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The account below of the courage and dedication of a Native Scout was written in her diary by Kate Driver, a nurse attached to the Natal Carbineers during the Siege of Ladysmith.

Brett

Brett,

That's a very courageous story recorded by Kate Driver.

The milk must have been a luxury indeed and I wonder how much 4% of can in every 24 hours equated to? Not very much I would imagine.

With thanks
David

I posted this pic on the Badge Forum but the members of that forum tend to look at the badge as an object rather than the history that attaches to it. Generally , as badges are unnamed , that approach is warranted , but in this case the epaulettes were disposed of by a relative of Robert Charles Azariah Samuelson , who as Brett mentioned earlier ( ok, 5 years ago !) commanded the Natal Native Scouts in the Boer War and raised the Natal Native Horse for the 1906 Zulu Rebellion. I'm glad that he decided to keep the titles on the original cloth epaulettes as I have never seen them to be pre prepared for a range of officer ranks.
The chap from whom I bought the titles also had an original photograph of Cetewayo . Salmuelson was Cetewayo's interpreter at some stage and was the author of the well known book , Long long ago. The photo is of Cetewayo as a young man in traditional animal skins He wants to sell the photo if anyone is interested

Hello Mike,
Those epaulettes are particularly nice examples, complete with their Natal made titles, I like them very much, have the rank stars survived, I assume they would have been the usual handsome ones, bought by officers of the Natal Volunteers and Militia.
Regards Frank

Hi Frank,
These particular epaulettes look as if they were never fitted with rank stars. There were a few rank stars with the "hoard ' of bits and pieces of which the epaulettes were but a part. Do you have a picture of what the corrects rank looked like ?
As an aside ( and not relevant to this post or even the Forum ) the hoard included two WW1 aluminium canisters designed to be tied to the legs of carrier pigeons . What was particularly interesting was that one still contained a message which gave battlefield information written in pencil on a rice paper pre printed message sheet. The message ended . "Please send Pigeons "
Regards
Mike

That's quite a collection, Mike. How did you identify the pigeon message containers?