George Nicholas Channer

Climbed a stockade to lead a surprise attack on its garrison

George Nicholas Channer was born at Allahabad on 7 January 1842, the son of an artillery officer. Educated at Truro Grammar School and Cheltenham College, he entered the Indian Army in September 1859 and joined the Bengal Staff Corps in 1866. Before the action that brought him the Victoria Cross, he had already experienced the Umbeyla campaign. He subsequently served in Malaya during the Perak expedition of 1875-76.

On 20 December 1875 a strongly held stockade blocked the British advance. Its defenders possessed a commanding position, and a direct assault threatened substantial casualties. Channer moved ahead with a small party, approached the stockade without being detected, and climbed the palisade while the defenders were eating. He shot the first man who confronted him and called his soldiers forward. The sudden attack enabled the party to seize the position and remove an obstacle to the column's advance. His leadership and personal initiative brought the Victoria Cross.

His service continued well beyond Perak. He participated in the Jowaki operations of 1877-78 and in the Second Afghan War, including the fighting at Peiwar Kotal. These campaigns added clasps to his India General Service and Afghanistan medals. He later commanded a brigade during the Black Mountain expedition of 1888, for which he was appointed a Companion of the Bath.

Channer also held responsibility during the Chitral operations of 1895, when he commanded a reserve brigade. His later career therefore combined active campaigning with higher command, rather than ending with his Victoria Cross action. He became a major general in 1893, lieutenant general in 1896 and general in January 1899, and received a good service pension.

In retirement he lived at Westward Ho! in Devon, maintaining family ties after a career largely spent overseas. He died there on 13 December 1905. His surviving campaign group provides a particularly detailed record of service stretching from Umbeyla to the North-West Frontier expeditions of the late nineteenth century.

Victoria Cross citation: For having, with the greatest gallantry, been the first to jump into the Enemy’s Stockade, to which he had been dispatched with a small party of the 1st Ghoorkha Light Infantry, on the afternoon of the 20th December, 1875, by the Officer commanding the Malacca Column, to procure intelligence as to its strength, position &c. Major Channer got completely in rear of the Enemy’s position, and finding himself so close that he could hear the voices of the men inside, who were cooking at the time, and keeping no look out, he beckoned to his men, and the whole party stole quietly forward to within a few paces of the Stockade. On jumping in, he shot the first man dead with his revolver, and his party then came up, and entered the Stockade, which was of a most formidable nature, surrounded by a bamboo palisade; about seven yards within was a log-house, loop-holed, with two narrow entrances, and trees laid latitudinally, to the thickness of two feet. The Officer commanding reports that if Major Channer, by his foresight, coolness, and intrepidity, had not taken this Stockade, a great loss of life must have occurred, as from the fact of his being unable to bring his guns to bear on it, from the steepness of the hill, and the density of the jungle, it must have been taken at the point of the bayonet.

The London Gazette of 14 April 1876, Numb. 24314, p. 2476