From the above it will be seen that, whilst 2,769 officers and men were killed in action or died of their wounds, the losses by disease amounted to no less than 16,037! For every ten officers killed in action, six died from disease, whereas in the proportion of the men who fell the figures were reversed. For every ten who fell in action or as a result of their wounds no less than sixty died of disease. CHAPTER XX BATTLE HONOURS FOR THE INDIAN MUTINY, 1857-1859 India--Delhi--Lucknow--Central India--Defence of Arrah--Behar. INDIA, 1857-1859. For some inscrutable reason, the colours of those regiments which were employed in the suppression of the Indian Mutiny bear no record of their services unless they happened to have been employed at the Siege of Delhi or in the operations at Lucknow or in Central India. There is, indeed, one notable exception. A group of Sikhs, but fifty in number, aided Mr. Wake in his determined defence of Arrah, and subsequently the regiment was engaged in maintaining peace in the province of Behar. For these services the 45th Rattray's Sikhs are authorized to bear the words "Defence of Arrah" and "Behar" on their colours and appointments. Yet British and native troops--aye, civilians and delicately-nurtured women--were engaged for many weary months in a daily contest with battle and with wounds, with plague, pestilence, and famine. Throughout the length and breadth of the northern portion of Hindustan we were waging a life-and-death struggle for the maintenance of British supremacy in India. The details of many incidents in that struggle we never shall know. Our Indian graveyards are filled with tombs recording the losses of those days, from Generals who, like Nicholson, fell in the hour of victory, to wee bairnies who perished from want of the bare necessaries of life, and, alas! also from the sword and bullet of our foes. The whole peninsula is hallowed with the unknown graves of our gallant dead. The history of the Siege of Delhi, where a force of less than 10,000 men besieged a city defended by four times their number of disciplined troops for a period of twelve long weeks in the hottest season of the year, is only equalled by the dauntless bravery with which Lucknow was defended against incalculable odds. Loyal native vied with his British comrade in upholding the honour of our flag, whilst the cheerful heroism and self-abnegation of the women who bore such a noble part in the struggle is deserving of more than a passing tribute of homage. The romantic interest that centred round Havelock's relief of Lucknow has dwarfed the marvellous achievements of the Delhi force--an achievement never surpassed in the military annals of our own or any other country.