Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
„Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!“ he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

„Forward, the Light Brigade!“
Was there a man dismay’d?
Not tho’ the soldier knew
Some one had blunder’d:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

Flash’d all their sabres bare,
Flash’d as they turn’d in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder’d:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro’ the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel’d from the sabre-stroke
Shatter’d and sunder’d.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro’ the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder’d.
Honor the charge they made!
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!

—Alfred, Lord Tennyson

From the testimony of former hostages interviewed by the Russian media, it seems virtually certain that the terrorists did have ample time to destroy many of the hostages before they themselves had been overcome by the gas or shot by the attacking special forces. Why did they not do so? As we have seen, most of the explosives in the building were „fakes“ or very weak bombs presenting a danger principally to the women terrorists wearing them. Even without detonating the bombs, however, the terrorists carried real automatic weapons and could easily have raked the hostages with automatic-weapon fire. They clearly chose, however, to let the hostages live. Even an Interior Ministry general who had been identified by the terrorists and had been separated from the other hostages was not killed (though his daughter died from the effects of the gas). Theater producer Vasilev has recalled: „When the shooting began, they [the terrorists] told us to lean forward in the theater seats and cover our heads behind the seats.“

—John B. Dunlop, The 2002 Dubrovka and 2004 Beslan Hostage Crises, (Stuttgart: ibidem, 2006), 148.

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Fast alle BSW-Mitglieder sind älter als 50 Jahre. Ein vorläufiger Sprecher des neuen Landesverbandes sagt: „Die alte Friedensbewegung und das Friedensthema spielt bei vielen der neuen Mitglieder eine Rolle.“