3-065-753 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Ashantee War: the 42nd Highlanders in the front - from a sketch by our special artist, 1874. Third Anglo-Ashanti War - the British Army in West Africa. '...the Ashantee tactics are always the same, and consist of a trap to draw on the enemy in front while they push on one or both his flanks through the dense bush...Rait's two guns...were with Sir Archibald, and a rocket was with each of the flanking parties...The Engineer labourers moving with them cut down the bush partially to aid their advance...five companies were already skirmishing, the slugs were dropping thick and fast, and there was a moment or two when the men's nerves were certainly in a very ticklish condition...Fortunately, the enemy were pitching in slugs, and not bullets, or scarcely a man of the Black Watch would have lived to tell the tale...Major Baird was seriously wounded whilst in active command of the regiment...it seemed impossible to subdue the fire of the Ashantees, and equally impossible to advance over the marshy ground and through the dense bush with such a rush as was necessary to make them give way...[However our] shells, fired at that short distance with deadly effect, soon forced the enemy to clear the road in the front...and they began to yield'. From "Illustrated London News", 1874.