Auction Catalogue

2 April 2004

Starting at 10:00 AM

.

Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

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

Lot

№ 337

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2 April 2004

Hammer Price:
£250

India General Service 1895-1902, 1 clasp, Punjab Frontier 1897-98 (2865 Pte. Nursing Orderly J. Bailey, 1st Bn. Somst. Lt. Inf.) about very fine and very rare £200-250

James Bailey was born at Devonport and enlisted in the Somerset Light Infantry, via a Militia Battalion of the Royal Berkshire Regiment, in August 1890, aged 18 years. Joining the 1st Battalion later in the same year, he served on garrison duty on Gibraltar from 1890-91, was posted to the 2nd Battalion in India in 1892 and returned to the 1st Battalion in 1894. Bailey subsequently served in the Mohmand operations of 1897 on the Punjab Frontier, being employed as a “Private Nursing Orderly” to the British Field Hospital of the Tochi Field Force Medical Department, one of just seven British infantrymen to be similarly attached (also see Lot 339). Returning home in early 1898, he was transferred to the Army Reserve, but in May 1899 he rejoined his old regiment and went to South Africa with the 2nd Battalion at the end of the same year. He came home to the U.K. in June 1900, returned to South Africa that October and was discharged for a final time back in the U.K. in September 1902.