BOER WAR QUEEN’S SOUTH AFRICA MEDAL PTE DUIGNAN 1ST CONNAUGHT RANGERS LEITRIM

Offered is a Queens South Africa medal with 5 clasps to Private Duignan, who hailed from Leitrim Ireland & served with the 1st Battalion, the Connaught Rangers, during the Boer War of 1899-1902.

Queen’s South Africa medal 1899-1902, 5 clasps, CAPE COLONY, TUGELA HEIGHTS, ORANGE FREE STATE, RELIEF OF LADYSMITH, TRANSVAAL. Impressed named 1920 P^TE P.DUIGNAN. 1^ST CONNAUGHT RANG.

The medal is unmounted and comes with copy enlistment papers and medal rolls. On the medal rolls his initial is recorded as M when it should read P.

A good set of clasps to a rarely seen Irish unit.

Patrick Duignan was born in Leitrim, Ireland and enlisted 4/12/1894. Occupation Labourer 17 years of age. Enlisted into the 5^th Battalion Militia Reserve. Regimental number 1920. Transferred to regular service 6/12/1899 with the 1^st Battalion Connaught Rangers. Discharged 3/12/00.

The 1st Battalion sailed on the Bavarian about 10th November 1899, arrived at the Cape about the 28th, and was sent to Durban. they formed the 5th or Irish Brigade.

At Colenso the Connaught Rangers were in the thickest, and their losses were very heavy, being approximately 24 men killed, 2 officers and 103 men wounded, and 2 officers and 23 men missing: these latter had got so far forward that they either did not receive the order to retire or were unable to get back.

At Venter's Spruit, 20th to 24th January, the battalion was not so heavily engaged as the Border Regiment and Dublins, and their losses were trifling.

In the attack on Hart's Hill or Inniskilling Hill on 23rd February 1900 the assault was delivered by the Inniskillings, the Rangers, and part of the Dublins. That day the battalion lost 7 officers wounded, 19 men killed and over 100 wounded.

About the middle of April 1900 the battalion, along with the Border Regiment and 2nd Dublins, came round to Cape Colony. The brigade having assisted to relieve Wepener, was railed to the Transvaal western border, and the greater part of it marched east with Sir Archibald Hunter, whose task it was to give the Mafeking relief column a clear start and thereafter occupy the towns in the Western Transvaal. In the latter half of June the Connaught Rangers and Border Regiment were at Irene, east of the Pretoria-Johannesburg line, where they were placed under Colonel Mahon, just returned from his brilliant relief of Mafeking. On 18th July the battalion, along with the Royal Fusiliers, joined a column north-east of Pretoria which was to support Ian Hamilton's larger column in his movement on Bronkhorst Spruit by the north of the railway line. In the autumn the Rangers were brought down to Cape Colony to assist in keeping the enemy to the north of the Orange River, an endeavour which was not completely successful.