TOPIC:

This is nice to see with the Colonial LSGC and MSM......

I still cannot find any for the Canadian Colonial versions, that is enough to do a mounting so have had to use another that is practically the same......

Mike

Good Morning Again Everyone......

I thought that I had posted this here earlier but I guess not......

Mike





LaFLAMME J, (JOSEPH)

REG. NO.: 436
RANK: CORPORAL SHOEING SMITH
REGT: ROYAL CANADIAN FIELD ARTILLERY, "E" BATTERY
BARS: CAPE COLONY ORANGE FREE STATETRANSVAAL

REMARKS / HISTORY:

1. CORONATION MEDAL 1902, (On medal roll as Corporal)
2. CORONATION MEDAL 1911 (Named in engraved style) (Not on roll.)
2a. DELHI DURBAR (Engraved naming to LaFlamme, a Walt medal?)
3. COLONIAL LONG SERVICE AND GOOD CONDUCT, CANADA REVERSE, EDWARD VII ISSUE, MEDALS ISSUED 37.
4. COLONIAL MERITORIOUS SERVICE MEDAL, CANADA REVERSE, EDWARD VII ISSUE, MEDALS ISSUED 100

BOER WAR

Enlisted at: QUEBEC CITY, QUEBEC
On: DECEMBER 23RD, 1899
Age: 31 YEARS (DOB February 20th, 1869)
Birthplace: LEVIS, QUEBEC
Former corps: "B" BATTERY, ROYAL CANADIAN field ARTILLERY
Trade or calling: SOLDIER
RELIGION: ROMAN CATHOLIC
NOK: MRS. A. LAFLAMME
ADDRESS NOK: QUEBEC CITY, QUEBEC
MARRIED OR SINGLE: MARRIED
NUMBER OF CHILDREN AND AGES: ONE
DATE OF DISCHARGE: JANUARY 9TH, 1901

WORLD WAR ONE - Royal Canadian School of Artillery (Part One)

REGIMENTAL NUMBER: 1924
PREVIOUS SERVICE: Permanent Force
ENLISTED AT: Kingston, Ontario
ENLISTED DATE: permanent force
TRADE OR CALLING: SOLDIER
NOK - Wife, A. LaFlamme, 78 North Street, Kingston, Ontario
MARITAL STATUS: Married
MEDICAL REVIEW: January 30th, 1917, Unfit for overseas duty
DISCHARGED: February 1st, 1917

WORLD WAR ONE - Royal Canadian School of Artillery (Part Two)

REGIMENTAL NUMBER: 1924 (Note same s.n.)
RE-ENLISTED AT: Kingston, Ontario
ENLISTED DATE: June 22nd 1918
TRADE OR CALLING: Painter
NOK - Wife, A. LaFlamme, 78 North Street, Kingston, Ontario
MARITAL STATUS: Married
DISCHARGED: August 26th, 1919, On Demobilization, Medically Unfit for further General Service. Overage.

　
Hello Mike,

I have turned up a bit of info in response to your question. I believe that there were 140 Canada reverse LSGCs awarded, and have recorded the survival of seven of these. Of the seven, six are paired with Canada reverse MSMs. Of note, there appear to have been 49 of these pairs awarded, suggesting a survival rate of at least 12% so far.

Laflamme's group is the only one I have recorded surviving which has an Edward VII reverse MSM. (Note: There has been one more Edward 7th pair found).

QSA with a North Borneo Company Medal


Picture courtesy of DNW

DSO VR., silver-gilt and enamels; OBE (Military) Officer’s 1st type breast badge, silver-gilt, hallmarks for London 1919; QSA (4) CC, OFS, Tr, SA01(Capt. R. V. K. Applin, Lanc. Fus.); BWM and VM (MID) (Lt. Col. R. V. K. Applin); British North Borneo Company Medal (1) Punitive Expedition (R. V. K. Applin, Supt. N.B.C.).

D.S.O. London Gazette 31 October 1902: ‘In recognition of services during the operations in South Africa.’
O.B.E. London Gazette 12 December 1919.

Reginald Vincent Kempenfelt Applin was born at Alphington, Devon on 11 April 1869, the eldest son of Captain V. J. Applin, a veteran of the Crimean and China Wars. He was educated at Newton College and Sherborne.

Clearly well-connected, young Reginald’s early ambitions to take to the stage got off to a promising start:

‘The Baroness Burdett-Coutts gave me an introduction to Henry Irving, and I wanted to walk-on at the Lyceum. He turned me over to Bram Stoker, his manager, and while waiting for a vacancy, I had the good fortune to see Irving and Ellen Terry in all their famous impersonations, for Bram Stoker never refused me a seat, however crowded the theatre.’

In fact, he passed his interview and was sent by Irving to tour the provinces as Cassio in Othello, Gratiano in The Merchant of Venice and Trinculo in The Tempest. His father, however, was anxious that his son ‘should do something better than mime the footlights’ and a family friend, a colonial administrator, suggested that he apply to the British North Borneo Company. And so, on his 21st birthday, he found himself ‘busy getting my outfit for the tropics and buying rifles and a 44 Colt revolver’. He was duly embarked in the P. & O. steamer Oceana.

North Borneo

Applin commenced his career as a Cadet in December 1889:

’I now found myself established in a small community of Britons cut off from civilisation by a thousand miles of sea, and with the task of opening up a new and unexposed country of tropical forests, savage tribes and wild animals, thus adding one more territory to the British Empire … My three months’ probation at Sandakan soon passed, and I was appointed to Kudat on the West Coast.’

He subsequently gained appointment as a Police Magistrate and J.P. for Crown Colony, Labuan, 1894 and District Officer, Interior, 1897. He served through the Syed and Mat Salleh rebellions of 1895-97 as a Captain Superintendent (Medal & clasp; one of about 12 awarded), and twice received the thanks of the Company’s Board of Directors for services against the Tumnunam tribes.

His autobiography is largely devoted to his time in North Borneo and contains a fascinating array of stories, one of which recounts an early outing with a Corporal and four Sikhs, charged with tracking down a pair of murderers. Much of the journey was undertaken by canoe. The operation was a success and, having handed over his two prisoners, he ‘gave a bottle of brandy to the gallant Sikhs, who had remained alert and cheerful all though that long night’. For his own part, Applin’s feet were so badly blistered that he couldn’t walk for two days.

Not long afterwards, he participated in a larger operation to apprehend some Chinese criminals - ‘I had twelve men and Sergeant-Major Unjou, a splendid fighting Dyak, under me.’ On entering the criminals’ abode, ‘the men in the room burst out with yells; but facing my Colt revolver, which I must admit nearly went off, for I was bit nervous, they subsided, greatly to my relief.’

He was next back in action on account of trouble in the Mumus country, on which occasion he took a force of 25 Sikhs and 70 Dyaks, under Captain Barnett, in the gunboat Petrel, their intended mission to capture the rebel tribesmen’s fort. As he later recounted, he ‘fired a few shots from the 3-pounder in the Petrel’s bows’, while Barnett and his men stormed the fort. The latter was badly wounded, his helmet ‘being smashed to pulp’ by a rock dropped from the ramparts.

Applin took a year’s leave at the end of 1895 but quickly faced further challenges on his return to North Borneo. He was asked to replace an officer who had been overseeing the laying of a vital telegraph cable at Penungah, a station at the head waters of the Kinabatangan River on the East Coast, another lengthy journey, much of it by canoe: ‘After a strenuous and trying twenty-four days, we reached Penungah at 10 a.m. on the morning of St. Valentine’s Day. I did the last thirteen rapids from Tamoi in three days and five hours, a record, for it usually takes five days at least.’ Then ensued the cable laying, and for ‘ten days we struggled over mountains so steep that loads had to be dragged up, and the men could not keep their feet; through rivers often up to their armpits, and ever the dark forest shut us in on every side.’ Journey’s end brought him to a a friendly chief’s long-house, where he was ‘disconcerted to see some twenty human heads hung from the rafters.’

Attack on a rebel’s long-house - ‘horrid trophies of heads and even arms and legs’

Of ongoing operations in the rebellions of 1895-97, Applin gives a good account of an attack on a rebel’s long-house at Mahrang, in Tumbunan country, in May 1896:

‘I led the attack with the regular police and riflemen, while Barraut followed at the head of four hundred native warriors who kept making rushes to the front and throwing my men into confusion. I was with the advanced party and closely followed our guides, who, when we reached a fairly big river, pointed out Mahrang perched high up on a steep mountain side, much scattered and rather inaccessible.

We turned up the river and presently struck straight up a very steep hill through thick jungle. Suddenly we came upon a long-house in a clearing - fortified by a palisade. I at once formed up and opened fire, and three very irregular volleys caused some forty men to leave the fort in two directions. Sending my Dyaks in pursuit and leaving Barraut's swordsmen to rush and burn the place, I pushed on through long grass and brushwood to the top of a steep and high hill, and came upon three more long-houses about four hundred yards away from which men were firing at us, so I reformed and fired volleys, during which a mass of spearmen rushed in and soon the houses were taken and burning. The Sikhs were very steady but three or four Pathans were very excited and after I had ordered cease fire and moved in front, I had my head nearly blown off by a Pathan who let off his rifle just past my ear!

From my position on the open hill-top I could see the lower Mahrang villages which Chief Sinite was attacking. I could see men running and firing at Sinite's party. I had my new .303 rifle and, partly to drown the dreadful shrieks and cries from the village behind me, where I knew spear and parang were doing their bloody work, I put up my sights to 1,200 and opened fire - emptying my magazine of five cartridges. I could see with my glasses that this had astonished them, for they were running away and looking back at the hill.

Flames now rose from the houses on every side, and Barraut appeared and said all was over and both villages fired. War gongs and drums were beating on all the hills around and the whole Tumbanan country would soon be alarmed, so Barraut gave the prearranged signal for retiring - a rocket from the hill.

As the warriors assembled in their groups and moved off at the run for the river, I formed up the rear-guard and we moved off at a less precipitate pace. I will not describe the victorious march home or the horrid trophies of heads and even arms and legs, that were borne in triumph by the native warriors, to be met by dancing girls and howling women at each village. On reaching Rumpun we released our prisoners, sending by them a message to the Mahrang chiefs to come into Kiningow within a month and we would make peace.

On June 5th, exactly a month later, the Mahrang chiefs came to Kiningow and swore allegiance to the Government, killing a bull and planting a white stone on which its blood had been sprinkled.

They told me that my shots from the hill had killed one man and slightly wounded two others, and they were greatly astonished because they neither heard the shots nor saw any smoke and could not believe any gun to carry so far.’

In early 1898, Applin returned home - ‘I had been promised an appointment at the Imperial Institute and was anxious to get away, as I was suffering much from fever.’

Boer War - D.S.O.

In November 1898, he obtained a commission as a Captain in the 6th (Militia) Battalion, Lancashire Fusiliers, and it was in the same capacity that he embarked for South Africa on the outbreak of the Boer War. He subsequently served as District Commissioner at Bloemfontein from 1 June 1900, and Staff Officer and Acting Provost Marshal, Orange River, in October and November 1900, and was otherwise employed in operations in Cape Colony, Transvaal and the Orange River Colony, including the action fought at Luckhoff in December 1900 (Medal & 4 clasps). Applin described his part in the action thus:

‘Nearly an hour passed, when a galloper from the General ordered the Lancashire Fusiliers to advance and hold the enemy in front, while the mounted troops turned the left flank. As we advanced to the ridge, bullets began to kick up the dust all round, and it was curious to see how men ducked when bullets hummed past like angry bees. The men were splendidly steady and at the first ridge we lay down, but could not return the fire as a second ridge lay a hundred yards ahead. MacMunn's howitzers were lobbing shells over our heads with wonderful accuracy, and a great column of yellow smoke rose as each shell burst with a tremendous concussion.

The man on my right suddenly crumpled up with a gasping cough, and I signalled behind for my stretcher, the arrival of which caused a smacking of bullets all round me; I hastily rolled over and crawled behind a big rock. After about an hour, heavy firing broke out on the left flank, and I could see mounted men racing along under the double line of kopjes; the turning movement had evidently failed. Drake's guns now barked away on the left and covered the retirement of the Mounted Brigade. All this took a long time and we had been firing away steadily for nearly three hours, when I received an order that the regiment was to carry the position by assault; and that the left wing under my command was to open magazine fire on two shells being fired in rapid succession from the howitzers; then, when the supports which Colonel Romer had moved up behind us reached the line, to fix bayonets and charge the Boer position.

I gave the old Lee-Metford command "Magazine Fire, Ready!" Then came the two shells -crash-crash- and the roar of rapid fire. Presently from the right, that most heartening of sounds, British cheering, and I realised that Owen-Lewis was leading the right-half battalion in their first charge. I blew my whistle and yelled the order to cease fire and fix bayonets. Then I scrambled up, and found myself running down the rock-strewn kopje as I had never run in my life before, with two hundred howling Bury Militiamen behind me, expecting every moment to be shot in the back or stabbed in a more tender part by a bayonet! As we reached the top, still reeking with lyddite fumes, we saw, far below, Boers mounting in haste - Boers racing away in clouds of dust-loose horses and running men, amongst which a shell from MacMunn's howitzers-now firing at extreme range-would burst like a small volcano. All along the ridge, on both sides of me, stretched the line of cheering khaki figures, but not for long as, completely exhausted, they dropped down and crawled to rocks for shelter from the scorching sun now beating down like a furnace. Now the mounted troops were in full pursuit and orders came to move independently on Beddy's Farm some five miles distant on the plain below.’

Applin, who ended the war with command of a Mounted Infantry unit, was awarded the D.S.O. and twice mentioned in despatches (London Gazettes 10 September 1901 and 29 July 1902, refer).

Machine-Gun Expert - the Great War

Remaining in South Africa, it was at Bloemfontein in 1904 that Applin first gained extensive knowledge of machine-guns and their effective use, an interest briefly diverted by his appointment to the 15th Hussars as a Captain in July 1905, when he was detached to the General Staff and appointed Deputy Assistant Adjutant General for Musketry in Malta.

Rejoining his regiment in late 1906, he gained advancement to Major in June 1911, and it was in this period that he published Machine Gun Tactics. The first book ever to deal exhaustively with this subject - published by Hugh Rees in 1909 - it went through many subsequent printings as machine-guns came to dominate the battlefield, until Applin’s writings were eventually subsumed almost word for word into British army doctrine by 1917. It is somewhat ironic that this work was originally largely ignored by the War Office for being ‘ten years ahead of its time’, the bulk of the 1st edition being sold to the American War Department.

During the Great War, Applin served as Commandant of the School of Musketry in India prior to being appointed an Instructor at the Machine Gun Corps Training Centre at Grantham. On his promotion to Lieutenant-Colonel, he was ordered to France to take command of the machine-guns of II ANZAC Corps, in which capacity he lent valuable service in the battles of Messines and Passchendaele, and the Third Battle of Ypres. With the entry of the United States into the war, he headed the British Machine-Gun Mission to America and received the thanks of the Secretary of State for War, U.S.A., in 1918.

He was twice mentioned in despatches (London Gazettes 11 December 1917 and 12 December 1919 refer), in addition to being awarded the O.B.E. in 1919, but not before an ‘exchange of fire’ with the War Office a few days before the end of the war, when he listed his extensive experience and recent services versus more junior officers:

‘I have already commanded a Service M.G. Battalion from October 1916 to January 1917; I have already completed a month’s probation with an M.G. unit in the front line at Arras in February 1917 and was duly reported fit to hold the post of Corps M.G.O.; that I directed the operations of these units in five battles to the complete satisfaction of both my Corps and Army senior officers and was ‘mentioned’; that I am one of the most senior officers in the Corps, if not one of the most experienced officers in machine gunnery in the Army ... That the officer who was selected by the War Office as head of the British Gun Mission to the U.S.A. should, on his return, be sent as a ‘Probationer’ to a unit in the Field, conditional to the rank he held for two years of war, cannot be explained in any satisfactory manner ... ’

Politician

Post-war, Applin was given the Brevet of Lieutenant-Colonel and commanded the 14th King’s Hussars, prior to being placed on the Retired List in January 1921. He then entered politics and, after two failed attempts to gain a seat in parliament, was elected the Conservative M.P. for Enfield in September 1924. Ousted by the Labour candidate in the General Election of 1929, Applin retook the seat in October 1931, on the formation of a National Government. He retired in 1935, in which year he emigrated to South Africa, and he died at Howick, Natal in April 1957, aged 87.

Group to Robert Bodley, Olympian and Army Best shot


Picture courtesy of DNW

QSA (6) CC, Paard, Drie, Joh, DH, Belf (33 Tpr. R. Bodley, C. in C. Bdygd.)
British War and Bilingual Victory Medals (Capt. R. Bodley)
South Africa Medal for War Service 1939-45
Coronation 1911
Coronation 1937
Coronation 1953
Colonial Auxiliary Forces Long Service, G.V.R. (Capt. (Hon. Mjr.) R. Bodley, 5th M.R. (I.L.H.))
Colonial Auxiliary Forces Decoration, G.V.R., the reverse officially inscribed, ‘Capt. (Hon. Maj.) R. Bodley, 5th M.R. (I.L.H.)’
Efficiency Decoration, G.VI.R., Union of South Africa, the reverse officially inscribed, ‘Col. R. Bodley, Ret. List’
Army Best Shot Medal, G.V.R., clasp, ‘1925’ (Capt. R. Bodley, 5th M. Rif. (I.L.H.))
Sweden, Stockholm Olympics Medal 1912, silver.

Robert Bodley was born in July 1878 and, as a young man, left his hometown East London for what was then the ‘hinterland’ and settled on the Rand. On the outbreak of the Boer War, he joined the Imperial Forces and was appointed to Lord Roberts’s bodyguard, one of 50 such men drawn from Colonial regiments. Following extensive service in the conflict he returned to East Rand, settling at Germiston.

In 1906, he was commissioned in the 5th Mounted Rifles (Imperial Light Horse), in which corps he quickly gained a reputation as a marksman, so much so that he was selected to join the South African shooting team for the Stockholm Olympics in 1912.

Having transferred to the Defence Rifle Association shortly before the outbreak of hostilities in 1914, Bodley was appointed a Captain in the 8th South African Horse and served in the German East Africa campaign from May 1916, a component of the 2nd South African Mounted Brigade under Brigadier-General Enslin; having also served on attachment to the 7th South African Horse in the interim, he was released from active service in May 1917.

Back with the 5th Mounted Rifles, Bodley continued to shine as a marksman and was selected for the South African shooting team at the Antwerp Olympics in 1920. He was awarded a Silver Medal for the team’s second place in the 600 metre military rifle competition, to which distinction he added the King’s Army Best Shot Medal in 1925. In between these happy events, he lent valuable service during the miners’ rebellion of 1922, being present at the ‘battle of Ellis Park’.

Having been awarded the Colonial Auxiliary Forces Long Service Medal and Officer’s Decoration in the interim, Bodley was awarded the Efficiency Decoration in November 1943, by which time he was back in uniform as a Colonel in charge of training future South African marksmen. The Colonel, a verified recipient of the Coronation Medal 1953, died at Port Shepstone, South Africa in November 1956.

US Navy DSM in a group to Admiral A E A Grant RN


Picture courtesy of DNW

Egypt and Sudan 1882-89, dated reverse, (0) (Sub. Lieut. A. E. A. Grant, H.M.S. Achilles)
QSA (0) (Commr. A. E. A. Grant, R.N., H.M.S. Racoon)
BWM 1914-20 (R. Adml. A. E. A. Grant)
Coronation 1911
United States of America, Navy Distinguished Service Medal, gilt and enamel
Khedive’s Star 1882

Alfred Ernest Albert Grant was born in April 1861, the son of John Glasgow Grant, C.M.G. Entering Britannia as a Cadet in August 1874, he first went to sea as a Midshipman in H.M.S. Hercules, the flagship in the Mediterranean of the Hon. Sir James Drummond.

Having then been advanced to Sub. Lieutenant in October 1880, he served in the Achilles during the Egyptian War of 1882, when he was landed with the Naval Brigade and took part in the defence of Alexandria after the bombardment by the Fleet (Medal; Khedive’s Star).

Next appointed to the gunboat Bulldog on the North American Station, he returned home to Excellent in September 1885 to qualify as Lieutenant in gunnery - as it happened the same year that King George V, as a Sub. Lieutenant, attended the same establishment. For his own part, Grant passed out with top marks and quickly found employment in the battleship Temeraire, under Captain E. C. Drummond, a nephew of Admiral Drummond, in whose flagship he had served as a Midshipman.

Back ashore by 1892, Grant was employed at the Sheerness depot, gaining advancement to Commander in June 1896, following which he was employed on the staff of the Naval Ordnance Department at the Admiralty for three years. Then in January 1900, he received his first independent command, the light cruiser Racoon, in which capacity he served with the squadron blockading Delagoa Bay during the Boer War (Queen’s Medal).

In 1901-04 he commanded the light cruiser Pyramus in the Mediterranean, and in 1905-08, after being promoted to Captain, he was in command of the cruiser Forte, at the Cape, and the Barfleur, at Portsmouth. He was then appointed to the command of the Gunnery School at Chatham but returned to sea with command of the battleship Lord Nelson in the Home Fleet in 1910-11. In June of the latter year the Lord Nelson was the flagship at the Coronation Review of Admiral Sir Arthur Moore, the C.-in-C. Portsmouth, and Grant was awarded the Coronation Medal.

From 1913, when promoted to flag rank, he was A.D.C. to the King, his subsequent career in the Great War being summarised in his Times obituary in the following terms:

‘At the outbreak of hostilities he was the Superintendent of Pembroke Dockyard and served there until September 1915. It was then beginning to be realised that the threat to our seaborne trade by the U-Boats might prove serious, and mercantile construction, which had been suspended in 1914 in favour of warship output, was resumed. Admiral Grant was appointed President of the Admiralty organisation for expediting the building of merchant vessels, and rendered timely and valuable service in this capacity. In 1916-17 he also served as President of the Admiralty Motor Transport Committee, and from 1917 to 1919 was Admiral Superintendent of contract-built ships in the yards on the north-east and north-west coasts of England, with headquarters at Newcastle.’

He was awarded the American Navy D.S.M., ‘for exceptionally meritorious and distinguished services in a position of great responsibility to the Government of the United States.’

Advanced to Vice-Admiral in 1919 and to Admiral in 1924, Grant died in London in August 1933

David
Interesting to see that (then) Tpr. Bodley of CinC BG earned a slightly different clasp combination on his QSA than "5 Tpr. L.Bramley C.in C. BDYGD" currently in my custody. Bramley's has RofK rather than Cape Colony.
WO 127/6 shows Tpr. Bodley as joining the BG 1.2.00 and apparently being struck off charge 5.12.00 ( notation s/c ??).
In addition, WO 100/243 shows Tpr. Bodley as serving as a Conductor with No.5 Coy., ASC and the Civilian Remount Department at East London.
Info added just in case one of the membership steps up to the table for Bodley's really great long group!
Best regards
IL.