Text: Boer War 1900. How Captain Towse (Gordon Highlanders) won his Victoria Cross.

Year: 1901.

Publisher: NA.

Artist: NA.

Additional information: Illustration shows Captain Beachcroft Towse carrying a wounded soldier away from a scene of battle during the Second Boer War. The soldier in question was Colonel Downman, who had been mortally wounded during the Battle of Magersfontein. Towse carried the wounded Downman away from the frontline until safe and then continued the battle with the Boers, during which he was shot in the face and blinded by Yevgeny Maximov, a Russian volunteer fighting with the Boers. A contemporary report from London gives a description of the battle: “Some of the Boers then got within 40 yards of Captain Towse and his party, and called on him to surrender. He at once caused his men to open fire and remained firing himself until severely wounded (both eyes shattered), succeeding in driving off the Boers. The gallantry of this Officer in vigorously attacking the enemy (for he not only fired, but charged forward) saved the situation, notwithstanding the numerical superiority of the Boers.” The battle however ended with a Boer victory, but Towse’s story became a national legend celebrated in newspapers, postcards and even illustrated children’s books in the years following the war. He subsequently became a campaigner for the blind.