From British English, an entirely different figure of speech for an act of great courage against impossible order or thinly spread military unit holding firm against attack, or the "thin red line", originates from reports of a red-coated Scottish regiment at the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War. A journalist described a "thin red streak tipped with a line of steel" with the appearance of the 93rd (Highland) Regiment and parts of the Turkish army as they stood before (and repelled) a vastly superior force of Russian cavalry. The reference was soon shortened into the thin red line, and famously described by Rudyard Kipling in the poem "Tommy" as "the thin red line of 'eroes [heroes]."