Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, 4 clasps, Cape Colony, Transvaal, South Africa 1901, South Africa 1902 (4389 Pte. F. J. Blakeman, 6th Dragoons) good very fine

With an original photograph in full dress uniform of the Inniskilling Dragoons and an original newspaper cutting which reads:

‘Birmingham Soldier’s Heroism and Death

Private F. J. Blakeman, 6th Inniskilling Dragoons, who has died from enteric at Heilbron, is another Birmingham man who has lost his life in his country's service, his parents living at 13, Lodge Road, Aston. He was severely wounded on December 1st 1901, when Colonels Rimington and Wilson were surrounded by the force under De Wet. His escape from death on that occasion was miraculous. In fact he was the only one of a small party of Inniskillings who charged the main body of the Boers, who was not killed. His wounds healed but left his right leg temporarily useless, so that he was unable to ride. He would have been invalided home, but so eager was he to rejoin his column that he prevailed upon the authorities to let him remain in South Africa so that he could rejoin at the earliest possible moment. They found him work to do in the Hospital Stores, and there he contracted the fever that has proved fatal to him.’

Private Blakeman was severely wounded at Victoria Spruit, Orange River Colony on 30 November 1901 and died of enteric, aged 20, at Heilbron hospital on 29 March 1902. Another Inniskilling Dragoon patient suffering from enteric in Heilbron hospital at the time that Blakeman worked and died there was Lieutenant L. E. G. Oates, later to become famous as the Captain Oates that walked to his death in the Antarctic during Captain Scott’s ill-fated expedition to the South Pole in 1912. Blakeman is buried in Heilbron Town cemetery and is commemorated on the 6th Inniskilling Dragoons and Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers memorial at Enniskillen and also the impressive memorial to the Memory of the Sons of Birmingham who fell in the South African War which stands in Cannon Hill Park, Birmingham.