Sergeant-Major Edwin Leaney, a Kentish man and a gardener by trade, enlisted into the 13th Light Dragoons at Maidstone on 13.12.1832, aged 19 years. Promoted Corporal in 1834, Sergeant in 1839, reduced to Private in 1841, and promoted Troop-Sergeant-Major in 1854, he rode at the right of the first line in the Charge of the Light Brigade on 25.10.1854 and had his horse shot under him. In October 1902 an account of the Charge by another veteran, Mr. William Dumayne of 'E' Troop, 13th Light Dragoons, in the Northampton Daily Reporter recorded: '... As I retreated from them [the Cossacks] I again saw Lord Cardigan ... and as I got up to where he was, he was sitting by himself, watching the men as they passed him in their retreat. He only looked at me, and I rode slowly by him. Our men at this time were falling on all sides, by the fire of the flank batteries. As I passed on I heard a cry and saw Private Court, of ours, fall from his horse; he had been struck by a round shot; and I saw lying on the ground struggling to rise Sergeant Leany [sic]. He called to me, and I passed my sword into my bridle hand and caught hold of him and dragged him from under his horse, and assisted him to the lines, and joined the remnant of my regiment, which when the muster was called, showed a poor account of the men'.

The 13th Light Dragoons suffered 84 casualties in the Charge and mustered only a handful of mounted Officers and men at the Battle's end. Leaney was invalided home with the Fall of Sebastopol, and discharged on 5.9.1855, having been 'found unfit for further military service'. He nevertheless subsequently served as Sergeant-Major of the Ayrshire Yeomanry, and later as the Sergeant-Major of the Maidstone Troop of the West Kent Yeomanry. He was also active in the Balaklava Commemorative Society and 'instrumental in limiting membership only to those who actually rode in the Charge'. A regular attendee of the Annual Balaklava Banquets to the end of his life, he died at Maidstone on 22.1.1894, aged 79 years.