The serialisation is unabridged, including most of the notes and appendixes, and features a few illustrations, collages from various paintings and pictures to depict a period montage of the Charge and Crimea.

The papers are attributed to Flashman, who is not only the bully featured in Thomas Hughes's novel, but also a well-known Victorian military hero.

Flashman witnesses and participates in the most notable offensive and defensive actions of that war, and eventually finds himself trekking across Asia in an effort to save the British Raj.

Flashman meets Queen Victoria's cousin, William of Celle, incognito in a billiards hall and, without knowing his true identity, befriends him, before getting him drunk and leaving him in an alley with shoe polish covering his buttocks for the police to find.

Powered by fear and flatulence, he reaches the Russian guns in front of the other surviving members of the charge and promptly surrenders.