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Auction: 12002 - Orders, Decorations, Campaign Medals & Militaria
Lot: 286

Queen´s South Africa 1899-1902, five clasps, Tugela Heights, Relief of Ladysmith, Transvaal, Laing´s Nek, South Africa 1901 (728 Pte. A.P. Donaldson. Impl: Lt. Infy), good very fine Estimate £ 140-180 728 Private Andrew Paton Donaldson (published transcription of Casualty Roll erroneously gives initials as ´A.J.´), was a British subject who enlisted in the Imperial Light Infantry,15.11.1899, and was taken prisoner of war at Spion Kop, 24.1.1900; he was subsequently released 6.6.1900; The Imperial Light Infantry saw comparatively little training and no fighting until they were thrown into the awful combat on Spion Kop... about 1,000 strong... paraded at 10pm on 23rd January, and, as ordered, they took up positions from which they could reinforce General Woodgate, who commanded the force detailed to capture the hill. Sir C. Warren visited the regiment early on the morning of the 24th, and asked the officers if they had seen anything of a mountain battery which he was expecting. They had not. He requested that 2 companies be sent forward to a specified point to be ready to escort the battery to the summit... The companies of Captains Champney and Smith moved out at 6am and waited as ordered for the battery, but about 9am a staff-officer told them to reinforce immediately on the summit. The 2 companies advanced and reached the top shortly after 10am. At this hour the enemy´s fire was appalling, the hail of bullets and shells being ceaseless, but these untried volunteers are said to have pushed up to the shallow trench and the firing-line beyond it without flinching. They at once commenced to suffer very severe losses... Throughout the afternoon and evening the firing was unceasing, and often at very close quarters; after dark it had died away... The regiment having been collected, fell in and marched off. They had barely gone 200 yards, however, when an officer said to Colonel Nash, "Where are you going?" The latter replied that he had been ordered to take down the regiment. The other field officer then said, "I am Colonel Hill of the Middlesex; not a man or regiment is to leave the hill." The officers of the Imperial Light Infantry then said to their men that a mistake had been made, and the column "about turned", marched back to the place they had come from, put out pickets, and lay down among the dead and the wounded. The worst feature of this very trying experience was the ceaseless crying of the wounded for water: there was none on the hill. During the night a staff-officer informed Colonel Nash that he had better bring down his men before dawn... Between 3am and 4am the regiment was again collected and finally left the hill.´ (The Colonials in South Africa 1899-1902, J. Stirling, refers); during this action the regiment suffered 2 officers killed, 29 non-commissioned officers and men killed; 3 officers and 110 non-commissioned officers and men wounded; and 19 men missing in action.

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£290