Samuel Hodge was one of those West Indian soldiers who garrisoned British positions on the West coast of Africa during the 19th century. White troops suffered terribly from malaria, blackwater fever and dysentery, and the War Office addressed the problem by shipping in troops of the West India Regiments. In 1866, Lieutenant ColonelGeorge Abbas Kooli D'Arcy, commanding officer of the 3rd West India Regiment and Governor of the Gambia, marched to confront a rebellious Marabout leader named Amar Faal at Tubabecolong, a stockaded town on the northern bank of the River Gambia; taking with him 270 officers and men of the 4th West India Regiment from the Bathurst garrison, Hodge being one; around 500 warriors from the Soninke people later joined his force. He attacked the town on 30 June. Private Hodge was about 26 years old. The British force had light armaments and rockets, but failed to break through the wooden stockade by bombardment. D'Arcy called for volunteers to assist him in trying to cut a breach by hand. Two officers and fifteen men seized axes and followed him. However, the fire of the defenders was intense; those officers were killed almost immediately, and most of the remaining men were wounded. D'Arcy and the two uninjured men, Hodge and another soldier, reached the stockade, and hacked a gap in it large enough for a man. Boswell was killed, leaving only D'Arcy and Hodge of the original assault party of eighteen. D'Arcy went through the gapfollowed closely by Hodge, who used his axe to hack open the inside fastenings on two more gates before being shot down. Hodge sustained serious gunshot wounds, but survived. British troops poured in through the now open gates; and in the fierce fighting that followed, several hundred of the Marabouts were killed, and the village and stockade burned down. Once the day had been won, D'Arcy presented Hodge to his regiment as the bravest man among them, to universal acclamation. Hodge was promoted to the rank of lance corporal, and was presented with the Victoria Cross on 24 June 1867. However, he never fully recovered from the terrible injuries he had sustained during the attack, and died of fever less than a year later during service in Belize.
