Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

The unique campaign group of three awarded to Captain C. V. Keyes, Queen’s Own Corps of Guides Cavalry, wounded in the defence of Malakand and brutally murdered in Northern Nigeria whilst attempting to arrest a gang of French cattle thieves

India General Service 1895-1902, 2 clasps, Punjab Frontier 1897-98, Malakand 1897 (Lieut. C. V. Keyes, Q.O. Corps of Guides Cavy.); Ashanti 1900, 1 clasp, Kumassi (Lieut. C. V. Keyes, Ind. Stf. Cp.); Africa General Service 1902-56, 1 clasp, N. Nigeria, high relief bust (Capt. C. V. Keyes, I.S.C.) extremely fine (3) £6000-7000

Charles Valentine Keyes was born at Abbottabad on 14 February 1876, son of General Sir Charles Patton Keyes, G.C.B., Madras Staff Corps, and brother of Admiral Sir Roger Keyes. He attended the Royal Military Academy and was appointed 2nd Lieutenant on the Unattached List for the Indian Staff Corps on 16 January 1895, and arrived in India in the following March. After temporary attachments to the Royal West Surrey Regiment and the Royal Scots Fusiliers, he was appointed to the 34th Bengal Infantry (Pioneers) as Officiating Wing Officer, which he joined at Malakand in May 1896. In July 1897 he was transferred to the Corps of Guides Cavalry, and he had scarcely joined when, in response to a call for aid, the corps marched for Malakand, which position had been suddenly assailed by a gathering of several thousands of the neighbouring tribesmen, led on by a fanatical and partially insane mullah.

He took part in defence of the Malakand position until the final repulse of the enemy, and was slightly wounded on the 1st August in the first attempt to relieve Chakdarra; he was also present at the relief of Chakdarra on the following day, and he afterwards served in the expedition to Upper Swat, including the action at Landakai on the 17th August, and in the campaign in Bajaur and the Mamand country in the following September and October (India Medal and two clasps).

Of Keyes’ wound at Malakand, Winston Churchill records in The Malakand Field Force:

‘The Guides made several charges. The broken nature of the ground favoured the enemy. Many of them were, however, speared or cut down. In one of these charges Lieutenant Keyes was wounded. While he was attacking one tribesman, another came up from behind and struck him a heavy blow on the shoulder with a sword. Though these Swatis keep their sword at razor edge, and though the blow was sufficiently severe to render the officer’s arm useless for some days, it raised only a thin weal, as if from a cut of a whip. It was a strange and almost an inexplicable escape.’

On the termination of the frontier war he returned to Mardan with the Guides, and there from April 1898 to June 1899 he officiated as a Squadron Officer in the Cavalry of the Corps. In July 1899 he went home on sick leave, and in April 1900, during his absence, he was appointed a Double-Company Officer in the Guides Infantry. In June 1900, when his leave was about to expire, he was appointed to the West African Frontier Force, with which he continued serving until his death. He took part in the Ashanti campaign and the relief of Kumassi in July 1900 (Medal with clasp). His death occurred at Argungo in the extreme north-west of Northern Nigeria, on the 21st June 1901, when he was brutally murdered by a gang of French cattle-thieves, whom he was endeavouring to arrest. The subsequent official enquiries made by the Colonial Office are contained in a file at the National Archives, Correspondence relating to the Death of Captain Keyes, which runs to 510 pages (TNA: CO879/68).

In St Alban’s Church at Mardan in the Peshawar district of India is a tablet inscribed, ‘Sacred to the memory of Lieutenant C. V. Keyes, Queen’s Own Corps of Guides who was assassinated at Argunga in Nigeria on 21st June 1901. Erected in affectionate remembrance by his Brother Officers.’