William Spottiswoode Trevor

He climbed the wall and entered a defended house under fire.

William Spottiswoode Trevor was born at Calcutta in 1831. His father was killed at Kabul in 1841, and William and his family spent months as hostages before rescue. Educated at Addiscombe, he entered the Bengal Engineers in 1849 and served in Burma, where he was wounded and mentioned in despatches. He subsequently worked on roads and military construction in Bengal.

At Dewan-Giri in Bhutan on 30 April 1865, Trevor and James Dundas led the assault on a defended blockhouse. Climbing a high wall and entering through a narrow opening, they showed the following soldiers the way into the position. Both were wounded. Their conduct earned the Victoria Cross.

Trevor later supervised famine relief works, became chief engineer in British Burma and director general of railways, then secretary in the Indian public works department. He retired in 1887 as a major general and settled in London. He died on 2 November 1907 and was buried at Kensal Green.

Official Victoria Cross citation

For their gallant conduct at the attack on the Block-house at Dewan-Giri, in Bhootan, on the 30th of April, 1865. Major-General Tombs, C.B., V.C., the Officer in command at the time, reports that a party of the enemy, from 180 to 200 in number, had barricaded themselves in the Block-house in question, which they continued to defend after the rest of the position had been carried, and the main body was in retreat. The Block-house, which was loop-holed, was the key of the enemy’s position. Seeing no Officer of the storming party near him, and being anxious that the place should be taken immediately, as any protracted resistance might have caused the main body of the Bhooteas to rally, the British force having been fighting in a broiling sun on a very steep and difficult ground for upwards of three hours, the General in command ordered these two Officers to show the way into the Block-house. They had to climb up a wall which was 14 feet high, and then to enter a house, occupied by some 200 desperate men, head foremost through an opening not more than two feet wide between the top of the wall and the roof of the Block-house. Major-General Tombs states that on speaking to the Sikh soldiers around him, and telling them in Hindoostani to swarm up the wall, none of them responded to the call, until these two Officers had shewn them the way, when they followed with the greatest alacrity. Both of them were wounded.

The London Gazette of 31 December 1867, Numb. 23338, p. 7107