Frederick Robertson Aikman

His horsemen charged a stronger force and captured its guns.

Frederick Robertson Aikman was born at the Ross in Lanarkshire in February 1828, into a military family. Commissioned into the Bengal Army in 1845, he joined the 4th Bengal Native Infantry and served during the First and Second Anglo-Sikh Wars. He was present at Sobraon in 1846 and later served with General Wheeler’s force in the Punjab campaign.

When his regiment mutinied in 1857, Aikman helped organize mounted volunteers at Jalandhar. The force became the 3rd Sikh Irregular Cavalry. He took part in the operations against Delhi and later advanced toward Lucknow with General Franks’s column.

On 1 March 1858, while commanding an advanced picket near Lucknow, he learned of an enemy force nearby. With about one hundred cavalrymen, he attacked a body estimated at five hundred infantry and two hundred mounted men supported by two guns. The charge was delivered over broken ground and under fire from a neighbouring fort. The opposing force was routed and both guns were captured. Aikman sustained a severe sword wound to the face. His conduct earned the Victoria Cross.

Invalided to Britain, he received the decoration from Queen Victoria in June 1859. He left his Indian Army career and subsequently entered the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms, the sovereign’s bodyguard. His later responsibilities included command of the Royal East Middlesex Militia. He resigned his militia commission in July 1886, retaining his rank and uniform. In September 1887, already described as a retired colonel, he was appointed honorary colonel of the battalion.

Aikman died in Hamilton, Scotland, on 5 October 1888 and was buried in the family mausoleum at Kensal Green Cemetery. His life connected frontier campaigning in India with later militia and ceremonial service in Britain.

Official Victoria Cross citation: This Officer, Commanding the 3rd Sikh Cavalry on the advanced Picquet, with one hundred of his men, having obtained information, just as the Force marched on the morning of the 1st of March last, of the proximity, three miles off the high road, of a body of 500 Rebel Infantry, 200 Horse, and 2 Guns, under Moosahib Ali Chuckbdar, attacked and utterly routed them, cutting up more than 100 men, capturing two guns, and driving the survivors into, and over, the Goomtee. This feat was performed under every disadvantage of broken ground, and partially under the flanking fire of an adjoining Fort. Lieutenant Aikman received a severe sabre cut in the face in a personal encounter with several of the enemy.