Pair: Private A. E. Bowditch, Dorsetshire Regiment Mounted Infantry

Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, 6 clasps, Relief of Kimberley, Paardeberg, Driefontein, Johannesburg, Diamond Hill, Wittebergen (3099 Pte. A. E. Bowditch, 2/Dorset. Rgt.); King’s South Africa 1901-02, 2 clasps (3099 Pte. J. Bowditch, Dorset. Regt.), note different initials, contact marks, some edge bruising, nearly very fine (2) £180-220

In 1888 the system of training Mounted Infantry was started at Aldershot. A company of Mounted Infantry was composed of four detachments from certain battalions of Infantry Regiments. These detachments were called ‘sections’ and were composed of about thirty men and one officer. Men selected had to be marksmen, of good character and physique and not above a certain weight; in effect a picked infantry soldier but with extra means of locomotion. In this he differed from a Mounted Rifleman, who although needing to be a good shot, did not have the same discipline and solidity of the former with which to stand steady in a square or to face severe fire when attacking a position. When the Boer War began, each Infantry Battalion had one of these specialised units. They were an elite corps and in effect, a ‘rapid reaction force’; sometimes operating with their battalion and other times joining up in larger units of combined M.I. As such, on many occasions, members of a Mounted Infantry unit would earn clasps not earned by the parent regiment.

Alfred Edward Bowditch was born in the Parish of Beaminster, near Bridport and attested for the Dorsetshire Regiment at Dorchester on 15 September 1890. Transferred to the Army Reserve in 1897, he was re-engaged for the Boer War where he served in the Dorset Regiment Mounted Infantry. He was discharged from the 2nd Battalion Dorsetshire Regiment in 1909 ‘having been found medically unfit for further service.’

Sold with original Parchment Certificate of Discharge; parchment Certificate of Character on Discharge (2), dated 1897 and 1909; Parchment Reserve Certificate.