The Brian Ritchie Collection of H.E.I.C. and British India Medals

The K.C.B. group to General Sir H. S. Anderson, who was severely wounded whilst in command of the 1st Bombay Grenadiers at Maiwand

(a) The Most Honourable Order of the Bath (Military) K.C.B., neck badge, silver-gilt and enamels, complete with full neck cravat and silver-gilt ribbon fitments, and breast star, silver with appliqué centre in gold and enamels

(b) India General Service 1854-95, 2 clasps, Persia, Burma 1885-7 (Lieutenant H. S. Anderson, 23rd Regt. N.L.I.)

(c) Afghanistan 1878-80, no clasp (Lieut. Col. H. S. Anderson, Bo. N.I.) enamels chipped on ‘Ich Dien’ motto of K.C.B. star, otherwise good very fine
£4000-5000

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Brian Ritchie Collection of H.E.I.C. and British India Medals.

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Horace Searle Anderson, the son of Robert Anderson, Solicitor, of 10 Langbourne Chambers, Fenchurch Street, London, was born in Hereford on 10 September 1833. He was educated at St Elizabeth College, Guernsey, and was nominated for the Bombay Service by J. Shepherd, Esq., on the recommendation of Mrs Forbes. Commissioned Ensign on 6 April 1850, he arrived at Bombay in July of that year and was directed to do duty with the 20th Bombay N.I. before joining the 23rd Bombay N.I.

In November 1854, he was appointed Adjutant and, apart from a period of service as Brigade Major at Dura from December 1854 to January 1855, he was employed on regimental duty until 1864. In 1856, Lieutenant Anderson was judged ‘a zealous officer. Kind and considerate to his men and ... well acquainted with his military duties and of those of Adjutant’.

In 1856-57, he accompanied his regiment to Persia and was present at the bombardment and capture of Mohammerah. He next took the field with his corps under Sir Hugh Rose in defence of Candeish against Tantia Tope in the latter part of 1857. Advanced to the rank of Captain in November 1859, he was appointed acting second-in-command of the 30th Native Infantry (Jacob’s Rifles) for three months in 1863, and at the end of the year accompanied a draft of Native volunteers to China. 1864 found him serving as Junior Wing Adjutant of the 21st Native Infantry and afterwards as Brigade Major at Aden till May 1865, when he was appointed to fill the same post at Poona. He was promoted Major in 1870, and Lieutenant-Colonel in 1876.

In 1878, Anderson was commanding the 1st Bombay Grenadiers at Ahmedabad, and in November of that year he was ordered to hold the regiment in readiness for service in Afghanistan. In February 1879, he crossed the frontier with his headquarters and for the next twelve months his regiment was employed building roads and escorting stores in the Bolan Pass. In November, however, Anderson was invalided to England on sick leave, and at the end of the year the Grenadiers marched to Kandahar where they went into winter quarters in the citadel. In early spring 1880 Anderson returned to India, and in late March joined a party of officers travelling up to Kandahar at the Sibi railhead.

Following Anderson’s arrival at Kandahar, the British at Kabul deposed Yakub Khan, and placed Abdur Rahman on the throne of Afghanistan in July 1880. Whereupon, Ayub Khan, the brother of the late ruler, staked his claim as Amir of Afghanistan and marched from Herat at the head of an army of 25,000 men and 30 guns. To protect the status quo and to prevent the warlike eastern tribes rallying to Ayub Khan’s standard, the British allied native Governor, or Wali, of Kandahar, was obliged to send out a force to stop him - his forces, however, being ‘supported’ by a British force, the Giriskh Column, comprising ‘E’ Battery, ‘B’ Brigade, Royal Horse Artillery, the 66th (Berkshire) Regiment, 3rd Scinde Horse, Anderson’s 1st Bombay Grenadiers, Jacob’s Rifles, and a detachment of Sappers and Miners, under the command of Brigadier-General G. R. S. Burrows. On 14 July the Wali’s troops mutinied and although they were driven off by Burrows and their smooth-bore guns and howitzers captured, they carried away with them the entire stock of British supplies. With Ayub Khan only three marches away, a council of war was called to find out the opinions of the senior officers. Colonel St. John, the Political Agent, wanted to go north to Haidarabad to occupy the forts there before Ayub’s arrival and gather stores. Anderson for his part advocated a complete withdrawal. Faced with the need for a decision Burrows settled on a compromise and decided to retrace his steps to the Khushk-i-Nakhud River, thereby shortening his supply lines.

The night of 21 July found Burrows’ force encamped on the west bank of the river with his 130 sick and the stores and baggage concentrated within a walled enclosure. Next day General Burrows received a copy of a directive sent to General Primrose at Kandahar by the Commander-in-Chief in Inda. It read: ‘You will understand that you have full liberty to attack Ayub, if you consider you are strong enough to do so. Government consider it of the greatest political importance that his force should be dispersed, and prevented by all possible means from passing on to Ghazni.’

On the evening of the 26th, word reached St. John that there were ghazis in the village of Maiwand. He immediately urged Burrows to move and evict the fanatics before Ayub Khan arrived and received it from their hands. At length Burrows was persuaded, but thinking that Ayub was still thirty miles away at Haidarabad, he refused to move till morning. Ayub, however, had already begun a flank march, screened from British eyes by a range of hills. From Maiwand he intended to move to Sinjiri, where Burrows might be cut off from Kandahar. At 10.30 p.m., Anderson was summoned from his camp bed to a meeting of commanding officers in the Brigadier’s tent, and received his orders for the march along the west bank of the Khushk-i-Nakhud towards Maiwand and the road junction leading to Khakrez in one direction and Sinjiri and Ghazni in the other. Next morning when the Grenadiers paraded, Anderson and his British officers discovered that they did so on empty stomachs. The commissariat staff, it seems, preoccupied with packing up, had refused to issued any rations or fuel to the regimental cooks. Anderson was next obliged to find seventy-five men, nearly a quarter of the Grenadiers’ strength, to guard the ordnance stores, Treasure, and Burrows’ personal baggage, seriously weakening the fighting echelon. The infantry moved out behind the cavalry brigade at 7 a.m., marching in line of columns with the river on the right, and with the Grenadiers protecting the left flank. Significantly, the Grenadiers in carrying out the duty of guarding the left of the advance were not allowed to go to the river and drink.

By 11 a.m., Ayub’s army had been sighted approaching Maiwand from the north west. On a converging course from the south west, Burrows hurried the main body of his force through the village of Mundabad and across the Mundabad Ravine beyond which the cavalry and E/B Battery, under Major G. F. Blackwood, R.H.A. (Ritchie 1-120), were already engaging the enemy at long range in an attempt to make Ayub deploy. The far bank of the ravine proved a tough obstacle for Anderson’s horse - a Waler - which notwithstanding the strength of the breed, was unable to carry his fifteen stone weight directly up the bank and had to pick a diagonal route.

By midday the Grenadiers occupied a position on the plain on the British left, dictated solely by the needs of the artillery. Ghazis, ‘purified for battle and death’, were the first to pose a serious threat to the position as a whole. Dressed in freshly laundered white robes, they issued forth from the village of Maiwand but were checked in their ragged advance on Burrows’ right by volley fire from the .577 Martini Henrys of the 66th Foot. Meanwhile, Ayub deployed seven regiments of infantry and a number of guns in his centre, and increased the threat to the Grenadiers on the British left by bringing forward two or three thousand Kabuli and Herati horsemen. Burrows replied to the potential outflanking movement by sending Captain Slade and Lieutenant Fowle’s two 12-pounder howitzers to a position two hundred yards from the left hand files of two Jacob’s Rifles companies, under Lieutenant Cole, which had been moved up from the reserve, to extend the battle line on the left of the Bombay Grenadiers, now lying prone on the ground to avoid the worst of the enemy’s fire. For the time being the British howitzer fire kept the Afghan horse at bay.

The Afghan gunners drew nearer, making good use of the ground to conceal their advance amidst the swirling masses of cavalry. The Grenadiers, however, spotted one battery less cautious than the others edging closer and reported it to Burrows. With his own artillery busy on other targets Burrows gave orders for the Grenadiers to set the sights of their Snider rifles and to load. He then ordered them to their feet and to fire a volley on the battery. However, owing to poor observation conditions, he was unable to see the result and he ordered the Grenadiers to lie down again. At half-past twelve, the bristling bayonets of Ayub’s regular infantry could be seen massing into huge squares. ‘Burrows knew better than to wait for them to complete their preparations - a crushing blow delivered at this stage, and the whole battle might be over. He called Anderson of the Grenadiers and ordered him to march his regiment forward in line for five hundred yards, and from his new position break up the impending attack with volleys of rifle fire. He was to take Cole and his companies with him.’ After an advance of about hundred yards came the enemy reaction, ‘ ... the whole of Afghan artillery opened fire and a hurricane of shot and shell flew screaming around the regiment ... Here and there some poor wretch was smashed backwards through the ranks, rifle flying one way, turban another, life-blood splattering adjacent files as some shell-splinter or cannon-ball struck home.


But discipline was never in danger, and the regiment marched on regardless ... But all this was too much for Burrows. He had never allowed for anything like this ... he could not bear to suffer the loss of anything under his command, be it supplies, transport animals or front-line fighting infantry. Riding close behind the Grenadiers, he shouted above the tumult that the regiment was to halt and take cover. They had covered a bare two hundred yards. The momentum of advance, that priceless commodity, difficult to achieve but once gained never to be impeded in any way, had reached its best. Now the bathos, the let-down, the lost opportunity.’

The Afghan infantry came on with the Herati foot charging the Grenadiers’ postion, and the Kabuli foot that of Jacob’s Rifles. ‘Anderson studied them silently until the range was right, his men standing tensely in their ranks waiting patiently for the order to fire. When the enemy were eight hundred yards distant the longed-for word of command came at last and five hundred Snider rifles cracked in rapid succession. The range had been judged correctly, sights were properly set. The Herati columns checked momentarily, flinching from the murderous fusillade. Then, brave men, they came on again, the rear ranks stepping over bleeding heaps of wrecked humanity, the silent dead, the writhing wounded. Now the Grenadiers changed to company volleys; but soon the din was such that words of command could not be heard and every soldier fired independently as best he could, grinning, grunting as he rammed home the bullet, cursing and slaying.’ The withering fire was too much for the Heratis and they fell back, whereupon Anderson turned to Burrows and remarked that the Afghans did not like volley-firing! To which the Brigadier replied “No. But there is no appearance of the rest going!” meaning the ghazis and Kabulis in the front of the 66th and Jacob’s Rifles.

The shocked and demoralized Heratis moved sullenly to their right rear adding their weight to the mounting cavalry menace to the British left flank, which after the Grenadiers’ advance was more exposed than ever. Burrows, who was still at hand, ordered Cole to move his companies back so as to pose a front to the new danger. The young officer issued the appropriate orders, but instead of the men performing a disciplined drill-movement, the young Pathans of Jacob’s Rifles started for the rear in confusion. Burrows was horrified and riding up only managed to get them back into position by his personal intervention. Having prevented Ayub marching direct to Maiwand and having given his forces a bloody nose, the time had come for Burrows to withdraw from the open plain into the natural defences of Mundabad village if he was to avoid being outflanked and encirled. But Burrows, his confidence shaken by the display put up by Cole’s men, now seriously doubted whether his native troops were capable of carrying out a disciplined withdrawal and decided to stay put. Unfortunatetly none of his staff officers bothered to tell him that the bhistis were refusing to bring up water for the parched troops, owing to the incursions onto the plain behind the firing line by parties of Afghan horsemen, and that the Wali’s smooth-bore guns which had been banging away at the massing Afghan cavalry opposite the Grenadiers all morning, were about to run out of ammunition. If they had, he might well have risked a withdrawal to the village, where with water from the ravine readily available and the baggage containing a quarter of a million rounds of small arms ammunition and 500 rounds of ammuntion for E/B Battery, he might have held out for ever.

As the smooth-bores started to run low, the howitzers on Cole’s left were ordered to join the rest of the battery, where coordination of fire could be controlled more effectively. However, the sight of the guns being limbered up and driven away had a dire effect on the morale of Cole’s companies, who, with the left hand files in the air, became increasingly unsteady. The Grenadiers, facing three fronts at the apex open triangle which now formed the British position, were clearly visible to the whole of the Afghan artillery and suffered accordingly. At 1.30 p.m., the smooth-bore battery ran out of ammunition and withdrew to Mundabad in search of resupply. Their absence meant that only a third of the Afghan guns could be engaged and effectively left the Grenadiers without artillery support. Nearly a hundred Grenadier Sepoys lay dead or seriously wounded in the ranks while another seventy-five had already been evacuated to Surgeon Dane’s aid post or to the field hospital in the ravine

As the right hand arm of the Afghan pincer movement came in contact with the baggage guard, the enemy cavalry came within range of the Grenadiers. In the ranks their Sniders became red-hot to the touch, and the Herati infantry emboldened by the presence of lage numbers of ghazi’s regained their mettle, returning fire from six hundred yards range. Cole on the left was killed along with his two most senior Native Officers, leaving the two companies under the command of a Jemadar. Nevertheless, the seventy survivors of Cole’s companies maintained their position and with the surviving two thirds of the Grenadiers continued to hold their own against ‘a looming host of 12,000 foemen as the battle reached its climax’. In addition to issuing fire orders and encouraging the men, the Grenadier officers were now obliged to help in the distribution of ammunition, the bandsmen detailed for the task being unable to keep up with the constant demand.

At about 2 p.m., the Afghan artillery fire began to slacken and the roar of battle died down to a brooding rumble. Burrows and others hoped that the Afghan artillery had run out of ammunition as well and that the day might yet be saved. Unfortunately, their optimism was misplaced. Ayub was about to launch a general advance on all fronts. Opposite the 66th Foot on the British right, Afghan officers and chieftans emerged from a nullah cheering their men on to the assault. A torrent of screaming tribesmen in a phalanx twenty men deep charged the 66th’s front, only to be cut down in droves by the disciplined and exacting fire. Flinching, the Afghan onslaught turned to the right, across the front of Jacob’s Rifles, and made straight for E/B’s guns.

‘Anderson of the Grenadiers, preoccupied though he was with his own battle, saw them coming and wheeled his right company back still more to face them and protect the battery, his men firing steadily and well. But as he did so, there arose the roar of another ghazi charge on his own regiment’s front and left. Again, a line of waving standards had risen aloft and was being escorted forward by a fanatic mob of white-clad ghazis, followed by sombre cohorts of Herati infantry. Undettered by company volleys, on they came, screaming their battle-slogans, dauntless and determined. It was too much for Cole’s companies. A youth must have turned and started to run. A few followed. In an instant a terrified, disorganized rabble was streaming to the rear, carrying with it the cursing old soldiers and non-commissioned officers who had succeeded for so long in maintaining the line. Something would have to give in the end, and the sorely tried Pathans of the left were predictably the first to break. Unfortunately they set off a chain-reaction; seeing what happened, one of the inside companies of the Grenadier left-wing stood up, broke formation, and began to press back towards the rear ... Anderson knew he must form company squares ... but in the heat of the crisis his adjutant shouted the orders for making a regimental square; and the native officers followed suit with the correct drill-book orders for forming a square from line. With three companies thrown back, two on one wing, one on the other, this resulted in the most hopeless confusion, accentuated by the left wing companies driving in amongst those on the right who were trying to make something out of their orders. The sepoys stood irresolute tightly packed ten-deep, the right refusing to give ground, the left pressing hard upon them. In company squares, or given even a short time to manoeuvre, and the day might yet have been saved by the determination of the right wing, but now it was too late.’

The tribesmen poured into the rear ranks of the Grenadiers who were so densely packed that they could not use their arms. The Afghans ‘reached over the sepoys’ bayonets and cut them down, and began pulling men out of the ranks into the open to hack them to pieces with more elbow-room for their long Khyber knives.’ Burrows made a last unsuccessful attempt to rally the Grenadiers but without effect. E/B’s left division of two guns, under Lieutenant Hector Maclaine (Ritchie 2-96), fell into the enemy’s hands and the rout of the Girishk Column commenced. By 3 p.m. the Grenadiers had been split up. One party, which had pushed its way into the ranks of the 66th, was carrying out a slow fighting retreat under a scorching sun towards the village of Khig. Another group was falling back on towards Mundabad. Anderson, meanwhile, had been wounded in several places by shell splinters, and ‘had become embroiled with some ghazis from whose clutches he had been rescued by [Risaldar] Dhokal Singh of the 3rd Light Cavalry.


The Risaldar had summoned one of the Grenadier Havildars and four men who found him a stretcher and themselves carried him across the ravine, protecting him on the way.’ Anderson, cursing the enemy and the misfortunes of the day, was further incensed by the behaviour of his second in command, Griffiths. Anderson had given him his water bottle to fill, but no doubt pre-occupied with more pressing matters, the second in command had set off with a party of two hundred Grenadiers to fight alongside the baggage guard at Mundabad, and had not brought it back!

Griffiths, like Anderson, survived the sixteen mile fighting withdrawal towards Kandahar, and afterwards mentioned in his report that an independent body of Grenadiers had made a courageous stand on the way back to the ravine. Anderson, however, most probably still smarting from the water-bottle business, took the trouble to send in a covering note refuting the assertion and intimating that his second-in-command was talking nonsense.

The battle of Maiwand decimated the Bombay Grenadiers. Of the seven British officers present, two were killed and one other, besides Anderson, was wounded. Of the fifteen Native Officers, eight were killed and four wounded. Three hundred and forty-seven of the rank and file were killed and fifty-five wounded. On 11 August Ayub Khan arrived before Kandahar and laid siege. Anderson and the remains of his regiment assisted General Primrose’s garrison in defence of the city, until the arrival of Lord Roberts from Kabul on the 31st, and next day mustered two companies to take part in the final defeat of Ayub at the battle of Kandahar. The regiment finally left Kandahar in October and arrived in Bombay on 3 December 1880. For his services in the Second Afghan War Anderson was mentioned in despatches and promoted Brevet Colonel in 1881

In 1885-87, he took part in the Burmese Expedition and ultimately rose to great heights at headquarters in Bombay, successively becoming Major-General in 1891, Lieutenant-General in 1894, and General in 1896. Created a Companion of the Bath in 1887 for services in Burma, he became a K.C.B. in 1906, and, retiring to Sussex, died on 2 June 1907.

Refs: Hodson Index (NAM); Who Was Who; IOL L/MIL/12/75, 91 & 97; IOL L/MIL/12/77; IOL L/MIL/12/78; IOL L/MIL/12/79; IOL L/MIL/12/80; My God Maiwand, Operations of the South Afghanistan Field Force 1878-80 (Maxwell); The Afghan Campaign of 1878-1880 (Shadbolt).