Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

British South Africa Company Medal 1890-97, reverse Rhodesia 1896 (8075 Pte. S. Vickers, 3/K.R.R. Corps.) contact marks and heavy edge bruising, otherwise very fine £600-800

28 medals for Rhodesia 1896 to the 3rd Battalion, all serving with the Mounted Infantry of the Mashonaland Field Force.

Private Smith Vickers was killed in action at Makonis Kraal on 3 August 1896. He is buried, along with Captain A. E. Haynes, Royal Engineers, and Private W. Wickham of the Royal Irish Regiment, also killed on that day, near St Faith’s Mission in the Rusape area of Rhodesia.

‘Poor little Haynes was, as I have already said, killed in the kraal, after having gallantly led his men over the wall. In him we have suffered an irreparable loss. With his bright keenness, his fertile brain, and ready resource, he had already made himself invaluable. Apart from his professional value to me, I never met a man whom I grew to like so much in so short a time. Both the privates we had had killed were good useful men, whose loss we could ill afford.’ (Ref. With the Mounted Infantry and the Mashonaland Field Force 1896, by Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel E. A. H. Alderson).