Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

British South Africa Company Medal 1890-97, reverse Rhodesia 1896 (Trooper Robert Arnold, B.F.F.) renamed, very fine £40-50

Robert Arnold is verified as having served in the Bulawayo Field Force during the Rhodesia operations of 1896, and as having received his B.S.A.C. Medal around the turn of 1903-04. In March of the latter year, he enrolled in the Southern Rhodesia Volunteers, and later still became Bandmaster of the Northern Rhodesia Regiment.

Arnold applied for a duplicate medal as late as 1936, having lost his original award at a boarding house in Bulawayo in 1931. Interestingly, the appropriate authority sent him the Rhodesia 1896 issue named to ‘Trooper J. M. Werrett, Gwelo Volunteers’, with permission to have ‘this engraving erased and to have the following substituted: Trooper Robert Arnold, B.F.F.’ Sold with a copy photograph of men of the Southern Rhodesia Volunteers, including the recipient wearing his original Medal, circa 1904.