Miles Ryan

Moving burning ammunition clear, he saved the Delhi assault.

Miles Ryan was born in Londonderry, Ireland, in 1826. He worked as a blacksmith before enlisting in the Honourable East India Company's army in September 1848. He arrived in India the following year and served with the 1st Bengal European Fusiliers. His early campaigns included the Second Burma War of 1852–53, for which he received the India General Service Medal with the Pegu clasp.

During the uprising of 1857 he served in the operations against Delhi. On 14 September, as British forces attacked the city, ammunition boxes near the Kabul Gate caught fire. Burning thatch fell among the boxes and threatened a major explosion. Men and ammunition stood close to the danger.

Ryan and fellow drummer James McGuire rushed to the fire. Without waiting for assistance, they moved burning ammunition away from the wall and threw it over the parapet into the water below. Their intervention prevented the threatened explosion. Both men received the Victoria Cross for the action. The award recognised their immediate response to a danger that could have caused heavy casualties among the assaulting troops.

Ryan also received the Indian Mutiny Medal with the Delhi and Lucknow clasps. He left the Company's service on 16 May 1859, the same year in which his Victoria Cross was presented in India. His final recorded military rank was drummer. He died in January 1887, possibly in Bengal; his place of burial has not been established.

Official Victoria Cross citation

At the assault on Delhi on the 14th September, 1857, when the Brigade had reached the Cabul Gate, the 1st Fusiliers and 75th Regiment, and some Sikhs, were waiting for orders, and some of the Regiments were getting ammunition served out (three boxes of which exploded from some cause not clearly known, and two others were in a state of ignition), when Serjeant McGuire and Drummer Ryan rushed into the burning mass, and, seizing the boxes, threw them, one after the other, over the parapet into the water. The confusion consequent on the explosion was very great, and the crowd of soldiers and native followers, who did not know where the danger lay, were rushing into certain destruction, when Serjeant McGuire and Drummer Ryan, by their coolness and personal daring, saved the lives of many at the risk of their own.

The London Gazette of 24 December 1858, Numb. 22212, p. 5519