Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, 1 clasp, Defence of Ladysmith (5076 Sgt. S. J. McDonnell, Liverpool Regt.), file mark on edge to right of suspension post and official correction to surname, good very fine £280-320

The recipient was killed in action on 9 November 1899 during the first Boer assault on Ladysmith. The siege had begun on 2 November.
 
From the early morning of 9 November, Boer artillery and rifle fire poured into the town. A probing attack was launched by the commandos on Observation Hill and countered. But, as recorded by the war correspondent H. H. S. Pearse in Four Months Besieged: The Story of Ladysmith;
 
‘We had not, however, done with the enemy by repulsing him at one point. His big guns opened up again presently from Blauuwbank and Rietfontein to the west and north. A smaller battery on Long Hill echoed the deep boom from “Long Tom”, who was carrying on a duel with our naval gun, and throwing shells over the town, to burst very near Sir George White’s headquarters. Field guns from the nek near Lombard’s Kop joined in chorus, shooting with effect on Tunnel Hill, held by the Liverpools, several of whom were hit. Sergeant Macdonald (sic) went out of the bomb-proof to mark where one shell had struck, when another burst on the same spot, and he fell terribly mangled by jagged fragments of iron. His comrades rushed to aid him, but he died in their arms, saying simply, “what a pity it was I went out to see.”’
 
McDonnell was buried in Ladysmith town cemetery. He is commemorated on the King’s Liverpool Regiment memorial in St John’s Gardens, Liverpool.