In this ferocious episode, a man born in the tiny village of Portglenone was to win the town's second VC.

India had been a jewel fought over by a number of European powers but by the 19th century it was a Victorian possession ruled by a combination of local potentates under the control of a vast army of British civil servants and policed by the tried and trusted sepoys of the locally recruited Indian army.

However, some Indians came to believe that the British intended to convert them either by force or by deception (e.g. causing them to lose caste) to Christianity.

Indians were also unhappy with the heavy-handed rule of the Company which had embarked on a project of rather rapid expansion and westernisation.

The mutiny itself was, literally, triggered by a gun. Sepoys throughout India were issued with a new rifle - a more powerful and accurate weapon than the old smoothbore 'brown bess' they had been using for the last several decades.

To load the new Enfield, just like the previous muskets they were issued with, soldiers had to bite the cartridge open and pour the gunpowder it contained into the rifle's muzzle, then stuff the cartridge case, which was typically paper coated with some kind of grease to make it waterproof, into the musket as wadding, before loading it with a ball.

A rumour spread that the cartridges that were standard issue with this rifle were greased with lard (pork fat) or tallow (beef fat) - this was offensive to Hindu and Muslim soldiers alike, who were forbidden by their religions to eat beef or pork respectively.

It was the spark which lit the mutiny which became infamous for atrocities on both sides.

Sergeant Bernard Diamond

Bernard Diamond was another Irishman who found himself in a regiment whose traditions lay far away from his home village of Portglenone on the banks of the Bann.

As a sergeant in the Bengal Horse Artillery, whose role would have been in support of the much more famous Bengal Lancers, he was a skilled man serving with a battery of artillery.

On September 28, 1857, his unit was involved in an attack on the town of Bolndshahr, which had been captured by Indian 'rebels'.

The British came under very heavy counter-battery fire and all their guns, with the exception of Diamond's were knocked out.

Nevertheless, both Diamond and Gunner Richard Fitzgerald from Cork, continued to keep up a steady fire on the enemy. Both men were subsequently awarded the Victoria Cross.

After his military service, Diamond emigrated to New Zealand. His co-winner, Fitzgerald, disappeared from war office records after 1886 and he is believed to have died in India about this time.

Sergeant Diamond, who was 30 at the time of his award, died on January 24, 1892 in Masterson, New Zealand.

His VC citation (in conjunction with Fitzgerald's) states:-

"For their act of valour performed in action against the rebels and mutineers at Bolandshahr, on September 28, 1857, when these two soldiers evinced the most determined bravery in working their gun under a very heavy fire of musketry, whereby they cleared the road of the enemy, after every other man belonging to it (their unit) had either been killed or disabled by wounds."