John Thornton Down

He crossed open ground under fire to save a wounded soldier.

John Thornton Down was born at Fulham, London, on 2 March 1842. His father served in the royal household. Down attended Westminster School and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, before receiving an ensign's commission in the 57th Regiment in February 1861. His regiment went to New Zealand during the campaigns there.

On 2 October 1863 at Poutoko, a soldier was wounded and left in exposed ground near the bush. Down and Drummer Dudley Stagpoole volunteered to bring him in. The defenders were firing from close cover, making the approach to the wounded man particularly dangerous.

The two men reached him and carried him to safety despite the continued fire. Both received the Victoria Cross for the rescue. Down was twenty-one at the time of the action.

The award was announced in September 1864, and Lieutenant-General Duncan Cameron presented the cross in New Zealand. Down remained with the regiment and purchased promotion to lieutenant in April 1865. His campaign service was also represented by the New Zealand Medal.

His military career was cut short by illness. He died of typhoid fever at Otahuhu Camp near Auckland on 27 April 1866, aged twenty-four, and was buried in the old cemetery there. His name was later included on the regiment's memorial in St Paul's Cathedral and on the Westminster School memorial.

He had neither returned to a long peacetime career nor established a family before his death. The rescue at Poutoko remained the defining public event of a short service that began with military education in Britain and ended in New Zealand.

Official citation

For their conduct at Potoko, on 2nd October, in rescuing a wounded comrade from the rebel Maories. They succeeded in bringing in this wounded man, who was lying at about fifty yards from the bush, although the enemy kept up a very heavy fire from the bush at short range, and also from fallen logs close at hand. The man had been wounded during an engagement with the rebel natives, and Ensign Down, and Drummer Stagpoole, responded to the call of the Officer commanding the detachment of the Regiment for volunteers to bring him in. The Medal for Distinguished Conduct in the Field has already been conferred on Drummer Stagpoole, for the energy and devotion which he displayed on the 25th September, 1863, at the affair near Kaipakopako, in having, though wounded in the head, twice volunteered and brought in wounded men.