Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, 1 clasp, Cape Colony (Pte. W. H. Wakelin. Border Horse) minor edge bruising, good very fine and a scarce casualty £300-400

Provenance: Peter Maunder Collection, Spink, April 2012.

W. H. Wakelin served with the Border Horse in South Africa during the Boer War, and was killed in action at Labuschagne’s Nek on 5 March 1900 (the latest published transcription of casualty roll erroneously gives the date ´5.2.1900´).

The Border Horse was formed under Colonel Crewe in February 1900, and ‘when General Brabant was driving the Boers from about Dordrecht, 200 of the corps joined Major Maxwell at Labuschagne’s Nek on 5th March. On the 4th Maxwell’s Colonials had established themselves on a mountain 1500 feet high on the east of the Nek, but the troops in front of the position had been held up, and indeed withdrawn. The Times History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902, vol.iii, mentions that the two squadrons of the Border Horse, when they arrived on the 5th, “proceeded to storm the Boer schanzes. By noon the whole Boer force was in full retreat towards Aliwal North,” to which place Brabant and Maxwell followed. On the 5th the Border Horse lost 2 killed and several wounded.’ (The Colonials in South Africa 1899-1902, J. Stirling, refers); thus making Wakelin one of the first two members of the regiment to be killed in action.