On This Day ... in 1857 & Others
The Shah Nuliff Fort at Lucknow was attacked and captured by British and Sikh forces during the Indian Mutiny. William Hall, a Canadian serving with the Royal Marines onboard HMS Shannon, distinguished himself in combat, for which he was awarded the Victoria Cross.
British military forces and many foreign civilians were besieged at Lucknow. In September, a relief column managed to fight through to the city but was also cut off by the attackers, who numbered approximately 50,000. The second relief column numbered approximately 5,000 troops and brought with them two 24-pound howitzers from HMS Shannon.
Hall was serving as a marine gunner in this ship and volunteered to be a member of “The Shannon Brigade.” A preliminary bombardment of the enemy strongpoint at the Shah Nuliff Fort produced no results. To breach the walls, the guns were moved forward to fire directly at low angel from very close range. The defenders’ fire killed the entire crew of one howitzer and all but two from Hall’s gun; the second man Lieutenant Thomas James Young was seriously wounded.
Despite the fierceness of the enemy fire, the two men methodically fired upon the fort until the wall was breached, whereupon a bayonet charge caused the defenders to flee from their stronghold. The rebels withdrew temporarily, giving the besieged forces and civilians at Lucknow the opportunity to withdraw from the city, which was not recaptured until March 1858. The rebellion was finally crushed in November.
Both Hall and Young were awarded the Victoria Cross.
On 25 Oct 1859, Hall was presented with his award in a ceremony held onboard HMS Donegal, at Queenstown, Ireland. Hall, a freed slave, was the first man of African origin to receive the award and was the first person from any of the Dominions of the Commonwealth to be so recognized
During the same engagement, volunteers were called for to climb a tree near the wall of the Shah Nujeff mosque in order to spot the enemy's position and then to dislodge the mutineers who were throwing grenades and firing on the gun crews below. Lieutenant Nowell Salmon, Leading Seaman John Harrison and an able seaman responded to the call and succeeded in performing this dangerous service, but Lieutenant Salmon was wounded in the thigh and the able seaman was killed.Salmon received the Victoria Cross, later achieving the rank of Admiral of the Fleet
1915: Private Caffrey of the York & Lancaster Regiment left the safety of his trench, accompanied by a corporal from the Royal Army Medical Corps, to rescue a wounded man lying in No Man's Land. Spotted by the Germans, their first attempt was driven back by an artillery bombardment. At the second attempt, they reached the wounded man, and bandaged his wounds. But as they were lifting him, the RAMC corporal fell with a serious head wound. On his own, Caffrey bandaged him in turn and got him back to the British lines. He then braved enemy fire a third time to successfully rescue, at last, the original wounded colleague. Caffrey received the Victoria Cross
1942: General de Gaulle announced that the 'Free French' would not accept Vichy General Darlan's authority
1943: Admiral Louis Mountbatten was appointed Supreme Allied Commander, South East Asia
Comments
"To breach the walls, the guns were moved forward to fire directly at low angel from very close range."
To a soldier, this is known as being used in the "battering" (ie: like a batering ram)role, from which we get "battery" for a group of guns engaged in such a role and the emplacement from which those weapons fire. To my knowlwdge the last time such employment occurred is when two 5.5 inch guns of the 14th Army were used at point blank range to try to breach the walls of Japanese held Fort Dufferin in Burma, 1945.
Col Beausaber
Posted by: Beausaber | November 16, 2009 4:21 AM
Wasn't Lady Lavender's parrot present at the siege of Lucknow? (And due to food shortage, the parrot was on the menu just the day the siege ended?) But seriously folks, the only thing the average British (like John Far[t]man in his "Very bloody history of something or other") seems to remember about the Indian Mutiny is that the heathen sepoys did not want to bite their cartridges greased with animal fat. (And of course, there had been no other reasons for a mutiny...)
Posted by: General von Klinkerhofen | November 22, 2009 6:51 PM