NAM.1991-02-7-1

Wooden printing block with an engraved image of the sculpture of Lt Walter Hamilton VC and an Afghan warrior, 1880 (c). Probably engraved by the sculptor of the original, Charles Bell Birch, 1880 (c). Boxwood, in four sections. Commemorating the defence of the British Embassy, Kabul, by soldiers of the Queen’s Own Corps of Guides, Punjab Frontier Force, under Lt W P Hamilton, 1879. Associated with the Siege of Kabul, 2nd Afghan War (1878-1880). Lieutenant Walter Hamilton of the Queen’s Own Corps of Guides won his Victoria Cross (VC) in 1879 during the 2nd Afghan War (1878-1880). At the Battle of Futtehabad on 2 April 1879, he led on his regiment after the death of his commanding officer against superior numbers and rescued Sowar Dowlut Ram, an Indian cavalryman, from the clutches of the enemy. News of his award had probably not reached him when, six months later, the British Embassy in the Afghan capital Kabul was attacked. Hamilton was in charge of the ambassador’s seventy-man escort. Virtually everyone was massacred, but Hamilton sold his life dearly, the official report relating ‘that at his final charge to silence a gun which he did silence, Lieut. Hamilton fell where he said he would fall, killing on his way to inevitable death three men with his pistol and two with his sword’.

Kabul, Siege of, 1879 (2nd Afghan War 1878-1880)