CAPTAIN MACHINE GUN SECTION PRE WW1 BRITISH ARMY QUEENS SOUTH AFRICA MEDAL QSA

Description

Boer War Queen’s South Africa Medal to Captain Horace Dixon Mayhew, who served with both the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers & the 4th Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment during the Boer War.

Queen’s South Africa Medal measures 36mm wide and is a circular silver medal with claw and swivel ribbon bar suspension, with CAPE COLONY, ORANGE FREE STATE & TRANSVAAL clasps; the face with the veiled crowned head and shoulders portrait of Queen Victoria facing left, circumscribed ‘VICTORIA REGINA ET IMPERATRIX’ (Victoria Queen and Empress), signed ‘G. W. de Saulles’ (for George William de Saulles, 1862-1903, Chief Engraver to the Royal Mint); the reverse with the full-length helmeted figure of Britannia, a standard in her left hand, her right arm extended with a laurel wreath, her shield and trident on the ground behind her, soldiers marching in a landscape beyond, warships near the coast beyond, signed ‘G. W. de Saulles’; attributed on the edge in correct officer’s sloped style Capt. E. E. HUTTON. 31 Co. 9 Imp. Yeo. on correct ribbon. The medal was instituted in 1899 to be awarded to participants in the Boer War.

Rarely will you see a Machine Gun officer’s Q.S.A. come up for sale.

Ernest Edward Hutton was appointed a 2nd Lieutenant in the Denbighshire Hussars in January 1900, the same month in which he transferred to the Imperial Yeomanry ‘to be a Machine Gun Commander’ (London Gazette 6 February 1900, refers). He was indeed given command of a Gun Section in the 9th (Welsh) Battalion, which was equipped with two Colt quick-firing guns, and went on to witness active service in South Africa with the 31st & 49th (Montgomeryshire) Companies. Invalided home in May 1900 as a result of Enteric Fever, he returned to South Africa as a Captain in the 4th Battalion, Imperial Yeomanry, and ended the war as second-in-command of the 36th Battalion, with the temporary rank of Major. He resigned his commission in early 1903; sold with copied research.