The crouching infantry meanwhile could hardly be restrained. A sergeant of the 53rd, a Welshman named Dobbin, called out, “Let the infantry storm, Sir Colin! Let the two Thirds at them”—meaning the 53rd and 93rd—“and we’ll soon make short work of the murdering villains.” Campbell, always good-tempered when the bullets were flying, recognised the man, and asked, “Do you think the breach is wide enough, Dobbin?”
The three regiments waiting for the rush were the 53rd, the 93rd, and a Sikh regiment—the 4th Rifles; and suddenly they leaped up and joined in one eager dash at the slowly widening breach. Whether the signal to advance was given at all is doubtful, and which regiment led, and which brave soldier was first through the breach, are all equally doubtful points.
Malleson says the rush on the Secundrabagh was “the most wonderful scene witnessed in the war.” No order was given; but suddenly the Sikhs and the Highlanders were seen racing for the breach at full speed, bonneted Highlander and brown-faced Sikh straining every nerve to reach it first. A Sikh of the 4th Rifles, he adds, outran the leading Highlander, leaped through the breach, and was shot dead as he sprang. An ensign of the 93rd, named Cooper, was a good second, and, leaping feet first through the hole like a gymnast, got safely through.
Hope Grant says that “before the order was given a native Sikh officer started forward, sword in hand, followed by his men.” The 93rd determined not to let the Sikhs outcharge them, and instantly ran forward. The Sikhs had a few yards’ start, but “a sergeant of the 93rd, Sergeant-Major Murray, a fine active fellow, outstripped them, jumped through the opening like a harlequin, and, as he landed on the other side, was shot through the breast and fell dead.” Archibald Forbes says the first man through the breach was an Irishman, Lance-Corporal Donnelly, of the 93rd, killed as he jumped through the breach; the second was a Sikh, the third a Scotchman, Sergeant-Major Murray, also killed. Who shall decide when there is such a conflict of testimony betwixt the very actors in the great scene!
Roberts confirms Hope Grant in the statement that a Highlander was the first to reach the goal, and was shot dead as he reached the enclosure; and he adds one curiously pathetic detail. A drummer-boy of the 93rd, he says, “must have been one of the first to pass that grim boundary between life and death; for when I got in I found him just inside the breach, lying on his back, quite dead, a pretty, innocent-looking, fair-haired lad, not more than fourteen years old.” What daring must have burned in that lad’s Scottish blood when he thus took his place in the very van of the wild rush of veterans into the Secundrabagh!