Then with a cheer out they dashed at the horde before them, in the mad endeavour to cut their way through. It was a forlorn hope. The enemy closed round them like a dark sea,
“And with never a foot lagging or head bent,
To the clash and clamour and dust of death they went.”
“The Guides at Cabul,” Henry Newbolt.
How Hamilton himself fell was learned afterwards from the Afghans, who could appreciate such dauntless courage as his. They said he fought like a lion at bay, sweeping a space clear around him with his sword; and it was only by the reckless sacrifice of a few of their number, who threw themselves upon him and were shot or sabred, that the rest were able to pull him down. Then a dozen knives buried themselves in his body, and all was over.
The record of the Afghan War teems with heroic exploits, but only a few more can be touched on here. There was, for instance, the gallant rescue of a wounded Bengal Lancer at Dakka, by Lieutenant Reginald Clare Hart (now a Lieut.-General and K.C.B.). “I am going for the V.C. to-day!” he said to his brother-officers on the morning of the engagement; and he won it, after running some twelve hundred yards under the Afghan fire to pull the disabled sowar out of a river bed.
At about the same time Captain O’Moor Creagh with a detachment of one hundred and fifty men held off fifteen thousand Afghans who attacked him near the village of Ram Dakka; a brilliant feat that was only equalled by Captain Vousden, of the 5th Punjab Cavalry, who some time later charged into a body of four hundred of the enemy with simply twelve sowars at his back, and dispersed them!
There were Crosses for both these brave captains, just as there was one for Captain E. H. Sartorius (brother of the Ashanti hero) for a dashing charge which cleared a strong force of the enemy from the Shah Juy hill at Tazi.
Mention of Sartorius recalls the somewhat similar deeds which gained a V.C. for a distinguished major of the 92nd Highlanders, who is now the popular Field-Marshal Sir George Stewart White, G.C.B., etc. On his Cross two dates figure, October 6, 1879, and September 1, 1880. The first denotes the action at Charasiah, where the Afghans were defeated, much to the chagrin of the treacherous Amir Yakoub Khan, who had laid plans for the complete annihilation of the British army.