Dawn breaks on the 12th of September 1897 in the small military outpost of Saragarhi.
As the men awake and the sun rises across the barren landscape
they wash and go through their morning meditations, affix their turbans, and begin their day.
There is a growing feeling amongst the company.
It is the feeling of uneasiness, as there is a sense of something to come.
The tribal populace are doing exactly what the British feared
and had risen in full revolt over the course of 1897 and are on the march, preparing to raid British India.
As the forts of Lockhart and Gulistan were in their path,
the rebelling tribesmen had conducted several attacks on the forts over the course of the last two weeks with no success.
All 21 men go about conducting their tasks.
As the day wears on, the quiet of the thin mountain air is interrupted by a loud cry.
“There is a great mass moving on the horizon!” shouts the Sikh soldier on the lookout post.
Havildar Ishar Singh bellows orders, as the men rush to the walls and take up defensive positions.
Sepoy Gurmukh Singh sprints to his tower with the heliograph
to provide communication via flashes of sunlight in Morse code.
He flashes to Fort Lockhart.
“There is a mass on the horizon. Is it hostile?”
“Yes,” comes the worrying reply. “14 standards are counted.”
At least 10,000 tribesmen are marching across the mountain plateau,
bearing down on the little signalling post at Saragarhi.
“Can you send help?” the sepoy asks.
After a moment of tense delay, “No.” comes the fateful reply.
They won't get there on time, and they can't leave the fort unguarded.
Gurmukh relays down the info and the others check their rifles, prepare the defenses,
stockpile ammo and barricade the gate to the post.
Havildar Ishar Singh calls his signalling unit to gather around him.
He addresses his men, as the tension of impending doom grows in the men's hearts.
Knowing that they can’t flee the post, lest they be cut down on the outside,
Ishar calls on his men to stay and fight, to hold the position for as long as possible.
Though the mood is tense, due to the knowledge that death is almost certain, the men remain calm and collected,
not giving in to disagreement, mutiny or desertion.
"It looks like we won't make our way out of this one men."
Havildar Ishar Singh knew that his men would do their duty.
Gurmukh Singh returns to his signalling tower and tells Fort Lockhart that they will hold the line
as long as they can in order to buy as much time for forts to call in reinforcements.
Sepoy Gurmukh will remain in his tower throughout the action, signalling the day's events minute by minute
to the 36th Sikhs division leader Lieutenant Colonel John Haughton at Fort Lockhart.
“Write it down!”
The Lieutenant orders the events to be written down for the record.
Trumpets blare and the sound of the mass of the tribes grows louder.
Their banners flutter in the wind, as they march to confront the signalling outpost at Saragarhi.
Ishar directs his Sikhs to man the ramparts.
The men watch with guns tightly grasped
as the tribesmen form up just outside of rifle range on the ground outside the post.
There is a loud cry and a wave of fighters charge at the rampart.
Rifles crack, as the Sikhs begin to unload their guns into the crowded mass furiously bearing now upon them.
The mass of tribesmen rush forward trying to scale the walls,
while others attempt to suppress the garrison with small arms fire.
The disciplined fire of the Sikh troops break the first wave of the tribesmen, but they're like the sea:
rolling back, reforming, then rushing back with even greater strength.
The twenty rifles of the Sikh soldiers versus the 10,000 tribesmen.
They reform and unleash a second wave attack on the outpost.
Tribesmen fall one after another to the Sikh’s fire, as the land in front of the wall fills with the dead.
However, this time, a bullet from one of the rifles of the raging tribesmen finds its mark,
striking Sepoy Bhagwan Singh who falls on the spot,
the first casualty amongst the desperate, heavily outnumbered defenders.
Naik Lal Singh, though seriously wounded,
with the help of a fellow sepoy removes Bhagwan’s body, placing it in the inner wall.
Lal tries to return to the fight, but collapses and is sadly left behind.
Each Sikh lost is not only a severe decrease in the defenders’ manpower,
but the loss of a friend, a brother in their shared faith.
The second wave of fighters continues to rush the post, with some of them making it to the base of the wall.
They attempt to scale the wall, but the Sikhs force them down at bayonet point.
Some of the tribesmen find a blind spot in the corner of the wall and manage to breach the outer defences.
The Sikhs, however, having repelled the main assault are ready.
A fierce melee ensues.
Knives and swords and bayonets and rifle butts crash together with a resound clash as the blood is drawn.
The valiant Sikhs, though heavily outnumbered,
kill all the enemies in the post and achieve a brief respite as the rest of the tribesmen regroup outside.
As the men recover for the melee, they tend to the wounded,
and briefly mourn their fallen fellows during the short lull in the action.
They hear shouts from outside the walls.
The leaders of the tribes are calling on the remaining Sikhs to surrender with the promise of their safety
offering bribes of wealth and status if only they just abandon the position.
But no man even considers the offer, they are determined to fight to the death here and now.
As the afternoon sun beats upon the dusty ground, smoke begins to fill the air.
The attacking tribesmen have set fire to the brush around the post and surrounding landscape.
The Sikhs look out, trying to see the shape of their foes through the thick gray smoke.
Then the signal man shouts.
The neighboring fort has flashed a dire warning.
From their position on the hill, the fort has spotted a large mass of tribesmen coming out of the smoke
to a blind approach on the side of the signaling station.
They've breached the first wall.
As Havildar Ishar Singh orders some of his men to defend the breach,
the enraged fighters rush at the gate, breaking it now.
Another brutal melee starts.
The Sikhs prove their tenacity as tribesmen after tribesmen fall to the cold steel of the valiant Sikhs.
Though the enemy suffers heavy losses, the numbers begin to take their toll.
Each Sikh soldier of the signal post sells his life dearly, slaying dozens for each defender that falls.
As the enemy floods inside of the outer-wall with troops and dozens of tribesmen fall for each Sikh death.
The situation becomes dire for the defenders.
Ishar, hoping to prolong the fight for the sake of buying time the forts,
orders his remaining men to fallback to the inter-wall.
In order to cover his men’s withdraw behind the second wall, the gallant Havildar,
who was seriously wounded and was profusely bleeding,
bellows a piercing battle cry and charges forward with sword and pistol in hand at stunned Afghans.
For a few valiant seconds, he cuts down attacker after attacker,
but then is overwhelmed and his blood stains the rock.
But his attack has meant that fewer than a dozen Sikhs have formed a second defensive line on the inner wall.
The Sikhs fire into the crowd.
The density of the numbers of the attackers ensure that each shot almost certainly strikes down a tribesman.
The gate is slammed over and over again by the fiercely determined warriors and falls down with a resounding crash.
Knowing that the end is near, the few remaining Sikhs rush to meet the charging attackers.
A final bout of bloody hand to hand combat begins.
The Sikhs fight harder than they have before,
but one by one the tribesmen strike them down in exchange for more of their own dead.
There is only one Sikh defending soldier left.
Sepoy Gurmukh Singh in his signalling tower.
Gurmukh had throughout the fight never left his post and had signaled the details of his fighting to Fort Lockhart.
He sends out one final message.
“Permission to take up my rifle.” he signals to the fort.
“Granted” is the reply.
The brave sepoy calmly and neatly packs up his heliographic equipment
and picks his gun as the tribesmen begin to break down the door.
Through telescopes, Lieutenant Colonel Haughton at Fort Lockhart
watch as the door to the tower is broken in and the room is filled.
For a moment, they cheer as he kills one tribesmen, then another. And then, eighteen more for a total of twenty.
The tribal fighters fled the room in terror.
There is a brief pause as the colonel looks on with awe.
But suddenly his sight is clouded by smoke.
The tribesmen have lit the tower on fire, deciding to burn Sepoy Gurmukh rather than face his blade one more time.
At ease with his fate, Gurmukh sits down and yells the Sikh battle cry.
“Bole So Nihal, Sat Sri Akal (Victory belongs to those who recite the name of God with a true heart)”
he yells over and over until at last he too dies.
The stand is over.
The post falls.
The valiant 21 Sikhs had lasted for six hours.
In this time, the forts have called in reinforcements and prepared their defenses.
The next day the reinforcements arrive and force the tribesmen out of Saragarhi and the surrounding area.
The sacrifice of the Sikhs means the forts are saved.
When the British troops entered Saragarhi,
they found the bodies of the 21 Sikhs and according to some reports over 600 tribesmen.
For the actions on the 12th of September 1897, all 21 Sikh warriors are posthumously awarded
the Indian Order of Merit at that time the highest award for gallantry for British Indian soldiers.
The first time in history that each and every member of a unit won the gallantry awards for a single battle.
Queen Victoria said
“It is no exaggeration to record that the armies which posses the valiant sikhs cannot face defeat in war”.
The 21 Sikhs cemented their place in history by fighting one of the greatest and epic last stands ever.
The valiant 21 are remembered every day by the Indian Army's 4th battalion of the Sikh Regiment,
who commemorate the battle every year on the 12th of September as Saragarhi Day
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