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Hi David

It’s probably Charles Henri Perrin.

Very interesting, David.

This photograph, previously posted by you, appears to show one of the brass-headed "5 pr" incendiary shells that Baden-Powell refers to. Although described as a 5 pr shell, this was fired by a Transvaal Staatsartillerie 60 mm Krupp BL Mountain Gun. One example was used at Mafeking, normally stationed in the Brickfields. Due to the gun’s light shell weight, the British referred to it as “Gentle Annie”. It was captured during the Boer withdrawal, on 17 May 1900 (MC Heunis, 2005).

SEE: Two castings from Thomas Begbie’s Johannesburg foundry








.Courtesy of Tinus le Roux





Taylor 1900, Plate 31, “Group of Cape Police, Div II., with 5-pounder [sic] Gun, captured from the Boers on the 17th of May, the date of the Relief of Mafeking. This body of men was successful in driving the Boers from their position in the Brickfields, after a long period of entrenching and counter-entrenching work”.



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In “Lessons from the “Varsity of life”” Baden-Powell says:

“Some letters came to us from the Boers on one or two occasions in an unorthodox way, being fired into the town in shells. They were to convey news of their friends to Boer families we had in the place. In one instance the gunner who fired the shell said that he only wished he had something to drink our health in. This was so nice of him that I sent him out a bottle of whisky under the white flag.
When I was in South Africa again recently a man came to me in De Aar and said that for many years he had wanted to meet me and thank me for an excellent bottle of whisky I had sent him, and this was my friend the gunner.”

Perhaps he was referring to Perrin….

More photographs of the aftermath of the explosion.








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