he many brave and devoted officers who have been surgeons to the corps
have displayed the greatest gallantry.

For high crimes and misdemeanours it was decided to punish the large and
important cluster of villages named Bori, in the land of the Jowaki
Afridis, not far from the present military station of Cherat. A brigade
of all arms, consisting of the 22nd Foot, 20th Punjab Infantry, 66th
Gurkhas (now the 1st Gurkha Rifles), the Corps of Guides, a squadron of
Irregular Cavalry, some 9-pounder guns on elephants, and a company of
Sappers, the whole under Colonel S.B. Boileau, was detailed for the
undertaking. The Bori villages lay in the valley of the same name
enclosed by high and rugged mountains, making both ingress and egress in
face of practised mountaineers a most difficult operation.

The advance was led by the Guides, who, themselves active as panthers in
the hills, drove the Afridis before them through the Bori villages and
up the precipitous mountains behind. The main body then set to work to
burn and destroy the villages with all the food and fodder therein, and
to drive off the cattle. So far, as is often the case in fighting these
mountaineers, all had gone well; but now came the crucial time. Afridis
may be driven all day like mountain sheep, but when the night begins to
fall, and their tired pursuers commence of necessity to draw back to
lower levels for food and rest, then this redoubtable foe rises in all
his strength, and with sword and gun and huge boulder hurls himself like
a demon on his retiring enemy.

At one of the furthest points ahead was Lieutenant F. McC. Turner, who
with about thirty men of the Guides had driven a very much superior
force of the enemy into a stone breastwork at the top of a high peak.
Here the British officer was held; not an inch could he advance; and now
he was called upon to conform with the general movement for retirement.
To retire, placed as he was, meant practical annihilation, so sticking
to the rocks like a limpet he blew a bugle calling for reinforcement.
Hodson, who himself was faced by great odds, seeing the serious position
of his friend, sent across all the men he could afford to extricate him,
but these were not strong enough to effect their purpose. Then it was
that Dr. R. Lyell, the surgeon of the Guides, took on himself to carry
forward the much needed succour. In reserve lying near him was the
Gurkha company of the Guides, and also a company of the 66th Gu