Both the officers had had their fill of fighting for the day, and fortunately, perhaps, for them, no more rebels appeared to molest them on their return to the camp. The lieutenant, I may note in passing, is now the well-known Lieut.-General Sir J. Hills-Johnes, G.C.B.; his fellow-hero of the fight died some years ago, a Major-General and a K.C.B.
Another veteran of the Indian Mutiny still alive, who also won his V.C. at Delhi, is Colonel Thomas Cadell. A lieutenant in the Bengal European Fusiliers at the time, Cadell figured in a hot affray between a picket and an overwhelmingly large body of rebels. In the face of a very severe fire he gallantly went to the aid of a wounded bugler of his own regiment and brought him safely in. On the same day, hearing that another wounded man had been left behind, he made a dash into the open, accompanied by three men of his regiment, and succeeded in making a second rescue.
The heroes of Delhi are so many that it is difficult to choose among them. Place must be found, however, for brief mention of the dashing exploit of Colour-Sergeant Stephen Garvin of the 60th Rifles. The Rifles, by the way, now the King’s Royal Rifle Corps, have the goodly number of thirteen V.C.’s to their credit.
In June 1857 the British army on the Ridge was greatly harassed by rebel sharpshooters who took up their position in a building known as the “Sammy House.” It was essential that this hornet’s nest should be destroyed, and volunteers were called for. For this service Colour-Sergeant Garvin promptly stepped forward and, with a small party of daring spirits, set out on what looked to most like a forlorn hope.
What the rebels thought of this impudent attempt to oust them from their stronghold we cannot tell, for but one or two of them escaped to the city with their lives. Such an onslaught as they received at the “Sammy House,” when Garvin and his valiant dozen rushed the place, quite surpassed anything in their experience. The colour-sergeant is described as hewing and hacking like a paladin of romance, and for his bravery and the example he set to his followers he well deserved the Cross that later adorned his breast.
At Bulandshahr, a little to the south of Delhi, in September of the same year, there was a gallant action fought by a body of the Bengal Horse Artillery, which resulted in no fewer than seven V.C.’s being awarded; but there is, I think, no more heroic act recorded in the annals of this famous corps than that of brave Gunner Connolly at Jhelum, two months previously.
While working his gun early in the action he was wounded in the left thigh, but he said nothing about his wound, mounting his horse in the team when the battery limbered up to another position. After some hours’ hot work at this new post, Connolly was again hit, and so badly that his superior officer ordered him to the rear.
“I gave instructions for his removal out of action,” says Lieutenant Cookes in his report, “but this brave man, hearing the order, staggered to his feet and said, ‘No, sir, I’ll not go there whilst I can work here,’ and shortly afterwards he again resumed his post as a spongeman.”
Throughout the fighting that day Connolly stuck to his gun, though his wounds caused him great suffering and loss of blood, and it was not until a third bullet had ploughed its way through his leg that he gave up. Then he was carried from the field unconscious. That was the stuff that our gunners in India were made of, and we may give Connolly and his fellows our unstinted admiration. For sheer pluck and devotion to duty they had no peers.
A highly distinguished artilleryman, who won his Cross in a different way, was a young lieutenant named Frederick Sleigh Roberts, now known to fame as Field-Marshal Earl Roberts, K.G. The scene of his valour was Khudaganj, near Fatehgarh, in the Agra district, and the date the 2nd of January 1858.