Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Pair: Private A. McGeorge, Royal Highlanders

Egypt and Sudan 1882-89, dated reverse, 5 clasps, Tel-El-Kebir, Suakin 1884, El-Teb_Tamaai, The Nile 1884-85, Kirbekan (701 Pte. A. Mc.George. 1/R.Hrs.); Khedive’s Star, dated 1882, unnamed as issued, replacement ring suspension to Star, light contact marks, very fine (2) £700-£900

Andrew McGeorge attested for the British Army on 26 October 1881 and saw considerable action in Egypt and the Sudan with the 1st Battalion, Royal Highlanders. Serving as part of the Highland Brigade, he was present at the night attack on Tel El Kebir when the Highlanders advanced, bayonets fixed, and carried a series of trenches and redoubts with the sounds of the pipes spurring them on. Further engagements followed including the Battles of El Teb and Tamai, contemporary accounts describing ‘fresh bodies of the enemy pouring out of a ravine and swarming down to the troops who met them with a steady fire’. Resisting waves of Mahdi warriors, the Highlanders suffered 90 casualties, with Private Thomas Edwards of the 1st Battalion winning the V.C. on 13 March 1884 for displaying conspicuous bravery in defence of a gun of the Naval Brigade; he received a spear wound in the process.

Returned briefly to Suakim, McGeorge was next engaged in the expedition of January 1885 to Berber, commencing with a boat journey along the Nile and then a long advance across hostile terrain towards enemy entrenchments near the Shu Kuk Pass - a ring of razor backed hills commanding a fortified gorge with an entrance blocked by loopholed walls. The passage proved fraught with danger and it took the Highlanders four days to work their way through just one whitewater rapid, seven miles long, labouring from dawn to dusk and losing one man drowned and two whaleboats in the process. Advancing over rocks and broken ground the men succeeded in defeating the enemy at the point of the bayonet at Kirbekan, but nature played its part in the return journey and more lives were lost to drowning and accidents. Likely exhausted from the experience, McGeorge took his discharge from the Royal Highlanders on 13 September 1886.

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