Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

The India General Service Medal awarded to Lieutenant R. A. T. Dury, 11th Bengal Infantry, who was the first officer to be killed during the Third Burma War, at Minhla on 17 November 1885, and was the inspiration for Kipling’s poem Arithmetic on the Frontier

India General Service 1854-95, 1 clasp, Burma 1885-7 (Lieutt. R. A. T. Dury 11th. Bl. Infy.) extremely fine £300-£400

Robert Ashton Theodore Dury was born on 7 July 1863 and was educated at the United Services College, Westward Ho! Commissioned Second Lieutenant in the South Wales Borderers on 25 August 1883, he transferred to the Indian Army on 28 April 1885, and was ‘with the 11th Bengal Infantry in Burma in 1885; landed with General Norman’s 3rd Brigade and advanced on Minhla Fort. The advance was stopped by a heavy fire from a prepared position in the middle of dense bush; it took some sharp fighting and more than one bayonet charge before the Burmans were driven back upon Minhla by the 11th Bengal Infantry and the 12th Madras Infantry. Lieutenant Dury was killed in the jungle; total casualties were 1 officer and 4 men killed, and 4 officers and 27 men wounded.’

Dury was the first officer killed during the Third Burma War, on 17 November 1885, 11 days after the declaration of War. The poet and novelist Rudyard Kipling had tried unsuccessfully to persuade the editor of the Civil and Military Gazette to send him to Burma to cover the campaign as a journalist, and upon reading the casualty list he remembered that Dury had been a contemporary of his at the United Services College. In a letter to Lionel Dunsterville, Kipling wrote: ‘I tried to go to Burma for the paper but I couldn’t be spared. By the way, did you see that poor Durey [sic] was killed by those swine? There’s £1,800 worth of education gone to smash and a good fellow with it.’

The following year, Kipling would write ‘Arithmetic on the Frontier’, with the third stanza presumably inspired by Dury’s death:

‘A scrimmage in a Border Station
A canter down some dark defile
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail.
The Crammer’s boast, the Squadron’s pride,
Shot like a rabbit in a ride!’

Sold with copied research including an engraved image of the recipient.