An exceptional Great War Cameroons 1914 operations D.S.O. group of four awarded to Captain E. E. Loch, Highland Light Infantry, attached 2nd Battalion, Nigeria Regiment, Royal West African Frontier Force, who was originally recommended for the V.C.: post-war an explorer, he led an expedition in search of the lost gold of the Incas in the 1930s and died of a tropical disease in Ecuador in 1944

Distinguished Service Order, G.V.R., silver-gilt and enamel; 1914-15 Star (Lieut. E. E. Loch, High. L.I.); British War and Victory Medals, M.I.D. oak leaf (Capt. E. E. Loch), good very fine (4) £2500-3000

D.S.O. London Gazette 12 December 1919:

‘For distinguished service in connection with military operations in East Africa, Somaliland and Nigeria’.

The recommendation - as per War Office Letter No. 012/3985 of 7 August 1919 - states:

‘For most conspicuous gallantry in action during the night operations against Garua on the night of 29-30 August 1914. On the morning of the 30 August, during the withdrawal, Lieutenant and Adjutant Browne was wounded and unable to move. Lieutenant (now Captain) Loch, though himself wounded, went immediately to his assistance and carried him out of action on his back under extremely heavy fire.’


Eric Erskine Loch was appointed a 2nd Lieutenant in the Highland Light Infantry direct from Sandhurst in October 1910, and was serving as a recently promoted Lieutenant on attachment to the 2nd Battalion, Nigeria Regiment at Lokoja on the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914.

V.C. recommendation

Quickly seeing action in the Cameroons campaign, he was decorated for his part in the attack on Garua on the night of 29-30 August 1914, when ‘C’ and ‘H’ Companies of his Battalion acted in direct support of ‘H’ Company of the 3rd Battalion, Nigeria Regiment. Pitched against three enemy forts near “Observation Hill”, which lit up the assaulting parties with rockets and opened up a heavy fire, progress was slow and costly, early fatalities including overall C.O., Lieutenant-colonel P. R. MacLear. Eventually confined to a small area of some 50 yards diameter, without any covering fire to protect them, Loch and his comrades were suddenly subjected to a fierce enemy counter-attack, and the British force broke and fled, in spite of every effort being made by the officers and N.C.Os to the contrary. Here, then, the moment when casualties quickly mounted, and no doubt, too, the moment of Loch’s great courage in rescuing Lieutenant H. W. Browne under a very heavy fire. Total British casualties amounted to 63, including four officers killed, one mortally wounded and captured, and two wounded, Loch, of course, being one of the latter. Lieutenant Browne died of his wounds.

He was mentioned in despatches (London Gazette 24 October 1914 refers), but, as per the W.A.F.F. Register of Correspondence for 1919, he was later recommended for the V.C. on 31 March 1919 (CO 641/8 refers), many acts of bravery from this theatre of war not having been considered for proper recognition until the War’s end. Ultimately, however, as cited above, he was awarded the D.S.O.

Back in the Cameroons, Loch returned to active duty in a month after the fight at Garua, the History of the Royal West African Frontier Force offering a further glimpse of him under fire with the Ibi Column:

‘On the 16th [November 1914], a patrol of 30 Nigerian rifles under Lieutenant E. E. Loch moved out to eject an enemy party from Gazabu, some 12 miles to the south-east. But the British were repulsed and forced to retreat, having incurred seven casualties, including Mr. H. Q. Glenny, a Political Officer mortally wounded.’

Loch was subsequently invalided home, where he was appointed Adjutant to the Highland Brigade at Norwich, and was again mentioned in despatches (London Gazette 5 July 1919 refers).

Explorer

After the War Loch left the Army to pursue an adventurous life as an explorer, one newspaper reporting on his expedition to discover hidden treasures of the Incas in the mid-1930s:

‘To one of the greatest scientific explorations of modern times is to be allied still one more attempt to disover the hidden treasure of the Incas. A retired British Army officer, Captain Eric Erskine Loch, D.S.O., is to lead an American expedition into the basin of the Upper Amazon, from which no white man has been known to return.

The expedition, which will be known as the Andes-Amazon Expedition 1935-36, will sail from New York on the Santa Barbara. The party will disembark at Guayaquil, Eucador, and proceed by mountain railway to Riobamba, and then by motor lorries to Racienda Leita, Patate, in the Upper Andes. This will be their last sight of civilisation. The remainder of their trip will be through hitherto unmapped and unexplored regions of mystery-by mule, on foot, and by Indian canoe and raft among the many rivers which form the headwaters of the Amazon.

Besides Captain Loch, the party will comprise Carl de Murait, of Zurich, second-in-command, H. M. Hardwicke, of New York, geologist, Wilfred Klamroth, of New York, assistant geologist, Peter Prime, of Milwaukee, botanist, and Alastair Loch, of London, cousin of the leader, who is an airman, and will act as navigator. Two scientists will join the expedition in Ecuador.

The itinerary demands that the expedition shall make for the shores of the lake near the perpetual snow line in the Llanganates Mountains, where, according to legend, the ‘lost treasure of the Incas was hidden 400 years ago in the time of the Spanish
conquest.’

“Though our expedition is purely scientific in its object,” said Captain Loch, “we shall not, of course, pass by the lake, which tradition has made, one of the world's treasure stores, without attempting to prove or disprove the legend. I am fortunate in having much more to go on than many people imagine. The last man, so far as I know, to seek this treasure, was Colonel E. C. Brooks, of New York, who in 1912 reached the lake. He saw on the other side what the old Spanish chronicler Valverde, who boasted he knew the secret, described as a cave formed like a church porch. A cloudburst occurred in the night, and the rising lake swept away the colonel's camp. His Indians deserted him, and he reached the coast with the greatest difficulty.”

The chief object of the present expedition, however, is to seek ethnological specimens of the Sábela Indians, map the unknown Amazon regions, seek ancient Inca mine-workings, collect fossils and samples of mineral deposits, and study the customs of the Jivaro (head-shrinker) Indians.’

Loch subsequently published an account of the expedition - Fever, Famine and Gold: the Dramatic Story of the Adventures and Discoveries of the Andes-Amazon Expedition.

He died of a tropical disease in January 1944 and is buried at Huigra, Ecuador; sold with a quantity of research.