In the preceding chapters I have told of many heroes who have won imperishable glory at the cannon’s mouth, “i’ the imminent deadly breach”; at the head of charging squadrons; or in Homeric personal combat. Valiant men were they all, and worthy of high admiration; but I come now to speak of other brave men, whose deeds though less ostentatious should appeal to our imagination no less forcibly—the devoted surgeons of our Army.

In the bead-roll of Britain’s heroes there are no more honoured names than theirs, and very high up among them I would place those of Surgeons Jee, McMaster, Home, and Bradshaw. Their work was not to lead storming parties or join in the press of battle, but to follow in the wake of the fight, to relieve the sufferings of the wounded, to bind up shattered limbs and bandage the ghastly hurts that round-shot, sabre, and musket had inflicted in the swirl of evil human passions thus let loose.

It was work that demanded devotion and courage of the highest order, for it was carried on mostly under fire, when bullets rained pitilessly around, and the very hand that one moment eased a sufferer’s pain might the next itself be stilled in death. Let the tale of what was done in Lucknow streets on that historic September day in 1857 when Havelock and Outram fought their way into the besieged city, testify to the pluck and noble self-sacrifice of which our Army doctors are capable at duty’s call.

Surgeon Joseph Jee was attached to the 78th Highlanders, the old “Ross-shire Buffs,” now known (with the 72nd Foot) as the Seaforth Highlanders. He had followed his regiment to Cawnpore to avenge Nana Sahib’s ghastly massacre, and thence to Lucknow, which, under the gallant Henry Lawrence, was holding out until relief came.

From the Alumbagh, the pleasure-house that was built by a Begum of the ex-King of Oudh about two miles out of the city, and was now garrisoned by some 12,000 sepoys, the relieving force, as is well known, fought their way steadily across the Charbagh Bridge, and so on to the Chutter Munzil Palace and the Bailey Guard Gate, and eventually gained the Residency itself.

It was on the morning of the 25th of September that Lucknow was actually reached. At the Charbagh Palace, near the bridge, the 78th Highlanders were left to hold that position, while the main body threaded its way through the narrow, tortuous lanes leading to the Residency, and here Surgeon Jee and Assistant-Surgeon McMaster quickly found work for their hands. All the streets and houses in the vicinity were strongly occupied by mutineers. Desperate charges had to be made to carry the rebel guns which poured a devastating fire upon our troops, and though the cannon were captured and toppled over into the canal, the casualties were exceedingly heavy.

While the wounded remained to receive attention from the busy doctors, the regiment, following up its last attack, disappeared round the bend of the canal, and Jee and his assistants found themselves suddenly exposed to the enemy’s fire. Having obtained some men to act as bearers, the surgeon got his patients lifted up and carried to where a few dhoolies were. These were filled in no time, one of them by Captain Havelock, son of the General, who was badly hit in the arm; the rest of the wounded were placed in carts drawn by bullocks. The latter, however, met with a heartrending fate ere they had gone far; for the sick train coming to a standstill in the road where it was blocked, all the occupants of the carts were massacred by sepoys before their comrades’ eyes.

The regiment was caught up at last, and a company under Captain Halliburton detailed to guard the dhoolies. But misfortune dogged the little party’s steps. They lost their way in the city, were led by a blundering guide right into an enemy’s battery, which shelled them mercilessly, and wandered about for hours continually under fire, until they took refuge in the Moti-Mahal (the Pearl Palace). Here was a square courtyard having sheds all round it and two gateway entrances. As it was already packed with soldiers, camp followers and camels, the surgeons were hard put to it to find accommodation for their wounded.

Of the horrors of that night Surgeon Jee has told us in his own words. The firing was deafening, gongs were sounding the hours, while there was a hubbub of shouting through which the groans of the wounded could nevertheless be heard. An alarming rumour came that all the 78th had been killed, and, what added to the terrors of the situation, no one knew how far off the Residency was. But Jee stuck to his post, and many a poor fellow lived through that inferno to bless the brave, tender-hearted doctor to whom he owed his life.

At daylight some tea was made (they had had neither food nor drink since leaving the Alumbagh the morning before), and then preparations were made to defend the place. Loopholes had to be pierced in the walls, and the best marksmen stationed there to pick off the sepoys who raked the square from house and gateway. Jee himself had many a narrow escape as he dodged about dressing the wounds both of the artillery and his own men, and he recounts how Brigadier Cooper was shot through a loophole close to where he was standing.

In this extremity Jee boldly volunteered to attempt to get his wounded into the Residency by taking them along the river bank, leaving Captain Halliburton to hold the Moti-Mahal. Nothing could dissuade him from this course once his mind was made up, so with his dhoolies he set out to run the gauntlet.

What the little company of dhoolies passed through ere it reached its destination we do not know, but we can picture to ourselves that terrible journey through the winding tangled streets in which nearly every house contained sepoy riflemen. There was, too, a stream to be crossed, and at this spot they were exposed to the fire of the rebel guns at the Kaiserbagh Palace.

They reached the Residency at length, after much going astray, and reached it sadly depleted in numbers. As elsewhere in Lucknow that same night, the cowardly sepoys made a special mark of the dhoolies, shooting the defenceless wounded in cold blood. On their arrival General Havelock warmly congratulated the plucky surgeon on his success in getting through, for he had heard that Jee had been killed.

Honour was slower in coming to the brave Army doctors than to many others who distinguished themselves in the Mutiny, for it was not until three years later that Jee was gazetted V.C. But such services as his could not be overlooked, and there was universal satisfaction when his name was added to the Roll of Valour. He died some years ago, a Deputy Inspector-General and a C.B.

On the night of the same day that Jee was conveying his wounded to the Residency, a somewhat similar scene was being enacted in another quarter of Lucknow. By the Moti Munzil Palace lay a number of wounded officers and men of the 90th and other regiments in the charge of Doctors Home and Bradshaw of the 90th. Left behind by the relieving force as it held straight on to its goal, the dhoolies had to rely for protection on a small escort of a hundred and fifty men. By great good fortune they escaped the notice of the mutineers during the first part of the night, but ere dawn had broken a fierce attack was made upon them. Off they started, then, on a slow, laborious journey, which was to cost many valuable lives before its end.

“To the Residency!” was the cry, a young civilian named Thornhill having undertaken to guide them thither. But between them and Havelock’s house was a network of streets and lanes that had to be threaded, and these were still overrun with sepoys. It was a true via dolorosa that lay before them.

The order having been given, the dhoolies were picked up by very reluctant native bearers, the surgeons closed in round their charges, and they started off, while the escort covered their progress as best they could. After a terrible hour’s journeying, with sepoys hanging on flank and rear, the little company eventually reached the MartiniÈre (a building erected by a French soldier of fortune in the eighteenth century). Their stay here was short, however, for a well-directed cannonade drove them once more afield. A flooded nullah was next crossed, and beyond this seemed to lie safety, but a fatal blunder on the part of their guide led them into a veritable death-trap.

The street into which they filed appeared to be deserted. As a matter of fact it was full of sepoys, who were concealed in the houses on either side. This was the narrow street leading to the Bailey Guard Gate, the entrance to the Residency; along its three-quarters of a mile, some hours previously, the 78th Highlanders and Brasyer’s Sikhs had won their way through a perfect tempest of shot. A similar reception awaited the dhoolies.

As the ill-fated train passed through and gained the square at the farther end, the storm of musketry broke into full blast over their heads. In a moment the panic-stricken bearers dropped the dhoolies and fled for dear life, leaving the wounded men in the middle of the square exposed to every sepoy marksman. The fire of close on a thousand muskets must have been concentrated on that small enclosure, but Surgeon Home managed, with nine men of the escort, to get half a dozen of the wounded within the shelter of a building before which was a covered archway.

Surgeon Bradshaw, meanwhile, who had been in the rear of the train, had collected his dhoolies as soon as the nature of the trap was disclosed, and turned hastily back to seek the turning that their guide ought to have taken. The luckless Thornhill had been killed, having been one of the first to be shot down. It is satisfactory to add that Bradshaw was successful in bringing his dhoolies to safe quarters without further mishap.

Would that such had been the case with Surgeon Home! He and his party had gained shelter for the time, but none could say how long it would be before the horde of sepoys would storm it. The most daring of the mutineers had already ventured out into the square to kill those of the wounded whom they could reach and to fire through the windows of the house.

The heroes of what became known afterwards as Dhoolie Square were, besides Home, Privates McManus, Ward, Ryan, and Hollowell. These gallant fellows, but for whom the whole company must have been massacred, formed part of the military escort. Patrick McManus, who was an Irishman of the Northumberland Fusiliers, was a noted shot. Taking up a position immediately behind one of the pillars of the archway, he coolly fired shot after shot until a number of sepoys had fallen victims to his unerring aim. The rest of the rebels retreated before his rifle and sought shelter within the houses.

McMANUS NOW RUSHED OUT, ACCOMPANIED BY PRIVATE JOHN RYAN … AND CARRIED IN CAPTAIN ARNOLD.—Page 98.