GALLANTRY OF THE BRITISH ARMS.

Hot Lakes Chronicle, Volume 2, Issue 127, 3 July 1895, Page 3

GALLANTRY OF THE BRITISH ARMS.

A gallant piece of soldiering is discribed in the studiously colourless official description received at the India Office of the holding of Chitrai by i ts defender. One sentence alone shows at the same time how hard every one of the defenders had to fight, and how modestly the chief tells his story. "British Agent wounded." That is how Dr Sobortson describes his own wound at the head of the garrison in making a sortie. On March 3 the garrison regarded their position as hopeless, and then for seven long weeks they stubbornly held their own. When the wator-towor ou*sido the fort was set en fire three times, three time they dashed out and extinguished it. When the natives came too near with their minos, again they issued and blew them up What could be more thrilling than this laconic statement, "Enemy made an attack on all sides of fort; failed"? On April 5 the enemy captured a summer-house within 50 yards of the gun tower of the fort. Twelve days later the garribo»i, no doubt finding that the summerhouse was serving as a cover for operations which would soon prove disastrous, sallied out, recorered it, and blew up the enemy's mines. But this sortie cost the little band of defenders dear; they had no fewer than eight killed and tLirteen wounded Dr Robertson himself was hit while helping to extinguish the flames which the tribesmen had succeeded in igniting. Captain Baird was mortally wounded and died and one o her Britiph and two native officers of distinction were wounded. All this timo the fatigue and exposure were dreadful, the food was Bcanty and bad, the medical stores were soon exhausted, and as a climax to discouragement the garrison seem to have beleived that General Gholam Hyder Khan, tbe Ameer's commander-in-chief was supporting the enemy. The joy 'with which Colonel Kelly's little force must have been welcomed at Chitrai may be left to the imagination. The policy of the expedition has from the first been open to doubt. But we may be thankful that so happy a result has been snatched from the very jaws of misfortune, and that we have received one more proof of how in our EJinpire the occasion always finds tho man.