‘Among the many brave acts of the Second Anglo-Afghan War (November 1878-September 1880), sixteen were awarded the Victoria Cross. Among this relatively small collection of awards, however, are several remarkable circumstances.

The war saw the last Victoria Cross awarded to a civilian and the same award was the first to a clergyman (Reverend James Adams). Two other awards also saw steps towards recognising men who either died during their brave actions or who died soon thereafter and so were either dead at the time their award was announced or died before they could receive it. Two other Victoria Cross recipients in the war, Captain John Crook and Lieutenant Walter Hamilton, would die before they could receive their awards (and Hamilton died heroically at the Residency Siege in Kabul in September 1879 – even before his Victoria Cross was gazetted). Their circumstances began a discussion which led to the granting of posthumous Victoria Crosses from 1902 onwards (the first of which were back-dated to the Second Boer War, 1899-1902).’

This episode was written by Murray Dahm.

Murray is an ancient and medieval military historian from New Zealand, living in Australia. He has written more than 100 articles on various aspects of ancient and medieval military history and other historical topics from all periods. He is the author of Macedonian Phalangite vs Persian Warrior, Athenian Hoplite vs Spartan Hoplite and Leuctra 371 BC, all from Osprey Publishing. He is a regular on the Ancient Warfare Podcast.