Samuel Hodge

He hacked through a stockade under fire to let troops enter.

Samuel Hodge was born on Tortola in the British Virgin Islands around 1840. He enlisted in the West India Regiment at Antigua in 1858 and later served in the Gambia. By 1866 he was a pioneer in the 4th West India Regiment.

On 30 June 1866, during an attack on the defended stockade at Tubab Kolon, Hodge volunteered to accompany Lieutenant-Colonel D’Arcy to breach the defences. Under heavy fire he used an axe to cut through the stockade. After entering with D’Arcy, he helped create an opening through which the rest of the troops could pass. He was severely wounded. His conduct earned the Victoria Cross.

Promoted lance-corporal, he subsequently served in British Honduras. Brigadier-General Robert Harley presented his decoration at Newtown Barracks in June 1867. Hodge never fully recovered his health and died in Belize on 14 January 1868. He was buried in the military cemetery there; the precise grave was later lost.

Official Victoria Cross citation

For his bravery at the storming and capture of the stockaded town of Tubabecolong, in the Kingdom of Barra, River Gambia, on the evening of the 30th of June last. Colonel D’Arcy, of the Gambia Volunteers, states that this man and another, who was afterwards killed, pioneers in the 4th West India Regiment, answered his call for volunteers, with axes in hand, to hew down the stockade. Colonel D’Arcy having effected an entrance, Private Hodge followed him through the town, opening with his axe two gates from the inside, which were barricaded, so allowing the supports to enter, who carried the place from east to west at the point of the bayonet. On issuing to the glacis through the west gate, Private Hodge was presented by Colonel D’Arcy to his comrades, as the bravest soldier in their regiment, a fact which they acknowledged with loud acclamations.

The London Gazette of 4 January 1867, Numb. 23205, p. 84