The Collection of British Orders, Decorations and Medals formed by the late Fred Rockwood

A rare Rhodesian Pioneer’s campaign pair awarded to Trooper H. A. Arnold, British South Africa Company’s Police, afterwards Army Service Corps

British South Africa Company Medal 1890-97, reverse undated, 1 clasp, Mashonaland 1890 (Tpr. Arnold, H. A., B.S.A.C.P.); Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, 5 clasps, Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Transvaal, South Africa 1901, South Africa 1902 (241 Mr. H. Arnold, A.S.C.), edge bruising, and the first with obverse surface scratch, otherwise generally very fine (2) £2000-2500

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Collection of British Orders, Decorations and Medals formed by the late Fred Rockwood.

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Howard Augustus Arnold was born at North Curry, Somerset, in January 1866, the son of a sea captain who sailed between England and America. Owing to his father having broken his neck in a hunting accident, he was raised by his grandfather, a strict Wesleyan Minister, an unhappy experience that prompted him to run away and join the Royal Navy as a boy rating. Much of his subsequent service was spent on the Mediterranean Station, including a long spell at Gibraltar, but in 1889 he left for South Africa, bearing a letter of introduction from Sir Alexander Moncrieff to Colonel Sir Frederick Carrington, C.O. of the Bechuanaland Border Police.

One of the earliest entrants to the Company’s Police, joining at Kimberley, he was not actually attested until reaching Taungs in December 1889. Subsequently sent to Mafeking in a party of police under Sergeant R. Bary, he served in ‘B’ Troop of the Pioneer Column and was present at Fort Salisbury for the occupation ceremony on 13 September 1890. Of his subsequent services in the period 1890-91, Hickman’s Men Who Made Rhodesia states:

‘In November, 1890, he was sent with a dispatch to recall Capt. P. W.Forbes, who, after the arrest of Col. Paiva D'Andrade and Gouveia, on 15/11/1890, had entered Mozambique with the intention of pushing on to the coast. On the second night of Arnold's ride he was suffering from malaria, decided that he therefore could not off-saddle his horse and rest, and so rode on. The horse wandered in a circle and Arnold found himself at the same Mashona burial-ground on a hilltop from which he had set out the previous evening. After two further days in the saddle his horse fell dead. It is not clear whether Arnold himself delivered the dispatch to Forbes, or whether it was carried on by another man; Arnold certainly got as far as Macequece.

On St. Patrick's Day, 17/3/1891, though an Englishman, he participated in the Irish banquet organised by No. 1 Troop Sgt.-Major F. K. W. Lyons-Montgomery and presided over by Dr. J. Croghan.

About the end of March, 1891, he was sent in charge of three other troopers to establish a post-station at Mangwenda's (Mangwendi) between Marandellas and Makoni's as a link in the dispatch-riding system between Fort Salisbury and Umtali. Here he suffered acutely from malaria and all the horses died. He was relieved by No. 2 L./Cpl. R. A. L. Smith and three other troopers, and started to return to Fort Salisbury with carriers. They suffered from lack of food and clothing, and by this time Arnold was barefoot. But at Marandellas Sub-Lieut. the Hon. Eustace Fiennes helped to equip the party to the best of his means, and sent them on to Salisbury by wagon. But they had little respite as they were recalled to Umtali to reinforce Capt. H. M. Heyman, though by the time they arrived the fight with the Portuguese on 11/5/1891 was over. The contingent therefore remained at Umtali for some months and helped to build the fort. They were there when Sister Rose Blenner-Hassett and her companions came through on foot from the east coast in July, 1891.

Arnold reports that about this time there was trouble amongst A Troop men, who refused duty because of their lack of rations and clothes, and were later allowed to take their discharge. The B Troop party returned to Salisbury in September, 1891, and Arnold was transferred to C Troop in October, taking his discharge from that troop on 16/11/1891; it is signed by Lieut.-Col. E. G. Pennefather.

He, with others, then travelled south with Col. Ignatius Ferreira as far as Fort Tuli, and then on by wagon to Vryburg, then the railhead, and so on by train. At Capetown Arnold, on the recommendation of Cecil Rhodes, obtained a position on the mines at Kimberley; later he went to the Rand.’

On the outbreak of the Boer War, he joined the Army Service Corps at East London, and served throughout the conflict, Hickman crediting him with a King’s Medal & two clasps, rather then the Queen’s medal with five. Be that as it may, Arnold settled in Johannesburg after the war, where he became a cyanide manager in the mining industry for 12 years. He then started an estate business from which he retired in the late 1930s. Present in Salisbury for the Occupation Day celebrations in 1930, when he wrote some notes on his earlier service, he was made a Freeman of the city in 1935 and, by 1960, when Hickman published his history, was 92 years old and living with his grandson in Durban - ‘still hale and hearty bodily, but beginning to realise his age through his kind.’