TOPIC:

Who was the youngest?


Drummer H. Lloyd is a boy who has served at the front as a bugler. He carried an "Ashanti drum," which was covered with a beautifully spotted leopard skin. He is the smallest boy in the British Army, and the youngest but one, and he derives infinite pleasure from two facts - (1) he served under Lord Roberts, and (2) he was photographed, not in a group, but singly, by Lady Roberts, whose presence at the seat of conflict has had such a gentle and useful influence. This by way of preface. Now for the small boy's history at the front, and his local connection at home. On Monday night a short-statured boy - sturdily built, and with all the "side" of a general - clad in nondescript regimentals, and minus a coat, walked up to the barracks at Cardiff, and, coming in contact with a contingent leaving the depot, he, with much military grandiloquence, demanded why they should go without asking leave of him. There was a general laugh, but those who laughed reckoned without their host. That boy, taken for a street gamin, almost took away the breath of the barracks people when they knew what manner of boy he was, where he had been, and what he had gone through; in fact, he was a hero, and his history known, he took the barracks by storm. The oldest veterans there said they had never seen such a boy before in all their born days. They had come across precocious boys aping unnaturally the ways of men, but never with one so young with the dignified bearing of a Kitchener, who could march up to va Grenadier and catechise him as to where he had fought, &c. A Liliputian, who knows every inch of country from Cape Town to Bloemfontein, who can talk of "old times," and in the mess smokes his clay and drinks his point with the best of 'em - this was the prodigy entertained and petted, and here is his authentic history. Drummer Lloyd was a bugler in the King's Shropshire Light Infantry. Arriving from South Africa on furlough at his home in the depot in Shrewsbury, he was sent to his parents, who reside at Woolwich, where his father is one of the senior clerks in the arsenal, and himself an old soldier. The lad has come home invalided, having been shot in the foot in taking up ammunition to the soldiers, and his object was to obtain an extension of furlough, which, after medical examination, was readily granted. The boy was present at the engagements at Paardeberg and Driefontein, and he was wounded in the skirmish at the waterworks near Bloemfontein. The centre of interest at the barracks, he was photographed by Sergeant Dan Leary (raconteur, conjuror, billiard player, &c.), his companion in the portrait, being the tallest man in the depot, who also was wounded in the South African campaign. The drummer boy left Cardiff for Woolwich on Thursday morning.


Who was this man?


Evening Express, Saturday 11th August 1900

Berenice,

You do find the most interesting information!

djb wrote: Berenice,

You do find the most interesting information!

I'm glad to hear that they're sometimes interesting!

BereniceUK wrote:

djb wrote: Berenice,

You do find the most interesting information!

I'm glad to hear that they're sometimes interesting!

They are always fantastically interesting.......

Mike