Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria, to include the Brian Ritchie Collection (Part III)

The rare Maiwand D.C.M. group of four awarded to Sergeant Frederick Lovell, 66th Foot, late 3rd Foot, the senior N.C.O. of his regiment to be decorated for Maiwand

(a) Distinguished Conduct Medal, V.R. (Sergt. F. Lovell, 66th Foot)

(b) India General Service 1854-94, 1 clasp, Perak (1980 Private F. Lovell, 1/3rd Foot)

(c) Afghanistan 1878-80, 1 clasp, Kandahar (B/1503 Sergt. F. Lovell, 6th Foot)

(d) Army L.S. & G.C., V.R., small letter reverse (1503 Sergt. F. Lovell, Rl. Berks. Regt.) contact marks, otherwise toned, very fine £6000-8000

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Brian Ritchie Collection of H.E.I.C. and British India Medals.

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Frederick Lovell, a Labourer by trade, was born at Lane End, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, and enlisted in H.M’s 3rd Regiment on 16 June 1870, at the age of eighteen. On 31 December of that year, he sailed for India, and in 1875-76 took part with his regiment in operations in Perak. Shortly after the end of this campaign, Lovell transferred to H.M’s 66th Regiment, though exactly when is not recorded on his service record, which notes ‘Original sheet lost at Maiwand’. In December 1878, Lovell moved with the 66th from Bombay to Karachi, where the corps remained until early 1880, when it was selected as one of the two British battalions which were to form part of the Bombay Brigade and relieve the Bengal troops in southern Afghanistan.

On arrival at Kandahar in March, the 66th, now part of the 1st Brigade of the 1st Division, Kandahar Field Force, went into cantonments and followed an uneventful routine, enlivened only by the occasional reconnaissance of the surrounding country, and interrupted in Lovell’s case by eight days spent in hospital with bronchitis.


In early July, the 66th was detailed to join the 2,300-strong Girishk Column under Brigadier-General G. R. S. Burrows which marched from Kandahar on the 4th, in support of the army of the Wali of Kandahar and at the approach of Ayub Khan from Herat. On 14 July the Wali’s troops mutinied near the Helmand River and were dispersed by Burrows’ force, leaving them to face Ayub Khan’s army which had swollen to more than 12,000 infantry and cavalry

At the famous reverse to British arms at Maiwand on the 27th, the 66th Foot were distributed as follows: fifteen officers and 343 other ranks in the fighting line; four officers and and sixty-three men with the baggage; and one officer and forty two men with the smooth-bore battery (taken from the Wali’s gunners). A breakdown of the 66th’s casualty statistics on that fateful day indicates the fortunes of the regiment. Eight were killed and two seriously wounded in the fighting line before the men of Jacob’s Rifles, under Colonel W. G. Mainwaring (Ritchie 1-126), on the 66th’s left were driven into their ranks due to the attempt by the Bombay Grenadiers, under Colonel H. S. Anderson (See Lot 103), on the far right to form company squares. In the chaotic retreat that followed, and during the attempt to make a stand at the village of Khig, 216 Berkshires were killed and 28 wounded (67% of the regiment’s strength in the fighting line). A further forty-five men of the 66th were either killed, died or went missing during the retreat of thirty miles to Kandahar. In addition to these staggering losses, the 66th lost both its Colours and most of the regimental documents.

Having reached Kandahar in one piece, Lovell was quartered with the remnant of his regiment in the Barrack Square, and served through the siege of the city, often under fire on working parties by day and guard duty by night. On the arrival of Sir Frederick Roberts and his force from Kabul, Lovell was present at the defeat of Ayub Khan and his followers in the battle of Kandahar on 1 September, with the ‘Service Company, Field Reserve, 1st Brigade’, under Colonel Daubney. Lovell quitted Kandahar with his regiment a month later, and, making short halts at Quetta and Karachi, reached Bombay on 28 November, whence the corps was sent up to the small hill station of Khandalla on the Western Ghats.

On 19 January 1881, after ten years and twenty days service in the East, Sergeant Lovell embarked for England. In the meantime, the Commander-in-Chief, H.R.H. the Duke of Cambridge, addressed the matter of gallantry awards and submitted: ‘That a Silver Medal for distinguished Conduct in the Field be granted, without Annuity or Gratuity to each of the undermentioned Soldiers in recognition of their gallant conduct in the action of Khursk-i-Nakhud, or Maiwand, on the 27th July last. 66th Foot. Sergeant Frederick Lovell, Private Edward Battle, Lance Corporal John Martin, Lance Corporal Frederick Williams, Private Charles Kidgell, and Private William Clayton.’ The submissions were duly approved and signed by the Queen, and on 17 August, the D.C.M. recipents (with the exception of Kidgell who had died) were included in the detachment of twelve officers and 200 men of the regiment, who marched under Colonel Hogge from Parkhurst on the Isle of Wight ‘to Osborne where they paraded before Her Majesty’. While presenting the medals to Lovell and the others, ‘Her Majesty addressed a few words to each of them’. In view of the loss of the 66th’s Colours at Maiwand and those of the 24th Foot at Isandhlwana to the Zulus in 1879, it was decided that never again would a regiment take its Colours with it on active service, but would instead lay them up before departure. On the followin day, the Queen presented the regiment with new Colours.

Between 1881 and his discharge nearly ten years later, Lovell was stationed successively at Gosport, Chatham, Athlone, Templemore and Dublin. On leaving the 2nd Berkshires in 1891, he immediately re-enlisted in the Army Service Corps with the rank of Barrack Sergeant, and in October 1892 was promoted to Barack Colour-Sergeant. On 31 March 1896, he was finally discharged ‘with a view to an immediate appointment as Barrack Warden’, which appointment he duly took up.

Refs: History of the 66th Foot - The Berkshires (Groves); WO 97/3317: WO 146/1; WO 100/45; WO 100/52.