‘Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah! ‘Tis a name so sad and strange’

A BACSA Project Report… and notice of a Royal Hospital Chelsea Governor’s Lecture on ‘The Battle of Chillianwallah and a Tale of Two Obelisks’, 14 May 2025…

In 2021-2022 BACSA supported a project to conserve the trench graves at Chillianwallah. Denise Love, BACSA Project Co-ordinator, describes the sensitive task below. Meanwhile BACSA Member and (retired) Brigadier Ian McLeod, who is a volunteer at the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, has supplied the following details of his forthcoming talk in the Governor’s Lecture Series:

The Battle of Chillianwallah

‘On 13 January 1849, in the Punjab in modern-day Pakistan, forces of the British East India Company clashed with the Sikh Empire in a fierce and bloody battle which shocked the British public due to the severe casualties inflicted on British soldiers, particularly those of Her Majesty’s 24th Regiment of Foot, which lost half of its strength in dead and wounded. Both sides claimed victory, but British prestige was damaged, and the British Commander was relieved of command.

Although little known today, the battle, at the time, fired Victorian imagination: a distinguished Victorian poet immortalised it in verse, and five years later, when two British generals were remarking on the disaster of the ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ in the Crimean War, one remarked ‘These sort of things will happen in war. It is nothing to Chillianwala’.

In his Lecture Ian McLeod will describe the events leading to the battle, the battle itself and the aftermath. He will share personal experiences of the battlefield as it stands today, and will tell of a unique link between the battle and the Royal Hospital Chelsea.

Ian is a Friend of, and Volunteer at, the Royal Hospital and a former career officer in the British Army. After 35 years, he retired in the rank of Brigadier and subsequently worked in various conflict areas in stabilisation and humanitarian roles. His last post in the Army was the Defence Adviser to the British High Commission in Islamabad, Pakistan, which gave him the opportunity to visit many of the battlefields of the British era – Chillianwallah being his ‘first choice’.

Ian has also worked as a battlefield tour guide and has a master’s degree in military history from the University of Buckingham, where his dissertation was on brigade command in the Victorian Army, including Chillianwallah as a case study’.
(From: https://chelsea-pensioners.co.uk/events/governors-lecture-series-battle-chillianwallah)

As Ian writes: ‘At the time, the battle fired Victorian imagination: a distinguished Victorian poet immortalised it in verse:’

Chillanwallah, Chillanwallah!
Where our brothers fought and bled,
O thy name is natural music
And a dirge above the dead!
Though we have not been defeated,
Though we can’t be overcome,
Still, whene’er thou art repeated,
I would fain that grief were dumb.

Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah!
‘Tis a name so sad and strange,
Like a breeze through midnight harpstrings
Ringing many a mournful change;
But the wildness and the sorrow
Have a meaning of their own –
Oh, whereof no glad to-morrow
Can relieve the dismal tone!

Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah!
‘Tis a village dark and low,
By the bloody Jhelum river
Bridged by the foreboding foe;
And across the wintry water
He is ready to retreat,
When the carnage and the slaughter
Shall have paid for his defeat.

Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah!
‘Tis a wild and dreary plain,
Strewn with plots of thickest jungle,
Matted with the gory stain.
There the murder-mouthed artillery,
In the deadly ambuscade,
Wrought the thunder of its treachery
On the skeleton brigade.

Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah!
When the night set in with rain,
Came the savage plundering devils
To their work among the slain;
And the wounded and the dying
In cold blood did share the doom
Of their comrades round them lying,
Stiff in the dead skyless gloom.

Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah!
Thou wilt be a doleful chord,
And a mystic note of mourning
That will need no chiming word;
And that heart will leap with anguish
Who may understand thee best; But the hopes of all will languish
Till thy memory is at rest.

(George Meredith 1828-1909)

Lecture: Wednesday 14 May 2025, 18:30-19:30

Date: Wednesday 14 May 2025
Location: Soane Stable Yard, Royal Hospital Chelsea (Royal Hospital Road, London SW3 4SR)
Time: 18:30 (Duration 1 hour).

Programme:
•The Soane Stable Yard shop and café will be open from 17:00-18:30.
•Drinks reception in Heidi Bakery from 18:00-18:30.
•Lecture begins: 18:30
•Lecture ends: 19:30.
Tickets:
•Tickets cost £15.00 (including a glass of wine). Click here to see details on the Chelsea Pensioners website, and to make a booking.

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BACSA Conservation project, Chillianwallah 2021-2022
In 2021 BACSA received a distressing report about the ‘desolate state’ of the three low-walled enclosures south of the Moong Road at Chillianwallah, where trench graves hold the remains of over 200 men from HM’s 24th Foot.

Dr Peter Williams, the Australian military historian, found that ‘At the easternmost one some burrowing creature has made its home in the crypt several feet below ground level, and in excavating earth it has scattered human bones on the surface’.

Coupled with the news that ‘The local village headman, who showed us all three sites, would like to do something about it but does not want to interfere without permission’, this report triggered a BACSA conservation project, spearheaded by (retired) Major General Syed Ali Hamid, the current Area Representative for Punjab and NWFP, Pakistan.

Denise Love, BACSA Projects Co-ordinator, summarises the outcome:

‘Our project at Chillianwallah involved the conservation of the three trench graves containing the remains of soldiers of the 24th Foot. The project started in September 2021 and was completed by the following Spring. BACSA gave a grant of £8700, which covered all the costs of the work and the installation of explanatory plaques.

The three trenches were cleared of vegetation and invading animal habitation, where necessary. The areas were consolidated with concrete, and a brick plinth was built in the centre of two of the trenches. The third trench was so affected by porcupine depredation that it was simply consolidated.

The surrounding walls of the other two were rebuilt and coping added. The contractors tried to reuse old materials but these usually crumbled away, so new materials were fabricated from traditional sources. Upright features in the walls were retained and used for plaques, one to repeat what had been placed there before and two to record the conservation work undertaken by BACSA, in English and Urdu’.

(Denise Love and Rachel Magowan)

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