b. ? d. ?
DATE OF AM ACTION: 15/11/1899 Chieveley Station, Natal, South Africa.
Charles Wagner AM
Little is known about the life of Charles Wagner other than the incident during the early stages of the Boer War. In November 1899 Winston Churchill was travelling with the Durham Light Infantry on an armoured train on a patrol when it came under mortar fire by Boer soldiers at Chieveley, near Durban, South Africa. Three carriages had overturned and blocked the rest of the train from retreating. The British troops returned fire while Churchill ran to the engine to find Wagner, bleeding heavily from a head wound, running away. Churchill told Stewart that ‘no man is hit twice on the same day’ and that a ‘wounded man who continued to do his duty was always rewarded for distinguished gallantry’. Churchill spent the next hour running up and down the outside of the train giving orders to the engine crew while they shunted the wreckage out of the way. Eventually the Boers infiltrated the track and Churchill found himself confronted by two of them with their rifles aimed at him from 100 yards. He ran in the opposite direction while being shot at as he did, with bullets missing him by inches. He planted himself into the grass bank and again was fired at before he scrambled up and over the ridge. As he made a dash towards a river one of the Boers on horseback galloped up to him and held him at gunpoint. After his escape Churchill made a point of visiting Stewart at his railway yard to thank him in person.
AM CITATION:
On the 15th November, 1899, near Chieveley Station, in Natal, an armoured train which had been sent out on patrol was intercepted by the Boers and three carriages were thrown off the line. These vehicles lay between the rest of the train and the track over which it must travel on its homeward journey, and until they were removed the train, the engine and its escort— about 150 men—were exposed to a severe converging fire of rifles and artillery from the surrounding hills. The sole means by which the line could be cleared was the engine, which moving to and fro butted at the wreckage until after about 50 minutes’ work it was heaved and pushed off the track. The part played by the driver of the engine, Charles Wagner, and by the fireman, Alexander James Stewart, was therefore indispensable to the rescue of the wounded with whom the engine and its teuder became crowded. The working of the engine itself was a difficult matter, because at each collision with the wreckage at which it was butting it might easily have been derailed. The danger was exceptional. The heavy fire of shells and bullets inflicted many casualties, and more than one quarter of all in the train were killed or wounded. The shells repeatedly struck the engine and at any moment might have exploded the boiler. The driver, a civilian, under no military code, was wounded severely in the scalp by a shell-splinter almost immediately. Although in great pain he did not fail during the whole of this affair to manage his engine skilfully, and by clearing the line saved from death and wounds a proportion at least of the 50 or 60 persons who effected their escape upon the engine and its tender. Both the driver and his fireman are still in the service of the Natal Government Railways.
BURIAL LOCATION: UNKNOWN.
LOCATION OF MEDAL: WARRIORS GATE MUSEUM, DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA.
