TOPIC:

Major H.A. Stock early commander of D Company 2nd Battalion Wiltshire Regiment.

Herbert Alfred Stock was born on the 24th of February 1857 at Radcliffe, Lancashire. He was the second son of the Reverend Edward Peché Stock, rector of Windermere, and Penelope Cope.

There are very few surviving records regarding Stock, but it is known that he graduated from the Royal Military College Sandhurst in 1879 and joined the Wiltshire Regiment on the 13th of August that year as a Second Lieutenant. His record of service is also unusually limited in detail. It is known that he qualified in Musketry at the Army School of Musketry at Hythe, Kent, but the year is not recorded. Neither is the year recorded when he qualified in Military Engineering at Chatham.

Prior to the South African war it is known that he served in India with the 1st Battalion, between the 28th of September 1879 and the 20th of April 1881, gaining promotion to Lieutenant on the 16th of June 1880. On the 18th of April 1885, he was seconded for service on the Army Staff.

On the 21 July 1886, he married Eleanor
Constance Morrell at St George’s Church Hanover Square, London. The service was performed by his father, then Canon Edward Peché Stock.

On the 27th of January 1899 Stock was promoted Major. He was fluent in French and Hindustani.

On the 16th of December 1899, he left England with the 2nd Battalion Wiltshire
Regiment onboard the troopship Gascon to serve in the war in South Africa, in command of the ill-fated D Company.

On the 25th of January 1900, during an engagement at what the official casualty toll lists as Rietfontein, but it was actually Major General John French’s reconnaissance in force at Plessis Poort near Colesberg, Cape Colony, Stock was taken prisoner and beaten on the battlefield by his captors, one soldier witnessing him being punched in the face knocking his helmet off and being roughly man-handled as he was led away.

“I briefly saw Major Stock and two or three Boers standing just feet apart, they disarmed him and one struck him about the head knocking his helmet clean off and him almost to t h e ground! Just then a bullet whizzed past my ear, I swear I felt it pass me, so I returned fire towards the enemy, but I don’t know where that particular bullet had come from. When I looked back, I’m sure I saw the Major being roughly man-handled. At that moment a bullet ripped through my tunic and grazed my shoulder” 5228 Private W. Cook , D Company.

Stock was imprisoned at The Staats Model School in Pretoria until the city fell in June of that year. Upon their release, some of the prisoners were formed into a Composite Battalion and Major Stock and Lieutenant Prior of the Royal Engineers Militia, who had been attached to the Regiment and captured at Rensburg, were amongst the sixteen officers who led this composite force.

The men of D and G Companies who had been captured at Rensburg on the 14th of
February were amongst this force. This force held the Boers at bay at Honing Spruit on the 22nd of June in a desperate action where they themselves were armed with outdated rifles abandoned by the Boers.

Soon afterwards Major Stock left South Africa on Saturday the15th of September 1900 onboard the Kildonan Castle which The Times Shipping Report of 1900 states left with sick, wounded and passengers and arrived in Southampton on Saturday the 6th of October. He was awarded the Queen’s South Africa medal with three clasps (Cape Colony, Orange Free State and Transvaal).

By 1901 he had retired as a Major and was living in Norfolk. There, he established himself as a private tutor, but was widowed in 1911. He subsequently moved to the family home in Westmorland, where he died on the 29th of May 1935.