From the next City Coins auction, November 2020.
ABO (Burger J. J. H. Geeringh);
1914-15 Star (Pte. J.J.H. Geeringh 4th F. Amb. S.A.M.C.);
BWM & AVM (Bil) (A/Sgt J.J.H. Geeringh 1st S.A.R.)
John James Humphries Geeringh was born in Robertson in the Cape Colony in 1875. Although of German descent, he joined the Hollander Corps in October 1899 to fight on the Boer side.
After the Battle of Elandslaagte the Hollander Corps was disbanded. Geeringh’s subsequent movements are not known, but he was one of the captured survivors of De Villebois Mareuil’s “Foreign Legion”.
He was sent to St Helena (PoW No. 3813) where he was one of a group of volunteer PoW’s who did duty under Dr R L Roe as male nurses tending fellow PoW’s.
In 1915 Geeringh joined the SA Medical Corps and served in German South West Africa with the 4th Field Ambulance. In February 1916 he attested in the 1st SA Rifles and later also served in the Nyasaland Section of the SA Postal Corps.
He was discharged due to malaria in December 1917 and died in 1918, probably during the “Flu Epidemic”. His WWI Trio (1920 & 1922) and ABO (1928) were posthumously claimed by his brother on behalf of his mother.
