Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

The Waterloo Medal awarded to Sergeant Charles Buck, 10 Hussars, a rare casualty for the action at Benevente in December 1808, where he was wounded by a sabre in the right hand

Waterloo 1815 (Serjeant Charles Buck, 10th Royal Reg. Hussars.) pierced with remains of steel pin, excavated condition, therefore good fine but a very rare casualty £1800-2200

Provenance: Found in early 2014 in a field near the small village of Hillam, West Yorkshire, where Sergeant Buck settled and died.

Charles Buck (Bucke on discharge papers) was born in Lavenham, Suffolk, in 1782. He enlisted into the 10th Hussars at Brighton on 11 November 1803, for unlimited service, aged 22 years. He was promoted to Corporal in November 1808, and to Sergeant in May 1811, in which rank he was finally discharged on 30 November 1818. He was discharged in consequence of ‘being subject to attacks of rheumatism induced by exposure to wet, cold & fatigue during the Peninsular Campaigns’ of 1808-09 and ‘13 & ‘14, and that ‘he was wounded in the right hand by a sabre at Benevente 29th Decr. 1808’. His total service amounted to 17 years 103 days, including 2 years for Waterloo.

French casualties at Benevente amounted to 73 captured, including General Lefebvre-Desnouettes and two Captains, and 55 killed or wounded; British losses are recorded as 50 men killed or wounded, shared amongst the 7th, 10th and 18th Hussars.

Charles Buck was admitted to an out-pension at Chelsea Hospital on 3 February 1819, and afterwards settled in the small village of Hillam, in West Yorkshire. His discharge papers state that he was a grocer by trade, so he might well have taken up the same occupation when he moved to Yorkshire. He was twice married, the first time in London in 1814 to Mary Lindsay, with whom he had two sons and two daughters. She died in 1826, and he married secondly, in 1827, Christiana Brown, by whom he had two more sons. Charles Buck died on Christmas day in 1836, and was buried in the graveyard of St Wilfred’s Church, Monk Fryston, a village close to where he lived until his death. Sold with copied discharge papers and other family research.