William Brydon

William Brydon (1811 to 1873) was a British army surgeon in the service of the East India Company, widely remembered as the lone rider who reached Jalalabad at the end of the disastrous 1842 retreat from Kabul. Born in London, he studied medicine at University College London and Edinburgh and in 1835 became an assistant surgeon in the Bengal Army. During the retreat, a sword blow took off part of his skull but a copy of Blackwood's Magazine stuffed in his hat absorbed much of it. Although he became famous as the only survivor, many other people were captured or reached safety separately. He later served with the Army of Retribution, in the Second Anglo-Burmese War, and at the siege of Lucknow in 1857, where he was wounded. He was made a Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1858 and died in Ross-shire in 1873.