with a little fuse burning away as proud as a real shell exploding and burying itself into soft parts of the flesh." Otherwise the assault is making no impression and the routine of night patrol drags on.