TOPIC:

Good find in Adelaide! Nice to know we still have some nice medals available here in Australia.

I also see it as a 9 bar, being 7 on the QSA and even better, he served longer to get 2 on the KSA. I have an 8 bar QSA and 2 bar KSA to the ASC. It might just be the ASC, but who has a 10 bar out there?

Cheers from Brisbane where it is a sunny and warm day!

Ryan

Hi Ryan,
Yours is a very good pair- I have always found the ASC to be very underated-they had the ability to serve all over the place and some of there stuff is probably unique to the British Army-the downside with the ASC is a lack of histories and the hardness of tracking their activities. A great 10 bar combination-if it had been waved under my nose I would have bought it.

A similar post I made on the British Medals Forum uncovered the 7 bar QSA/KSA to 7815 Lee which only brings the know survivors to 5 out of 42.
Also I discovered the 8 Bar to M.Lally sold last December at DNW.
The Paardeberg bar is the interesting one and I have now gone through the roll 3 times and have only came up with 92 awards of this clasp-3 Officers and 89 other ranks to the 2nd Coldstream Guards-I should have said earlier my man was with the second.
Has anybody any idea what this small number of men were doing at Paardeberg, obviously detached from the rest of the regiment-there was some suggestion they may have been used as mounted infantry-the histories seem to be very quiet on the subject.

I have now done a scan through DNW'S previous auctions back to 2011 and cannot find another 7 battle bar/KSA combination to the Coldstream Guards-plenty of 6 bars though and of course none have the elusive Paardeberg bar so a rare item, and I still cannot find any reference to what the 92 members of this regiment were doing there.

I eventually paid off my lay-bye and the medals arrived this week and I am delighted-they were also accompanied by a copy of his service papers-bonus. The interesting thing about his service papers is they record his death in 1910, I guess this is because he technically was still serving in the reserve when he died. He enlisted in Feb 1899 for three years of which he spent 2 years and 251 days in South Africa and then transferred to the reserve so when he died on the 1st of March 1910 he had only completed 11 years 27 days of his 12 year engagement. The soldiers papers list all 7 battle bars he qualified for and his two bars on the KSA-HAPPY CAMPER.

$35!

QSAMIKE wrote: Congratulations on your find........

The following may be of interest from my collection......

SHIELD, T. (THOMAS)

REG. NO.: 9574
RANK: PRIVATE
REGT: COLDSTREAM GUARDS
BARS: BELMONT, MODDER RIVER, PAARDEBERG, DRIEFONTEIN, JOHANNESBURG, DIAMOND HILL, BELFAST

DATE OF PURCHASE: SEPT. 10, 1960 (FIRST MEDAL I EVER PURCHASED)
PRICE AT TIME OF PURCHASE: $35.00

REMARKS / HISTORY:
1. KINGS SOUTH AFRICA MEDAL - USUAL TWO BARS

Mike