Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A fine Crimea D.C.M. group of three awarded to Private J. Forrest, Scots Fusilier Guards, who was seriously wounded by a musket ball at the Battle of Inkermann, suffering the ‘loss of the ring finger and a portion of the middle finger and complete contraction of the little finger’

Distinguished Conduct Medal, V.R. (John Forrest, Scots Fusr. Gds.); Crimea 1854-56, 4 clasps, Alma, Balaklava, Inkermann, Sebastopol (Pvte., Scots [?] Gds.), contemporary engraved naming, faint in places due to edge bruising; Turkish Crimea 1855, British issue, unnamed, the second with refixed suspension claw and one or two unofficial clasp rivets, contact marks and edge bruising, otherwise generally good fine or better (3) £1800-2200

D.C.M. recommendation dated 26 March 1855.

John Forrest was born near Biggar, Lanarkshire in February 1820 and enlisted in the Scots Fusilier Guards at Glasgow in February 1841, aged 21 years. For reasons unknown, he deserted in July 1845 and was “on the run” until August 1847, when he was tried by Court Martial and sentenced to three months hard labour and the forfeiture of his earlier service. Further disciplinary action was to follow in April 1850, when he was apprehended by the civil authorities for assault, this time to the tune of 20 days imprisonment.

Yet he was to distinguish himself with the 1st Battalion in the Crimea, in which theatre of war he served from February 1854 until March 1855, including the battles of Alma, Balaklava and Inkermann, and the operations before Sebastopol. The Guards, of course, won eternal fame for their great gallantry at Alma and Inkermann, and more specifically the Scots Fusilier Guards won the regiment’s first V.Cs, namely those awarded to the Colour Party under Captain R. J. Lindsay at Alma.

Whether Forrest’s subsequent award of the D.C.M . was in anyway directly associated with this gallant body remains unknown, but we may be sure he was involved in a several bayonet charges and a good deal of bloody hand-to-hand fighting at both battles - and that he was seriously wounded by a musket ball at Inkermann. But he was not alone, for ‘of the 19 officers and 372 other ranks of the Scots Fusilier Guards engaged [at Inkermann], one officer, five Sergeants and 59 rank and file were killed or died of wounds, and eight officers, five Sergeants, two Drummers and 99 rank and file were wounded’ (Regimental history refers); an excellent account of the Scots Fusilier Guards in the Crimea may also be found in the Countess of Airlie’s With The Guards We Shall Go, based, as it is, on the correspondence of one of the regiments young officers, the Hon. Strange Jocelyn.

A tall man for the Victorian era, standing at nearly six feet - and a good deal taller with his bearskin - Forrest was finally discharged in London in December 1855, ‘in consequence of being unfit for further service from a severe gunshot wound in the right hand at Inkermann (two middle fingers amputated)’. By then in possession of two Good Conduct Badges, his pre-desertion service had also been reinstated on his record. Forrest received an increase in his pension in April 1870, was admitted to the Royal Hospital, Chelsea as an in-pensioner in December 1874 and died in January 1883, aged 63 years.