Lord Henry Percy

He led trapped soldiers through hostile fire back to safety.

Lord Henry Hugh Manvers Percy was born at Cobham, Surrey, on 22 August 1817. Educated at Eton, he entered the Grenadier Guards in 1836 and served in Canada during the disturbances of 1838. He became a battalion adjutant and later commanded a company in the Crimea, where he was wounded at the Alma.

At Inkerman on 5 November 1854, Percy joined the fighting at the Sandbag Battery. Later he found himself nearly surrounded with men from several regiments who had advanced too far and exhausted their ammunition. Although wounded, he used his knowledge of the ground to guide more than fifty men through Russian fire to safety, enabling them to replenish ammunition and continue fighting. He received the Victoria Cross at Hyde Park on 26 June 1857.

Percy commanded the British-Italian Legion and later returned to Canada during the Trent crisis. He represented North Northumberland in Parliament from 1865 to 1868, became a knight commander of the Bath in 1873 and reached general in October 1877. He died in London on 3 December 1877 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Official Victoria Cross citation (London Gazette, 5 May 1857):

At a moment when the Guards were at some distance from the Sand Bag Battery, at the Battle of Inkerman, Colonel Percy charged singly into the battery, followed immediately by the Guards; the embrasures of the battery, as also the parapet, were held by the Russians, who kept up a most severe fire of musketry.

At the Battle of Inkerman Colonel Percy found himself with many men of various regiments, who had charged too far, nearly surrounded by the Russians, and without ammunition. Colonel Percy, by his knowledge of ground, though wounded, extricated these men, and, passing under a heavy fire from the Russians then in the Sand Bag Battery, brought them safe to where ammunition was to be obtained, thereby saving some fifty men, and enabling them to renew the combat. He received the approval of His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge, for this action, on the spot. Colonel Percy was engaged with, and put hors de combat, a Russian soldier.