Auction Catalogue

4 December 2002

Starting at 12:00 PM

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Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Grand Connaught Rooms  61 - 65 Great Queen St  London  WC2B 5DA

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Lot

№ 382

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4 December 2002

Hammer Price:
£820

The Second Afghan War medal to Sub-Lieutenant F. H. Harford, 10th Hussars, drowned in the disastrous night crossing of the Kabul River in March 1879

Afghanistan 1878-80, 1 clasp, Ali Musjid (Sub. Lieut. Harford, 10th Rl. Hussars) note lack of initials, together with two original Illustrated London News illustrations, both hand coloured, one of the 10th Hussars crossing the river and one of Harford’s funeral, extremely fine £700-900

Francis Harvey Harford was born in March 1858, and educated at Winchester and R.M.C. Sandhurst. Passing out from Sandhurst in 1877 in the first class, he was gazetted to the 16th Foot, then serving in Ireland, but transferred to the 10th Hussars, then serving in India, in October 1877. He left England in the following December, and joined the Headquarters at Rawal Pindi. On the outbreak of the Afghan War in the autumn of 1878, he accompanied the regiment into the Khyber, and was present with it at the taking of Ali Musjid on the 21st November.

During the events which immediately succeeded, the 10th Hussars were stationed at Jalalabad. It was in the neighbourhood of this post, in the accident which consigned in the space of a few moments forty-six men of the regiment to one common grave, that Harford met his death. Forming one of the ill-fated squadron which was told off to accompany the force directed to co-operate with General Macpherson’s column in the second Lughman Valley expedition, he was swept away with the rest of the squadron, during the night of the 31st March, 1897, in the disastrous fording of the Kabul River at Kala-i-Sak, and was one of those found missing when the roll was called after the accident. On the 4th April his body was found lying untouched, and was buried with military honours on the evening of the same day, the General and all the officers in garrison following it to its last resting-place.

‘Few young soldiers have gone to an early grave more deeply regretted than the gallant but ill-fated subject of this brief memoir. His life was one of the finest promise, and there are none who knew him who could doubt that that promise would have been fulfilled to the utmost had he lived.’

Sub-Lieutenant Harford, 46 N.C.Os. and men, and thirteen horses were drowned in this disaster which was shortly afterwards the subject of the famous poem by Rudyard Kipling, which opens:

Kabul town’s by Kabul river,
Blow the bugle, draw the sword,
There I left my mate for ever,
Wet and dripping by the ford.
Ford, ford, ford of Kabul river,
Ford o’Kabul river in the dark!
There’s the river up and brimming,
And there’s half a squadron swimming
‘Cross the ford of Kabul river in the dark.