Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria, to include the Brian Ritchie Collection (Part II)

The Second Afghan War medal to Lieutenant R. T. Chute, 66th Foot, killed in the famous stand of the ‘Last Eleven’ in the walled garden near Maiwand

Afghanistan 1878-80, no clasp (Lieut. R. T. Chute, 66th Foot) sometime cleaned and polished, therefore nearly very fine £4000-5000

Ex Buckland Dix & Wood, May 1993, when sold along with the medals of his uncle, General Sir Trevor Chute, K.C.B., both lots from the Bill Land Collection.

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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At the battle of Maiwand after the ghazi charges shattered the Bombay Grenadiers and Jacob’s Rifles, the 66th began its retreat from the plain, across the Mundabad Ravine, to the walled enclosures and gardens at the village of Khig. Several weeks after the battle and at the approach of a punitive column under General Daubney the local villagers hurriedly buried the British dead still lying where they had fallen on 27 July, and by opening the graves to identify the fallen, a picture of the retreat emerged. The regiment had covered General Burrows’ withdrawal from the field and falling back had clearly been engaged in constant furious combat. In the first two hundred yards from the 66th’s original fighting position on the right of the British line there were five graves containing some 200 men. Another hundred died before the ravine was reached. In a stand on the far side about seventy fell. In Khig itself the survivors made a second stand where thirty-six bodies were found. The last stand was made in a walled garden on the southern edge of the village and here thirty-six more were shot down.

Only Lieutenant Chute and the Adjutant of the Bombay Grenadiers, Lieutenant Hinde, and nine men were left alive. ‘The Last Eleven’ came out into the open, shortly before sunset, preferring to fight to the end in the open rather than boxed in by walls of mud-brick. A Kizilbash artillery Colonel who had come forward with the Afghan guns witnessed the scene:

‘Surrounded by the whole of the Afghan army, they fought on until only eleven men were left, inflicting enormous loss on their enemy. These men charged out of the garden, and died with their faces to the foe, fighting to the death. Such was the nature of their charge, and the grandeur of their bearing, that although the whole of the ghazis were assembled around them, no one dared to approach to cut them down. Thus, standing in the open, back to back, firing steadily and truly, every shot telling, surrounded by thousands, these officers and men died; and it was not until the last man was shot down that the ghazis dared advance upon them. The conduct of these men was the admiration of all that witnessed it.’

The Afghan Colonel’s evidence was confirmed by the number of dead horses, once mounts of the tribal cavalry, lying in a circle around the scene of Chute’s gallant death.

Refs: My God Maiwand, Operations of the South Afghanistan Field Force 1878-80 (Maxwell); The Second Afghan War (Hanna); The Afghan Campaign of 1878-1880 (Shadbolt).