TOPIC:

My great great grandfather, Major Walter Andrew Gale, R.E., was wounded by shellfire while sending a telegraph in Ladysmith on or about 9 November 1899.

I know nothing more about this except that I believe he may have been on General White's staff, having been posted from India where he was previously C.R.E. at Cawmpore. He later returned to India and retired from half-pay as a Brevet Colonel in 1911.

He must have had the QSA medal, but have not found his name on any of the online lists including this one. Has anyone by chance got a copy of the roll for RE officers under 'staff'?

There must be photographs of General White and his staff prior to the date of Gale's wound, and I'd love to know if anyone has seen pictures that might include him.

As a wounded soldier at Ladysmith at this date would he have been evacuated, or was this impossible until the siege was lifted?

Thanks!

Gibbins
The hefty book, "War Services of Officers of the Army, etc" has an entry for:" GALE, W.A. (Lt. Col., R.Eng.) which comments only that he had served in something called the "Rumpa Rebellion, 1879-80"). I cannot find an ABW casualty entry for Maj. W.A.Gale in the Palmer casualty roll; nor in the Natal Field Force Casualty list. However, these can occasionally be found to be incomplete. Over the weekend, I will have a trawl through some CDs I have which show Retired List officers and see what is there - unless someone else does it first.
Regards
IL.

Thanks very much!

He was wounded on 9 November 1899, and there's quite a lot of reference to it in newspapers at the time, one of which has a brief biography confirming that it is indeed him and not the other Gale RE officer in South Africa at the time - his cousin Captain Henry Richmond Gale RE.

The Illustrated London News carried accounts and sometimes photos of officers wounded at this early period in the war and perhaps he is there.

He would not appear in a retired officer list for South Arica as he did not go on half-pay until 1907, retiring fully in 1911 (though being re-employed in the First World War).

The Rumpa (or Rampa) Rebellion was a tribal uprising in southern India in 1879-81 put down by a brigade-sized field force of the Madras Army, including Gale's regiment at the time, the Madras Sappers and Miners. It was an arduous jungle campaign that went on for more than 18 months but was overshadowed by the Afghan War, and like other similar campaigns within India was not deemed appropriate for the 'Frontier Medal', as they revealingly called the Indian General Service Medal - so veterans of Rampa had nothing to show for it apart from 'Field Service' on the records and in many case a lifelong battle with a particularly debilitating form of malaria.

South Africa 1899 does not appear in Gale's RE service record but those records are sometimes surprisingly partial, especially for officers like him on prolonged India Service.

The critical thing is to discover him on the medal roll, as he certainly would have been eligible for the QSA medal if this account is correct. I will look at this the next time I'm at Kew. I'm never sure how complete or accurate the online lists from medal rolls really are and tend to think it's best to see the original if possible.

I've noticed in looking at other officer records, for instance for the 1879 Afghan War, that attached RE staff officers of somewhat uncertain role often seem to fall a bit through the net as far as records are concerned (by comparison with RE officers on regimental deployment with sapper units), though again he should at least appear in the medal roll.

Thanks again!

What an interesting problem.

Apart from the mention in The Times (11-11-1899) of his wounding from a telegram sent from Ladysmith I can't find anything to connect Gale to the ABW.

He is not in the RE's own published QSA roll, nor the list of officers in the defence of Ladysmith in the medal rolls. The CRE in Ladysmith was Major SR Rice.

The only other RE officer with the surname Gale - is the aforementioned HR Gale who earned 8 clasps on the Western Front.

Curious.

Several of the newspapers that took up the story included brief bios of him, including the Pall Mall Gazette. The Leeds Evening Post for 11 Nov 1899 has this: 'Major Walter Andrew Gale, mentioned as wounded in General White's message has been in the Corps of Royal Engineers for 24 years. He served in the Rumpa Hills Rebellion of 1879-80, and was engaged in the Military Works Department at Cawnpore when ordered to South Africa.'

To me this seems enough evidence to suggest that this isn't a case of mistaken identity, somehow. Certainly if this is accurate Gale would have been eligible for the QSA so I will trawl everything when I get the chance at Kew. There may be something more in the Corps history.

This continues to be an interesting mystery, particularly as I can't find him anywhere on the medal rolls that can be downloaded from the National Archives site. However, Colonel Sir Charles Watson, author of History of the Corps of Royal Engineers, Vol III, dealing with the South African war, states that besides RE officers commanding regimental units, and others attached to the regimental units, ' ... a large number of additional officers were sent to assist in the various duties, and, by Dec 1 1899, the total force of Royal Engineers in South Africa had been raised to 151 officers ... '

Certainly there do not seem to be anywhere near 151 officers in the RE rolls for the QSA, so these other officers must be spread around other rolls according to where they were attached, or listed as individual claimants. There must have been some who made individual claims which for one reason or another didn't make it into the rolls as we have them now.

Louis Creswicke's South Africa and the Transvaal War (1900), Vol 2, p 117, in his account of the Boer assault on Ladysmith on 9 November, states that 'Major Gale, R.E., was wounded while sending a message.'

Gale went on as a colonel to become CRE of the Quetta Division of the Indian Army in 1905 and then of the Lahore Division in 1906-7, and it seems inconceivable that a senior officer still in service who would have known he was eligible for the QSA with Defence of Ladysmith clasp would not have claimed it - so there must be a record somewhere!