Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

The ‘Tirah 1897-98’ D.S.O. group of three awarded to Captain J. A. L. Haldane, Gordon Highlanders, afterwards General Sir Aylmer Haldane, G.C.M.G., K.C.B., D.S.O., who famously commanded the armoured train at Chieveley when he and Winston Churchill were captured with others and imprisoned in Pretoria from where they each escaped; after the Great War he rose to be G.O.C. in Mesopotamia where he successfully suppressed the Arab Rebellion of 1920-22 - his published writings included How We Escaped from Pretoria (1901) and his autobiography A Soldier’s Saga (1948)

Distinguished Service Order, V.R., silver-gilt and enamel, with integral top ribbon bar, the ribbon additionally fitted with 1st type ‘laurel’ Second and Third Award Bars [to which he is not entitled]; India General Service 1854-95, 1 clasp, Waziristan 1894-5 (Capt. J. A. L. Haldane 1st Bn. Gordon Highrs.) naming officially engraved in running script as usual; India General Service 1895-1902, 3 clasps, Relief of Chitral 1895, Punjab Frontier 1897-98, Tirah 1897-98 (Captn. J. A. L. Haldane 1st Bn. Gord: Highrs.) naming officially engraved in running script as usual, mounted court-style as worn, good very fine (3) £4,000-£6,000

From an old collection formed 1950-80. A single Victory Medal 1914-19 named ‘Lt. Gen. Sir J. A. L. Haldane.’ was sold at Christie’s in October 1999 which would suggest that Haldane’s group of medals had been broken up subsequent to his death in 1950.

D.S.O. London Gazette 20 May 1898: ‘James Aylmer Lowthorpe Haldane, Captain, Gordon Highlanders. In recognition of services during the recent operations on the North-West Frontier of India.’ The insignia were presented to him by the Queen at Windsor on 25 June 1898.

James Aylmer Lowthorpe Haldane was born on 17 November 1862, only son of the late D. Rutherford Haldane, M.D., and Mrs Haldane. He was educated at Edinburgh Academy and Wimbledon School, and passed with Honours, Royal Military College, Sandhurst, joining the Gordon Highlanders on 9 September 1882, as Lieutenant. He was Adjutant from 1 September 1888 to 31 January 1892, and became Captain on 8 April 1892. Captain Haldane served with the Waziristan Field Force in 1894-95, as Orderly Officer to Sir William Lockhart, Commanding the Force (Medal with Clasp). He served with the Chitral Relief Force under Sir Robert Low in 1895 with the 1st Battalion Gordon Highlanders (Medal with Clasp). He was A.D.C. to General Sir William Lockhart, 1896-99, and served in the campaign on the North West Frontier of India under Sir William Lockhart in 1897-98 with the Tirah Expeditionary Force as Deputy Assistant Adjutant Head Quarters Staff, and was present at the actions of Chagra Kotal and Dargai, and at the capture of the Sampagha and Arhanga Passes. Reconnaissance at and around Dwatoi and action of 24 November 1897. Operations against the Khani Khel Chamkanis. Operations in the Bara Valley 7 to 14 December 1897. Operations in the Bazar Valley 25 to 30 December 1897. He was mentioned in despatches (London Gazette 5 April 1898); received two Clasps to his India medal, and was created a Companion of the Distinguished Service Order.

Haldane served in South Africa 1899-1902, with the 2nd Gordon Highlanders, taking part in the operations in Natal in 1899, including the action at Elandslaagte, where he was severely wounded. He was in command of the Chieveley Armoured Train on 15 November 1899, when it was ambushed by the Boers. The incident is chiefly remembered by the fact that Winston Churchill, who was present whilst serving as a newspaper correspondent for The Morning Post, was also taken Prisoner of War that day - his gallant conduct in action and daring escape from captivity captured the public’s imagination, propelled him into Parliament, and set him on the road to becoming Prime Minister. A full account of the incident is recorded in his Autobiography, My Early Life:

‘Nothing looks more formidable and impressive than an armoured train; but nothing is in fact more vulnerable and helpless. It was only necessary to blow up a bridge or culvert to leave the monster stranded, far from home and help, at the mercy of the enemy. This situation did not seem to have occurred to our commander. He decided to put a company of the Dublin Fusiliers and a company of the Durban Light Infantry into an armoured train of six trucks, and add a small six-pounder naval gun with some sailors landed from H.M.S. Terrible, together with a breakdown gang, and to send this considerable portion of his force out to reconnoitre towards Colenso. Captain Haldane was the officer he selected for the duty of commanding this operation. Haldane told me on the night of November 14 of the task which had been set him for the next day and on which he was to start at dawn. He did not conceal his misgivings on the imprudence of the enterprise, but he was of course, like everyone else at the beginning of a war, very keen upon adventure and a brush with the enemy. 'Would I come with him?' He would like it if I did! Out of comradeship, and because I thought it was my duty to gather as much information as I could for the Morning Post, also because I was eager for trouble, I accepted the invitation without demur.

The military events which followed are well known and have often been discussed. The armoured train proceeded about fourteen miles towards the enemy and got as far as Chieveley station without a sign of opposition or indeed of life or movement on the broad undulations of the Natal landscape. We stopped for a few moments at Chieveley to report our arrival at this point by telegraph to the General. No sooner had we done this than we saw, on a hill between us and home which overlooked the line at about 600 yards distance, a number of small figures moving about and hurrying forward. Certainly they were Boers. Certainly they were behind us. What would they be doing with the railway line? There was not an instant to lose. We started immediately on our return journey. As we approached the hill, I was standing on a box with my head and shoulders above the steel plating of the rear armoured truck. I saw a cluster of Boers on the crest. Suddenly three wheeled things appeared among them, and instantly bright flashes of light opened and shut ten or twelve times. A huge white ball of smoke sprang into being and tore out into a cone, only as it seemed a few feet above my head. It was shrapnel - the first I had ever seen in war, and very nearly the last! The steel sides of the truck tanged with a patter of bullets. There was a crash from the front of the train, and a series of sharp explosions. The railway line curved round the base of the hill on a steep down gradient, and under the stimulus of the enemy’s fire, as well as of the slope, our pace increased enormously. The Boer artillery (two guns and a pom-pom) had only time for one discharge before we were round the corner out of their sight. It had flashed across my mind that there must be some trap farther on. I was just turning to Haldane to suggest that someone should scramble along the train and make the engine-driver reduce speed, when suddenly there was a tremendous shock, and he and I and all the soldiers in the truck were pitched head over heels on to its floor. The armoured train travelling at not less than forty miles an hour had been thrown off the metals by some obstruction, or by some injury to the line.

In our truck no one was seriously hurt, and it took but a few seconds for me to scramble to my feet and look over the top of the armour. The train lay in a valley about 1,200 yards on the homeward side of the enemy’s hill. On the top of this hill were scores of figures running forward and throwing themselves down in the grass, from which there came almost immediately an accurate and heavy rifle fire. The bullets whistled overhead and rang and splattered on the steel plates like a hailstorm. I got down from my perch, and Haldane and I debated what to do. It was agreed that he with the little naval gun and his Dublin Fusiliers in the rear truck should endeavour to keep down the enemy’s firing, and that I should go and see what had happened to the train, what was the damage to the line, and whether there was any chance of repairing it or clearing the wreckage out of the way.

I nipped out of the truck accordingly and ran along the line to the head of the train. The engine was still on the rails. The first truck, an ordinary bogey, had turned completely head over heels, killing and terribly injuring some of the plate-layers who were upon it; but it lay quite clear of the track. The next two armoured trucks, which contained the Durban Light Infantry, were both derailed, one still upright and the other on its side. They lay jammed against each other in disorder, blocking the homeward path of the rest. Behind the overturned trucks the Durban Light Infantry men, bruised, shaken and some severely injured, had found a temporary shelter. The enemy’s fire was continuous, and soon there mingled with the rifles the bang of the field guns and the near explosion of their shells. We were in the toils of the enemy.

As I passed the engine another shrapnel burst immediately as it seemed overhead, hurling its contents with a rasping rush through the air. The driver at once sprang out of the cab and ran to the shelter of the overturned trucks. His face cut open by a splinter streamed with blood, and he complained in bitter, futile indignation. ‘He was a civilian. What did they think he was paid for? To be killed by a bombshell-not he! He would not stay another minute.’ It looked as if his excitement and misery – he was dazed by the blow on his head – would prevent him from working the engine further, and as only he understood the machinery, the hope of escape would thus be cut off. So I told him that no man was hit twice on the same day: that a wounded man who continued to do his duty was always rewarded for distinguished gallantry, and that he might never have this chance again. On this he pulled himself together, wiped the blood off his face, climbed back into the cab of his engine, and thereafter obeyed every order which I gave him.

I formed the opinion that it would be possible, using the engine as a ram, to pull and push the two wrecked trucks clear of the line, and consequently that escape for the whole force was possible. The line appeared to be uninjured, no rail had been removed. I returned along the line to Captain Haldane’s truck and told him through a loophole what was the position and what I proposed we should do. He agreed to all I said and undertook to keep the enemy hotly engaged meanwhile.

I was very lucky in the hour that followed not to be hit. It was necessary for me to be almost continuously moving up and down the train or standing in the open, telling the engine-driver what to do. The first thing was to detach the truck which was half off the rails from the one completely so. To do this the engine had to be moved so as to tug the partly derailed truck backwards along the line until it was clear of the other wreckage, and then to throw it completely off the rails. The dead weight of the iron truck half on the sleepers was enormous, and the engine wheels skidded vainly several times before any hauling power was obtained. At last the truck was drawn sufficiently far back, and I called for volunteers to overturn it from the side, while the engine pushed it from the end. It was very evident that these men would be exposed to considerable danger. Twenty were called for and there was an immediate response, but only nine men, including the Major of the Durban Light Infantry and four or five of the Dublin Fusiliers, actually stepped out into the open. The attempt was nevertheless successful. The truck heeled over further under their pressure, and the engine giving a shove at the right moment, it fell off the line, and the track seemed clear. Safety and success appeared in sight together, but one of the bitterest disappointments of my life overtook them.

The footplate of the engine was about 6 in. wider than the tender and jammed against the corner of the newly overturned truck. It did not seem safe to push very hard, lest the engine itself should be derailed. We uncoupled the engine from the rear trucks, and time after time moved it back a yard or two and butted forward at the obstruction. Each time it moved a little, but soon it was evident that complications had set in. The newly derailed truck had become jammed in a T-shaped position with the one originally off the line, and the more the engine pushed, the greater became the block.

It occurred to me that if the trucks only jammed tighter after the forward pushing, they might be loosened by again pulling backwards. Now however a new difficulty arose. The coupling chains of the engine would not reach by five or six inches those of the overturned truck. Search was made for a spare coupling. By a solitary gleam of good luck, one was found. The engine hauled at the wreckage and before the chain parted pulled it about a yard backwards and off the track. Now surely the line was clear at last. But again the corner of the engine footplate jammed with the corner of the truck, and again we came to a jarring halt. The heat and excitement of the work were such as to absorb me completely. I remember thinking that it was like working in front of an iron target at a rifle range at which men were continually firing. We struggled for seventy minutes among these clanging, rending iron boxes, amid the repeated explosions of shells and the ceaseless hammering of bullets, and with only five or six inches of twisted ironwork to make the difference between danger, captivity and shame on the one hand, and safety, freedom and triumph on the other.

Above all things we had to be careful not to throw the engine off the line. But at last, as the artillery firing steadily increased and the second gun came into action from the opposite flank, I decided to run a great risk. The engine was backed to its fullest extent and driven full tilt at the obstruction. There was a harsh crunching tear, the engine reeled on the rails, and as the obstructing truck reared upwards, ground its way past and gained the homeward side, free and, as it turned out, safe. But our three remaining trucks were fifty yards away, still the wrong side of the obstruction, which had fallen back into its original place after the engine had passed. What were we to do? Certainly we could not take the engine back. Could we then drag the trucks by hand up to the engine? They were narrower than the engine and there would be just room for them to slip past.

I went back again to Captain Haldane. He accepted the plan. He ordered his men to climb out of their steel pen and try to push it towards the engine. The plan was sound enough, but it broke down under the force of circumstances. The truck was so heavy that it required all hands to move it; the fire was so hot and the confusion so great and increasing that the men drifted away from the exposed side. The enemy, relieved of our counter-fire, were now plainly visible in large numbers on the face of the hill, firing furiously. We then agreed that the engine should go slowly back along the line with all the wounded, who were now numerous, and that the Dublins and the Durban men should retreat on foot, sheltering themselves behind the engine which would go at a foot’s pace. Upwards of forty persons, of whom the greater part were streaming with blood, were crowded on the engine and its tender, and we began to move slowly forward. I was in the cab of the engine directing the engine-driver. It was crammed so full of wounded men that one could scarcely move. The shells burst all around, some striking the engine, others dashing the gravel of the track upon it and its unhappy human freight. The pace increased, the infantry outside began to lag and then to be left behind. At last I forced the engine-driver to stop altogether, but before I could get the engine stopped we were already 300 yards away from our infantry. Close at hand was the bridge across the Blue Krantz River, a considerable span. I told the engine-driver to cross the bridge and wait on the other side, and forcing my way out of the cab I got down on to the line and went back along it to find Captain Haldane, and to bring him and his Dublin Fusiliers along.

But while these events had been taking place everything else had been in movement. I had not retraced my steps 200 yards when, instead of Haldane and his company, two figures in plain clothes appeared upon the line. ‘Plate-layers!’ I said to myself, and then with a surge of realisation, ‘Boers!’ My mind retains its impression of these tall figures, full of energy, clad in dark, flapping clothes, with slouch, storm-driven hats, poising on their levelled rifles hardly a hundred yards away. I turned again and ran back towards the engine, the two Boers firing as I ran between the metals. Their bullets, sucking to right and left, seemed to miss only by inches. We were in a small cutting with banks about six feet high on either side. I flung myself against the bank of the cutting. It gave no cover. Another glance at the two figures; one was now kneeling to aim. Movement seemed the only chance. Again I darted forward: again two soft kisses sucked in the air; but nothing struck me. This could not endure. I must get out of the cutting – that damnable corridor. I jigged to the left, and scrambled up the bank. The earth sprang up beside me. I got through the wire fence unhurt. Outside the cutting was a tiny depression. I crouched in this, struggling to get my breath again.

Fifty yards away was a small plate-layer’s cabin of masonry; there was cover there. About 200 yards away was the rocky gorge of the Blue Krantz River; there was plenty of cover there. I determined to make a dash for the river. I rose to my feet. Suddenly on the other side of the railway, separated from me by the rails and two uncut wire fences I saw a horseman galloping furiously, a tall dark figure, holding his rifle in his right hand. He pulled up his horse almost in its own length and shaking the rifle at me shouted a loud command. We were forty yards apart. That morning I had taken with me, Correspondent-status notwithstanding, my Mauser pistol. I thought I could kill this man, and after the treatment I had received I earnestly desired to do so. I put my hand to my belt, the pistol was not there. When engaged in clearing the line, getting in and out of the engine, etc., I had taken it off. It came safely home on the engine. I have it now! But at this moment I was quite unarmed. Meanwhile, I suppose in about the time this takes to tell, the Boer horseman, still seated on his horse, had covered me with his rifle. The animal stood stock still, so did he, and so did I. I looked towards the river, I looked towards the plate-layer’s hut. The Boer continued to look along his sights. I thought there was absolutely no chance of escape, if he fired he would surely hit me, so I held up my hands and surrendered myself a prisoner of war.’

The story of Churchill’s subsequent escape from captivity six weeks later is well documented and Captain Aylmer Haldane records in his autobiography, A Soldier’s Saga, how even before his escape, Churchill had recognised the significance his part in this action might have on his future career, telling him that ‘what had taken place [at Chieveley], though it had caused the temporary loss of his post as war correspondent, would help considerably in opening the door for him to enter the House of Commons...’

However, the debate about whether Churchill abandoned Haldane and Brockie was re-ignited with the discovery in 1997 of a letter written by Haldane in 1930, shortly after Churchill’s publication of My Early Life. Haldane wrote that ‘Since the publication of his book, which maintains what I honestly think is fiction so far as his escape enters into it, I feel that I have nothing more to conceal... The truth was that I had made all the plans with another man to escape when Churchill came into the picture. He perfectly understood that he and I were to go in company. We tried together one night, but conditions were unfavourable. The next night we tried again in company, proof that he understood we were not to go separately. [The next night] he slipped off without myself or the third man, whose abuse of Churchill I shall not forget.’

Haldane was mentioned in despatches (London Gazette 8 February 1901); received the Queen’s medal with four clasps, and the Brevet of Lieutenant-Colonel, 24 July 1902. He was promoted to Major on 23 July 1902. In 1904 and 1905 he was attached to the Japanese Army in Manchuria, during the Russo-Japanese War. He was present at the battles of Liao-Yang, Sha-ho and Mukden, and received the Japanese War Medal and Clasp, the Order of the Sacred Treasure, 3rd Class, and was created a C.B. (1906). He was given the Brevet of Colonel, 11 January 1906, and became Colonel on 29 October 1906; was Assistant Director of Military Operations, Headquarters of Army, October 1906 to September 1909; was Brigadier-General, General Staff, Eastern Command, April to August 1912.

Her served in the European War from 5 August 1914, as Brigade Commander, 10th Infantry Brigade B.E.F., up to 20 November 1914; as G.O.C. 3rd Division B.E.F. and British Armies in France, November 1914 to August 1916, and as Army Corps Commander, 6th Army Corps, British Armies in France, from August 1916. He was promoted to Major-General on 26 October 1914, and to Lieutenant-General on 1 January 1919; was eight times mentioned in despatches; created a K.C.B. in 1918, and received decorations from both Belgium and France. He was appointed General Officer, Commander-in-Chief, Mesopotamia 1920-22, during extensive Arab insurrection, which was suppressed (G.C.M.G., General Service medal and two Clasps). He was promoted to General in 1925 and retired the same year. General Sir Aylmer Haldane died on 19 April 1950.