My name is John Hendry and my grandfather Herbert Dart was a private in the Coldstream Guards enlisting on 6th November 1896, aged 19 Reg No 680, and on 9th March 1899 he set sail with his regiment for South Africa and the Boer War. After a sojourn of seven months in Gibraltar he arrived in South Africa on 28 October 1899, where he saw active service with his regiment at Belmont, the Modder River, Dreifontein, Johannesburg, Diamond Hill and Belfast, possibly sometimes as a mounted scout. Herbert Dart returned to England with the regiment on 20th July 1902, and five months later, on 16th December 1902, he was demobbed from active service and embarked on a career as a nurse.
With the outbreak of WW1 Herbert re-enlisted in the Coldstreams (knocking a year of his age in the process!) to play his part, and on 7th October 1914 went with the battalion and the British Expeditionary Force to the front in France. In one sense he was one of the lucky ones as fifty days later Herbert was "back in blighty" having received a gun shot wound to the head received in the field on 25 November 1914. As a result of this 11 months later, on 1st October 1915 he was invalided out of the Army. It is sobering to reflect that had the German rifleman who shot Herbert Dart been an inch or two more accurate, I would not be writing this today.
Of course as a small boy I never asked all the questions I would dearly love to ask him now about his time both in the Boer War and WW 1 (and his life in general for that matter!). I do remember a story of scouting expeditions where he would go out into the veldt on his horse, dismount leaving the horse loose whilst he scouted ahead on foot. When done he would give a whistle and the horse would re-appear and the pair of them would return to camp. Also vague memories of a story of meeting the young Winston Churchill. All this was treated with a fair amount of scepticism but after his death a photo was discovered of him in South Africa looking very much the part of a mounted scout, spurs and all. This photo, et alia, are availabale at
www.thehendrys.freeserve.co.uk/FHistory/madge/madge.htm#1
I guess I am interested in any background anyone can supply ref his and the Coldstreams time in South Africa plus any thoughts about the photos and the scouting story!
