REVIEW: ORDERS, DECORATIONS, MEDAL AND MILITARIA: 20 MAY

When Michael Frederic Rimington was gazetted to a lieutenancy in the 6th (Inniskilling) Dragoons in October 1881 at the age of 23, it was the beginning of an outstanding military career. As a heroic, almost legendary figure in The South Africa War, he overshadowed his superiors, and he eventually rose to the highest ranks of the military and became Inspector of Cavalry in India.

Now the important Boer War and Great War K.C.B., C.V.O. group of nine awarded to Lieutenant-General Sir M. F. Rimington, 6th Inniskilling Dragoons – the notorious Commandant of Rimington’s Guides during the Boer War – has trebled its estimate to sell for £18,000 in this sale.

Born on May 23, 1858, Rimington’s early life involved Highgate School and then Keble College, Oxford, where he took his degree before passing into the Army as a university candidate and joining the 6th (Inniskilling) Dragoons in Natal where they were quartered at the end of the Boer War.

It was a time of upheaval as the Boer Government of the Transvaal pushed to take possession of Bechuanaland, in direct breach of the Pretoria Convention, while the British feared that German territory on the west might readily be extended to join with that of the Boers.

In 1882, the British sent an expeditionary force of 4,000 men under Major-General Sir Charles Warren to remove the threat pending further measures. The 6th Dragoons, including Rimington, were part of the force and took the whole country under British protection without firing a shot.

By 1886, Rimington had become adjutant of his regiment and was promoted captain in October 1887. The following year the British annexed Zululand, prompting Dinizulu, a Zulu chief, to rebel. The Inniskillings took part in the counter action, and Dinizulu surrendered in November 1888.

The 6th Dragoons now came home from South Africa. Rimington was promoted major in the spring of 1897, and in September was appointed staff captain on the Remount Establishment, a post which he held until the end of June 1899. By this time relations with the Dutch Republics had become strained, and Rimington went out to the Cape as a special service officer, the date of his appointment being July 1.

Now aged 41, he came into his own when commissioned to raise a corps competent to act as guides in any part of the sub-continent. Its official title was Rimington’s Guides, but it became better known as Rimington’s Tigers owing to the strip of wild-cat skin with which the headdresses of the men were adorned.

This hard-fighting body of men developed into a corps of scouts supplying guides to the Army. At their head, Rimington proved himself an admirable leader of light irregular horse; his men were veterans of the many South African wars – Zulu, Basuto, Kaffir, Boer, or Matabele; they bad been carefully, even individually, selected, and trained on novel and unofficial lines; and they would have followed their major anywhere.

“He ought to have lived 500 years ago and dressed in chain-mail, and led out his lances to plunder and foray,” one of them said of him. “Picturesque is the word that best describes him. He makes every one else look hopelessly commonplace. His men admire him immensely, like him a good deal. Generals in command sometimes find him, I fancy, a bit of a handful, that is, if their policy is at all a backward one. He is essentially a man who means business, who believes that the Army is here to fight, and it is especially in action that he makes his value felt. In all scouting operations in our frequent long patrols, he shows the same mixture of prudence and daring: he has never got trapped or cut off; he has an extraordinarily good eye for country.”

Under Rimington the Tigers fought at Enslin and Modder River. Given the command of the regiment in September 1900, he served all over the three Colonies in the operations round Colesberg, the relief of Kimberley, at Paardeberg, Driefontein, Johannesburg, Diamond Hill, and in the Wittebergen, sometimes leading very mobile columns; he was five times mentioned in dispatches, was made
C.B., and given a brevet lieutenant-colonelcy and ten clasps to the two war medals.

Rimington became a substantive colonel in January 1903, and in the same month was appointed to command the 3rd Cavalry Brigade at home with the rank of Brigadier-General. Four years later he was appointed to command the Secunderabad Cavalry Brigade, and in March 1911, by now a major-general, was appointed Inspector of Cavalry in India.

He commanded the Escort at the 1911 Delhi Durbar and was appointed colonel of his old regiment (now the 5th Inniskilling Dragoon Guards) in June 1912.

The outbreak of the Great War found Rimington still in post in India, and he followed the infantry of the Indian Contingent to France as commander of the Indian Cavalry Corps, serving during that first terrible winter, and until the Indians were withdrawn from the European theatre of war and there was no longer any scope for a cavalry corps commander.

Twice again he was mentioned in dispatches and was appointed a Commander of the Legion of Honour.

Major-General Rimington was commander of a Reserve Centre from April 1916 to January 1918, awarded a distinguished service reward in August 1919, and promoted K.C.B. in 1921. He retired in July 1919, with the rank of lieutenant-general.

Dying at the age of 70, Rimington’s Times obituary noted that all over the Empire the death of ‘Mike’ Rimington will be received with real sorrow, for men of all kinds of units, regular and irregular, had served under him and know his remarkable personality and powers of leadership.

As well as his Boer War and Great War K.C.B., C.V.O. sets of insignia, the group of nine included Rimington’s Queen’s South Africa medal 1899-1902, with 8 clasps (for Belmont, Modder River, Paardeberg, Driefontein, Johannesburg, Diamond Hill, Wittebergen, and Relief of Kimberley); the King’s South Africa medal 1901-02, with 2 clasps (South Africa 1901, South Africa 1902); the 1914 Star, with clasp; British War and Victory Medals, with M.I.D. oak leaves; the Delhi Durbar medal 1911, in silver; and the Legion of Honour, Commander’s neck badge, gold and enamels.

Accompanying the lot were several original documents including the Royal Military College Half Yearly Report of Gentleman Cadet Rimington (December 1880 – Exemplary); R.M.C. vellum Certificate of proficiency in Military Topography and Riding (August 1881); two Horse Guards, War Office letters relating to his Lieutenancy in the 6th Dragoons (October 1881); and a copy of the Special Order of the Day upon giving up the Command of the Indian Cavalry Corps (4th March 1916); together with four Boer War period photographs, a large print of Rimington on horseback titled ‘Rimington of Rimington’s Guides, S. Africa 1899 to 1902’, and another print from the I.L.N. or similar.