In 1871 Wood joined a new battalion, the 90th Light Infantry, as a junior major in command of three companies at Stirling Castle, Scotland. In January 1873 he was promoted to brevet lieutenant colonel, and at the end of that month Sir Garnet Wolseley requested him on’special service’ for the Ashanti campaign in West Africa (Ghana today).

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Wood soon had raised a regiment from the local friendly tribes. Between skirmishes he and his men helped to drive a track inland through jungle and swamp. Exhaustion and illness again laid him low, but still he carried on. On January 31, 1874, Wood was at the head of his column helping to clear track when they were attacked. An Ashanti who had been lying under cover nearby shot the head of a nail into Wood’s chest right over his heart. He was taken to a makeshift hospital and examined by the principal medical officer of the expedition, who quickly summoned Wolseley. The doctor told Wolseley to say his farewells to Wood, since he ‘never yet saw a man live with a shot in his pericardium.’

Three days later, Wood received a note lamenting his absence and the fact that his regiment would not now be present at the fall of Kumasi, the Ashanti capital. Despite protests from the doctor, Wood discharged himself from the hospital. After a delay of some five hours he and three others marched through the night — in pouring rain — until they reached the regiment at 4 a.m. the next day. Wood then took command of the lead section of the advanced guard for the action that followed.

After the successful conclusion of the campaign, during which he had been mentioned in dispatches five times, Wood returned to England and again held a succession of administrative posts.

In January 1878 Wood followed his battalion to South Africa, where there was trouble with the so-called Gaika people. The fighting finished on May 29.

Throughout November and December, preparations were being made to disarm the restive Zulus. War obviously was coming. On January 6, 1879, Evelyn Wood led No. 4 Column, consisting of the 13th and 90th Light infantries, four artillery pieces and a varying number of horsemen, across the Blood River into Zululand.

At 9 a.m. on January 11, Wood met with his commander, General Frederic Thesiger, Earl of Chelmsford, on the Nkonjane Hill, some nine miles from Rorke’s Drift. In a three-hour meeting, he warned Chelmsford that his spies had told him the first serious Zulu attack would fall on the column that Chelmsford was leading. On January 24, in the middle of an action against a small Zulu force, Wood received a note telling him of Chelmsford’s disaster at Isandhlwana. On January 22, a Zulu force had overrun the camp of No. 3 Column and left more than 1,000 officers and men of other ranks dead. Wood received a further note some days later from Lord Chelmsford, confirming the news and advising him that he now had a free hand to go anywhere in Zululand, but also warning that he could shortly expect to have the whole Zulu army on his hands. Wood replied on January 31 that he had taken up station on Khambula Hill, a site that he thought he could hold against attack.

Hearing on March 27 that a large force of Zulus was on the nearby Hlobane Mountain, Wood sent out a strong force for an attack of his own on March 28. A violent action was fought on that day on the slopes of the mountain, and in the early stages of the action two of Wood’s friends were killed and his own horse was shot dead under him. As Wood tried to have the bodies of his friends hoisted up onto baggage animals, his party came under heavy fire and most of the ponies were killed. Finally, a bugler, whom Wood described as one of the bravest men in the army, managed to get the bodies onto a pony. Wood recalled that he had a prayer book in the wallets of the saddle under his dead horse. He asked the bugler to retrieve it, though not to take any unnecessary risks in doing so, a feat that the bugler accomplished in an apparently leisurely fashion while still under fire.

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