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QSA: with 4 clasps: CC.OFS, TR, SA01, SA02 officially named to: 2985. PTE T. SYRIA. 107TH COY IMP. YEO.
Thomas Foster Syria, was born at Biggar, Lanarkshire in 1881, a shoe maker by trade he was serving with the 9th Lanarkshire Rifle Volunteers when he volunteered for the Imperial Yeomanry for service in South Africa on the 19/2/1901 at Lanark. He was originally posted to the 17th Company, but was transferred to the 107th Company, 6th Battalion 17/04/1901. He served in South Africa 6/3/1901 – 4/8/1902. The roll records show he was captured at Brakspruit on 13/11/1901 and released. He returned home, and was discharged on 11/8/1902 in Aldershot. He died in Glasgow in 1945.
Taken prisoner of war (P.O.W.) 13/11/1901:
Captured at Palmietfontein Hill on 13 November 1901, Gazetteer refers: 'On 13, November 1901 Lt-Col WB Hickie based at the farm Brakspruit sent out a force of about 95 officers and men from the 103rd and 107th companies Imperial Yeomanry commanded by Major Haughton, IY to reconnoiter the hill in search of the enemy. Three miles from the hill Major Haughton sent four troops under Captain Woolf to occupy the hill while he remained behind with 1 and a half troops. Captain Woolf signaled back that there was a party of mounted men under a hill two miles to the right. As Major Haughton tried to identify these men he was attacked from the right rear by a large party of 300 Boers. They held the Boers off for 1 and a half hours before surrendering, elements of Captain Woolf's party were also captured. British losses were five men killed, four mortally wounded, 14 wounded and 70 captured.' In this action, the Boers lost 4 killed and 8 wounded.
Another version reports:
Meanwhile, Boer resistance continued in the western Transvaal. Lt-Col W B Hickie, with a force of mounted troops and infantry, totaling about 870 men, was engaged in covering the construction of blockhouses on the Schoonspruit. On 13 November 1901, Hickie lost heavily at the farm, Brakspruit, 32km north-east of Klerksdorp, when two squadrons of Imperial Yeomanry (drawn from the 103rd and 107th Coys, 2nd Bn, and the 107th Coy, 6th Bn, IY), whom he had sent forward to reconnoiter, were destroyed. Ten men were killed or mortally wounded, eleven were wounded, and 64 were taken prisoner. In this action, the Boers lost four men killed and eight wounded (Wilson, Vol II, p 856; Maurice & Grant, Vol V, pp 339-40, 348; Watt, 2000; and Amery, Vol V, p 229)