Lieutenant-Colonel William Morris CB (18 December 1820 – 11 July 1858[1]) was a British Army officer who rode in the Charge of the Light Brigade.

[1] During his time in India he became a "firm friend" of Louis Nolan, an officer with a keen interest in cavalry warfare but whose regiment, the 15th Hussars, was stationed at Bangalore and had not participated in the recent conflict.

[1] He purchased his promotion to captain on 25 April 1851,[17] and in 1852 married Amelia, daughter of Major-General Thomas William Taylor CB, of Ogwell, a fellow-landowner in Devon and sometime Lieutenant-Governor of the Royal Military College.

[1] On the outbreak of war with Russia in 1854, Morris was appointed Deputy Assistant Quartermaster-General in the Cavalry Division of the Army of the East, leaving for Turkey in April.

While at Varna he contracted cholera, and did not participate in the initial invasion of the Crimea, only joining the army besieging Sebastopol in October,[1] where the 17th Lancers were also present as part of the Light Cavalry Brigade.

[18] The enemy cavalry withdrew without further injury, and the Russians now began carrying off the guns they had earlier captured from their positions along the Causeway Heights, a ridge dividing the battlefield along a line from east to west.

[22] As the Brigade came under increasing fire, the horses moved from a trot to a canter, and to avoid being overtaken Lord Cardigan, at the front, had to order Morris and the 17th, who were setting the pace, to keep steady.

[23] Morris led his regiment down the valley without being injured, and reaching the eastern end, charged past the guns and into the Russian cavalry stationed behind.

He received two sabre cuts to the head, which knocked him from his horse, and then was wounded again by a lance from the Cossacks that surrounded him, after which he surrendered his sword.

[25] In the confusion he managed to escape back down the valley, having a captured horse shot under him before continuing on foot, but lost consciousness not far from Nolan's body.

Sergeant Charles Wooden of the 17th and Surgeon James Mouat of the 6th (Inniskilling) Dragoons saved Morris's life by attending to his wounds under Russian fire.

In December 1855 he returned to the Crimea as Deputy Quartermaster-General of the Turkish army at Kerch, with the local rank of colonel, remaining there for the rest of the war.

[35] After his return to Britain Morris served as Deputy Assistant Adjutant-General at the Curragh in Ireland, until the 17th Lancers were ordered to India in September 1857.

Three months later he died at Poona aged 37,[1] "supposedly from the effects of the sun on the silver plate he had in his head as a result of his wounds sustained at Balaclava".

[37] Sacred to the memory of William Morris of Fishleigh, Devon, Brevet Lieut.-Colonel and Major Her Majesty's 17th Lancers Companion of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath, Knight of the Legion of Honour And Companion of the Third Class of the Imperial Order of the Medjidie, Deputy Assistant Adjutant-General Of Her Majesty's Forces, Bombay, Who departed this life 11th July 1858, at Poona.

7 ver.This frontage erected 1901 by Sir Robert White-Thomson of Broomfield Manor in memory of his brother John Henry Thomson lieutenant 17th Lancers who fell at Balaklava October 25, 1854 when the regiment was commanded by Captain afterwards Colonel Morris CBA fictionalised version of Morris was played by Mark Burns in the 1968 film The Charge of the Light Brigade, with Vanessa Redgrave as his wife (renamed Clarissa in the film) and David Hemmings as his friend Nolan.