Fantastic Adrian – super photograph of Sydney Strong’s headstone and many thanks.
Unforgivable I know but I’ve had his pair of medals, Zulu & QSA for years, my focus always being his falling at Spion Kop. I was aware that he had been MID in ‘79 as a young 90th 2nd Lieutenant but didn’t pursue it until recently, when I turfed his folder out. Long story short, it would seem his actions at Khabula could well have saved another Isandhlwana debacle – speculative but of all the senior officers present at Khabulia, Colonel Wood saw fit to mention the gallant 20 year old in his Despatches.
Extract.
Sydney Strong, 90th Perthshire Light Infantry
…… Although now attacked on both sides, Colonel Wood appreciated that the situation to the south was critical and ordered Major Hackett, 90th to take two companies from the cover of the laager to clear the Zulus off the glacis. Led by Hackett, the men of the 90th formed in line with bayonets fixed and charged across the open ground, forcing the Zulus, after fierce close quarter fighting, back over the rim of the glasis. The two Companies then lined the crest and opened volley fire into the packed warriors in the ravine below. Wood’s counter-attack had succeeded perfectly but Hackett's men suddenly found themselves under a heavy enfilade fire from their right, where Zulu marksmen, armed with captured Martini-Henry rifles, had concealed themselves in a refuse pit and under the wagons in the cattle laager.
Exposed in the open, men of the 90th began to fall, encouraging the Zulus in the ravine to charge again but this time along the narrow killing zone to the front of the laager. At this point some men of the 90th began to falter in the face of the combined threat of increasingly heavy enfilade fire and the onrushing hoards of screaming Zulu warriors – now just an assegai thrust away.
It was then, at this critical moment, a young 90th subaltern, 2nd Lieutenant Siyney Strong, leapt forward alone at the foremost Zulus, yelling for his men to follow him; bayonets fixed and inspired by the youth’s fearless courage - follow him they did - to a man, stopping the Zulus in their tracks.
Had not the young subaltern blunted the enemy’s onslaught at that pivotal moment in the battle, would the impetous of the Zulu charge been sufficient for it to have swept through the camp, as at Isandhlwana just a few weeks earlier, massacring then, over a thousand British souls?
After the battle, did Colonel Wood recognize the full importance of the young subaltern’s intervention at that critical moment or did he just recognize guts and bravery? Which ever way, he saw fit to mention the young man in his despatches, the highest accolade he could bestow at that time.
With casualties mounting rapidly, Colonel Wood ordered Hackett to retire his men to the relative safety of the entrenched laager but not before losing a Colour-Sergeant killed by a shot to the head, another young subaltern, 2nd Lieutenant Arthur Bright, grievously wounded, shot in both legs and Hackett himself receiving a dreadful head wound, which left him totally blinded. But now it was the onrushing Zulus who could not this time prevail against the controlled volleys from behind the laager and were obliged to seek cover, back over the rim of the glasis.
Regards
Les
