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We have this photo and believe it to be Leonard Alfred Herbert (although later he went under the name of Fuller) and have been told the uniform is of the time of the Boer War. If it is our man, he was born in Kent in 1875. From the uniform we have been told he was a Staff Sergeant in the Royal Artillery. However on his attestation papers for WW1 (where he uses the surname Fuller, but notes his next of kin is his mother, Mrs Herbert and is definitely the same man ) he mentions 3 years' previous service in the Hampshire Regiment Volunteers (with a note I.of E.[?] 1901). He joined the Army Service Corps, Remount Company in 1914, as a 'rough rider' having been brought up looking after horses. Not having much military history knowledge, is it possible he could have served in both the Royal Artillery and the Hampshire Regiment Volunteers, which if the date of 1901 is correct (unsure if this means when he joined or when he left), could he still have been in the Royal Artillery during the Boer War?

Hello Amb
Welcome to the forum.
Is this Leonard Alfred Herbert.....Very good question.

Sorry for late reply, your post has been quite a challenge.
I couldn't find any information regarding Leonard serving in the Anglo Boer War. Checking Ancestry there was nothing for Royal Artillery or Royal Hampshire Volunteers.  The 2nd Battalion Hampshires were present but no matches for Herbert/ Fuller. I am no expert on uniforms but the image looks as you described NCO Royal Artillery regiment and possibly early 1900s . But searching for Herbert/ Fuller pertaining to the Boer War for RGA  RFA & RHA didnt prove fruitful for Leonard Alfred.  Can I ask why he used 2 different surnames? His WW1 service was certainly Fuller and there is no mention on his service papers regarding Artillery, his time in the Hampshire volunteers may have been milita.  He certainly served his county in the BEF and was awarded the WW1 medal trio. His time in France was 4 years and he was invalided back to England in May 1918. As a rough rider he was responsible for horses in France, number 1 base depot RASC. As for the photograph ,could it be another member of the Herbert / Fuller family? It's a shame the photograph wasn't taken from a different angle as Leonard had a mole on his left cheek.......might have helped solve the enigma.

PS. I did find a WW1 medal card to a Leonard Herbert who served in the Artillery and RASC which may be a coincidence as Fuller was definitely used for his papers pertaining to his remount role in the RASC. If you have any further information to share, it may help.

Best regards
Dave

Hi Dave and very many thanks for looking into this for me. He certainly was a slippery character. He was born in Kent but by 1891 was in service as a stable boy at Audleys House in Cliddesden, Hampshire. His parents and many siblings had moved into the village too which confirmed he was the right person. Then by 1895 he's down in Dorset working in a stables and living with the widowed, and very much older, landlady of the Hambro Arms in Milton Abbas, mother of four young children. He marries her and a daughter is born. Six years later on the 1891 he is in Kensington working as a coachman which is where he probably met my great grandfather, but the census shows he was born in Lyme Regis! My great grandfather, Frederick William Jones (another slippery character, born in Loddon district, Norfolk, but we can't find him) was also a coachman but died after an accident in 1905 leaving my gt grandmother with 4 young children. Around this point it's probable that Leonard Herbert changed his name to Fuller (coincidentally or not, Frederick Jones's Kensington employer was a Mr Fuller) but rate books, when Leonard Herbert was living with my widowed great grandmother, show his name as Leonard Jones! On the 1911 census he's Herbert Fuller shown as married but my gt grandmother is down as widowed. He had 3 children with my gt grandmother, one of whom died in infancy. Both surviving boys had Herbert as a middle name as do his grandsons. If I can I'll attach a photo of him taken while in Cliddesden but it's hard to see if he is one and the same as the man in uniform. Your PS is interesting too. I'll look for another Leonard Herbert elsewhere to see if he is a totally separate person to my man. My great grandfather Frederick Jones's children (including my grandmother) all had Butcher as a middle name. On some paperwork we have he gave his mother's name as Butcher living in Aldeby, Loddon district, but having found her family on various censuses, there is no mention of a child named Frederick or William! And so the puzzle goes on! I hope this isn't too much information but I'm guessing both these men had something to hide and didn't want their pasts catching up with them.

Photo of Leonard Herbert taken in Basingstoke, very close to Clissenden where he worked.

He left my gt grandmother at some point and we've no idea when he died. My father remembered him being pointed out in the street as Mr Fuller but not to speak to. I did find a Leonard Fuller on the 1939 in Willesden living with a Betty Fuller but no marriage. Could easily be someone else though.

Medal roll enclosed for the mentioned L Herbert. RFA has him as a driver. If your man was a proficient rider, you would have thought he would have been in the Royal Horse Artillery. Many thanks for sharing your information, and good luck with investigations...all good fun.