Beschreibung:

We advanced steadily across the open, fifteen paces between men and about forty yards between companies. We were soon under heavy rifle fire. The row was deafening but in that extended order hardly anyone was hit. I was on the right with P and Left-flank companies. We went on under a heavy fire over a donga to some cover behind rocks. Here the companies got rather mixed up having inclined away to the left. We went through the Leinsters and I found myself with a few of the Left-flank and L companies and some Leinsters under the shelter of a wall, with a huge rock on our right, which was being plastered with bullets. Some one ahead of the Wiltshire Regiment (of Clements’ column), I think, shouted “For goodness' sake come on,” so I jumped over the wall and called out “Come on, any Scots Guards.” Sergeant Brown and Corporal Calder of the Left-flank Company and Alston and Hanbury followed and we made for a kraal about 200 yards to our left front, and, my eye, they did let us have it. A man in the Leinsters was hit just behind me, Alston was shot close beside me. We had to roll under a beastly barbed wire fence of which they had the range exactly. We reached the kraal at last and found there the Colonel of the Wilts and some of his officers and men. The Colonel was wounded in the arm and one of his sergeants. We could not get a yard farther, nor could any of the companies. The poor Colonel was again hit, this time in the jaw, while looking round the corner to see where they were shooting from. Another poor fellow in the Wilts also exposed himself and was shot through the chest and died in a few minutes. So in our small body we had one man killed, the Colonel twice wounded, Alston and two of our men wounded. Just before dark P company under Billy Lascelles got up a kopje in front of their position and occupied it. In fact the old battalion did I think more than their share of the work. If the battle had been fought as in the beginning of the war the casualties would probably have been 300 instead of 30 or 40’ Colonel Harbord describes a hot encounter at Slaap Kranz on 27 July 1900, one of several of first hand accounts published in the regimental history of the Scots Guards. A fine Boer War C.B., Groom-in-Waiting’s M.V.O. group of seven awarded to Colonel Hon. C. Harbord, Scots Guards, afterwards the 6th Baron Suffield, who was appointed to the command of the 1st Battalion in July 1901, after seeing much action as 2nd-in-Command of the 2nd Battalion: ‘He was beloved by all ranks, and the men would have followed him anywhere. Surely he was the truest and most loyal friend a man could have; absolutely without guile or affectation, and gifted with a keen sense of humour’ The Most Honourable Order of the Bath, C.B. (Military) Companion’s breast badge, silver-gilt and enamel, complete with swivel-ring suspension and riband buckle, the intervening suspension ring a replacement; The Royal Victorian Order, M.V.O., Member’s 4th Class breast badge, silver-gilt and enamel, the reverse officially numbered ‘104’; Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, 3 clasps, Cape Colony, Transvaal, Wittebergen (Lt. Col. Hon. C. Harbord, C.B., Scots Gds.); King’s South Africa 1901-02, 2 clasps, South Africa 1901, South Africa 1902 (Lt. Col. The Hon. C. Harbord, C.B., Scots Gds.); Jubilee 1897, silver; Delhi Durbar 1903; Coronation 1911, the first with loose reverse centre-piece and chipped enamel wreaths, the second with abrasions to white enamel arms, otherwise very fine and better (7) £2500-3000 Footnote C.B. London Gazette 23 November 1900. M.V.O. London Gazette 9 November 1902. Charles Harbord was born in June 1855, the eldest son of Charles, 5th Baron Suffield, who ‘was in his day a well known social figure, who served the Royal Family in various affairs with loyal devotion and especially King Edward, to whom he was attached by ties of intimate friendship’; his mother, the youngest daughter of Henry Baring of Cromer Hall, Norfolk, was Lady of the Bedchambers to