A large army of horse riders starts gathering at the horizon. The sergeant at the post notices
this. It’s morning, the sun has risen up and so has the enemy, FOURTEEN THOUSAND soldiers flooded
the streets of Saragarhi in Afghanistan. Nobody had expected that a small post of only twenty-one
soldiers would find themselves surrounded by such a large army with guns and rifles. A huge army,
insurmountable odds, and a certain death. This is the fate that was waiting for those 21 soldiers
defending the post. Fleeing or surrender was never an option. The Battle of Saragarhi is the
modern simile to the last stand of 300 Spartans at Thermopylae but with even crazier odds. Today
we’re talking about the most gallant and ‘nutty’ last stand of the Modern World.
This is the Battle of Saragarhi. But before we get started, be sure that you subscribe to the Nutty
History channel and click the bell to stay updated with our upcoming content. Now let’s get into it.
Afghans were clearly planning this coup for a long time. Ishar Singh and his men were on a
high alert. As Afghans had tried to attack the nearby forts multiple times recently. This is
also why British garrison was spread too thin to provide any more men at this small post.
However, if this post fell, the two forts Gulistan and Lockhart would not be able to communicate any
further and Afghans would succeed in picking off both forts one by one, for the lack of assistance
and reinforcements. When Ishar Singh spotted the hordes of enemy troops approaching, he directed
sepoy Gurumukh Singh to contact Fort Lockhart immediately. “ENEMY APPROACHING THE MAIN GATE…
NEED REINFORCEMENT” The commanding officer at Fort Lockhart was Lt. Colonel Haughton.
He immediately responded to the message with orders for troops to march down to Saragarhi but
when he looked down from the signaling tower, he was astounded. Afghans had
surrounded the whole village. There was no way to break through for the reinforcements.
It was too late; the Afghans already had their plans in position. The twenty-one
Sikh soldiers at Saragarhi post were on their own. Realizing the grave situation,
Haughton sends a reply immediately. “UNABLE TO BREAKTHROUGH…. HOLD POSITION.” Lt. Col. Haughton
also counted about 14 companies of fully gathered enemy troops, each consisting
of about a thousand men each. This information was also relayed to Saragarhi.
Hold Position! That was the message from the fort. There will be no reinforcement,
there will be no support, there will be no more ammunition. Anybody else would have
either surrendered or abandoned the post. But when Sargent Ishar Singh gathered his men to consult,
they all echoed his opinion. To take a stand and defend the post till death. You might be wondering
well… what is this, madness? No, THIS. IS. KHALSA!
I … bet you were expecting me to say Sparta instead of Khalsa, weren’t you? Frankly what
followed at Saragarhi was no less legendary than what transpired at the great battle of Thermopylae
2500 years ago under the Spartan King Leonidas and his 300 men. There is not much difference between
the culture of a Spartan and the Khalsa when it comes to the life of a soldier. Their obligation
to their duty and the honor of their army was far too greater for them than their own lives.
Ishar Singh may have been only a Sargent, but his leadership skills were far beyond
his designated rank. And on 12th September in 1897, the man proved his mettle by instilling
fear and agony among the hearts of Afghans. For the likes of which they had never ever witnessed
before. Sargent Ishar Singh lined his men in two rows, the front row squatting down and the back
row standing up. They were armed with .303 caliber guns so Ishar made them wait till the enemy
approached as close as 250 meters from the post. At this range, these guns were deadly accurate.
As soon as Ishar Singh commanded the fire, the whole vanguard of the Pathan Alliance was
decimated. This was nowhere close to a victory but it did catch the enemy off guard. This was
the moment Afghans realized taking over the post would not be a walk in the park-like
they were assuming until now. A battle cry from the post roared the sky “JO BOLE SO NIHAL,
SAT SRI AKAL”. Lt. Col. Haughton on the other side was anxious too. All his attempts to supply
ammunition to these brave and stubborn men at Saragarhi had been futile. Meanwhile, by 1400
hours, Ishar Singh’s regiment blew off another wave of attack to the dismay of the Afghans.
After another failure, Afghans had reached the limit of their patience. This caused them
to resort to a more tactical approach. They set fire to every nearby bushes and trees to create
a smokescreen. The motive behind this move was to take advantage of a small breach that they
have managed to create in the post. Haughton, who was keeping a sharp eye on the turn of the events,
immediately asked his heliograph operator to send another message to Saragarhi.
ENEMY APPROACHING… THE BREACH. Saragarhi was down to their last six men and Sargent Ishar
Singh himself was severely injured with bullet wounds and bayonet stabs. Reading the room,
Ishar once again showed his exemplary skills as a leader.
He knew that if Afghans made it through the breach it would be all over, and thus a sacrifice was
required. He commanded the youngest soldier, Sepoy Gurumukh Singh, to stay on the heliograph tower
while he ordered the other four to retreat to the inner walls. But before that, he asked
two of them to carry himself to the breach, where Ishar Singh will take his… last stand.
Ishar was all out of ammunition and thus fixed his bayonet to his rifle to buy as
much time as possible for his colleagues. In his last moments, Ishar Singh went all in
to perform an extraordinary feat of courage and valor and fought the enemy till his last breath.
While Sepoy Gurumukh Singh reported these events to Fort Lockhart, the four men inside inner walls
formed an all-round formation with their backs against each other to fight a fierce battle to
delay the inevitable. As the Afghans started pouring in every single one of these sepoys
fought till the last breath to either kill or kick the Afghans back. Gurumukh Singh,
who was still executing his communication duties to Fort Lockhart, asked permission
from Lt. Col. Haughton to join the battle. It would be a tough decision for any commander
to send a mere kid in action where death is the only certain outcome for him, this must have been
a gut wrenching moment for Lt. Col. Haughton. The young man, without fearing for his life,
jumped down from the tower with his bayonet and to the shock of Afghans started cutting them
down one after the other. Within an hour he had killed about forty of the enemy soldiers forcing
them to retreat out of the post. Embarrassed by the ruthlessness of a nineteen-year-old against
his army, Afghani leader Gul Badshah ordered his soldiers to burn down the post. Gurumukh Singh
died holding the defense till his last breath. The fierce battle on a hot sunny day had left
Afghans exhausted by 1600 hours. After a short rest, they turned their attention towards Fort
Gulistan but the reinforcements from Fort Lockhart arrived with heavy artillery, and the Afghans
were forced to surrender. The Afghan alliance admitted a loss of six hundred soldiers that day,
however the reinforcement reported witnessing a total of fourteen hundred bodies at Saragarhi.
The total loss to Afghans was nearly five thousand before they surrendered to the heavy artillery.
The impact of their feat was so huge that all twenty-one non commissioned officers and
soldiers who martyred in the Saragarhi battle were posthumously awarded Victoria Cross and
Queen Victoria, Empress of Commonwealth herself praised the valor of these brave
men in the British parliament. What Ishar Singh and his men achieved may not be as mythical as
King Leonidas’s three hundred Spartans, but it is definitely nothing less of legendary.
So, what do you think? Was there any other ‘Last Stand’ from the modern history of the world that
matches the gallantry of these Sikhs in Saragarhi? Let us know in the comments below,
and when you are done, check out some of these other videos from Nutty History.