Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A regimentally unique Boxer Rebellion and Boer War campaign pair awarded to Private H. Pawsey, 7th Dragoon Guards, the regiment’s only other rank so entitled as a result of his employment as a personal servant to Captain W. D. McSwiney

Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, 5 clasps, Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Transvaal, South Africa 1901, South Africa 1902 (4191 Pte. H. Pawsey, 7th Drgn. Gds.); China 1900, no clasp (4191 Pte. H . Pawsey, 7th Dragoon Gds.), contact marks and occasional edge bruising, nearly very fine or better (2) £500-600

Herbert Pawsey was born at Camberwell in February 1879 and was educated at Salters Hill School, Gypsy Road, Lambeth. On leaving school in 1893 he moved to Northamptonshire where he joined the local Militia and it was direct from this unit that he enlisted in the 7th Dragoon Guards in December 1896.

Having been employed on the Home Establishment until August 1900, Pawsey was embarked for the Far East, where he served as personal servant to Captain W. D. McSwiney, 7th Dragoon Guards, during the Boxer Rebellion and beyond, up until June 1901 - the latter was then employed as a Special Service Officer at Tientsin in Northern China. Pawsey then followed McSwiney to South Africa, again as his personal servant, the pair of them being actively employed in the Boer War from June 1901 until April 1902: their subsequent awards of the China and Queen’s South Africa Medals were regimentally unique.

Returning to the U.K., Pawsey was placed on the Reserve in December 1903 and discharged in December 1908. In April of the following year, he sailed for America in the S.S. Mauretania, listing his occupation as a labourer. With the advent of the Great War, however, he decided to return home, arriving at Liverpool in June 1915.

He immediately re-enlisted in his old regiment, the 7th Dragoon Guards but was quickly transferred to the Northumberland Fusiliers and, it is believed, served in the 2nd (Garrison) Battalion out in India; possibly, too, in Mesopotamia, where a few of the unit’s companies were employed. Be that as it may, his MIC entry does confirm that he forfeited his 1914-15 Star, British War Medal and Victory Medal, on account of desertion from the Royal Army Service Corps in October 1921. His awards were restored in November 1923 but whether he ever received them is open to speculation, for he died at the Royal Herbert Hospital, Woolwich in January 1924; sold with a file of copied research.

Also see Lot 244 for Captain McSwiney’s awards.