3-065-768 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Ashantee War: convoy of sick and wounded crossing a river on the road from Coomassie - from a sketch by our special artist, 1874. Third Anglo-Ashanti War - the British Army in West Africa. 'There is a painful interest of reality in the Illustration of a convoy of sick and wounded carried down the road from Coomassie [ie Kumasi] to the Prah. The number of hammock- bearers available at this time was so much reduced that each hammock, with the suffering or helpless invalid lying beneath a scanty canopy, was borne upon the heads of four men instead of six, as at first, along a rough and often flooded path. It required the energetic persuasive exertions of the British officers in charge of these convoys to get them over the ground, as many of the natives were inclined, but for fear of instant punishment, to lay down their load. Nearly half the troops of white race that went up to Coomassie were obliged to he carried back in hammocks; of the 42nd Highlanders only 350 were in marching condition; nor were the Rifle Brigade, Welsh Fusiliers, and Naval Brigade in a much better plight, when the excitement of the conflict was passed, and they felt the immense fatigue, as well as the unwholesome effects of climate, to which they had been exposed'. From "Illustrated London News", 1874.