Major Edward Robertson Gordon, 9th Lancers in the Boer War (1899-1902)
Captain Edward Robertson Gordon, 9th Lancers, in South Africa during the Boer War (1899-1902) (family collection).
Major Edward Robertson Gordon was my great-great-great uncle, the eldest son of Captain Thomas Edward Gordon of the 14th Light Dragoons. Edward was born in New Zealand on 24 February 1864, educated at United Services College in Devon and saw extensive service with the 9th Lancers during the Boer War. During the war he commanded D Squadron, briefly commanded the regiment in the field in January 1902, was wounded and was Mentioned in Despatches. Following the war he and Lieutenant Colonel F.F. Colvin co-authored Diary of the Ninth Lancers in South Africa 1899-1902 (London, Cecil Roy, 1904), one of the most detailed regimental histories to emerge from the Boer War; in it Gordon’s involvement can be traced over two and a half years of active service in South Africa.
The volume Gordons under Arms: a Biographical Muster Roll of Officers named Gordon (C.O. Skelton and J.M. Bullock, Aberdeen University, 1912) contains a summary of his service, alongside that of his father and of his uncle William Cracroft Gordon (who had been an officer in the 9th Lancers during the 1850s). The details are drawn from the Army Lists, which include an officer’s dates of promotion, regiment and any active service. They show that he was commissioned first into the 3rd (Militia) Battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, on 23 February 1884. A militia commission was an alternative to Sandhurst as a route to a commission in a regular infantry or cavalry regiment, which he achieved on 25 November 1885 when he became a Lieutenant in the 2nd Dragoon Guards (The Queen’s Bays). He spend much of the next decade with the regiment in India, first at Umballa and then at Sialkot, and was promoted to Captain on 18 September 1895. After the 2nd Dragoon Guards returned to England he transferred to the 9th Lancers, on 16 December 1896, and went with them to South Africa - where they were stationed from August 1896 to March 1898 and then on to Muttra in India. The 9th Lancers returned to South Africa in October 1899 soon after the outbreak of war and did not sail back to India until March 1902. Gordon was promoted to Major on 15 March 1904 and retired from the Army after the regiment returned to England in 1906, when he left to run his father’s sheep station at Hawke’s Bay in New New Zealand.
The Army List for 1906 contains the following summary of his war service:
The 9th Lancers suffered 203 casualties during the war, killed or otherwise died, wounded or missing - about one in three of the normal complement - as well as many horses, including almost a hundred lost during a storm in the passage from India to South Africa. The regiment covered more than 8,500 miles during the campaign, not including reconnaissance and patrolling. As a result of their Boer War experience the 9th Lancers were considered ‘battle-hardened’ at the outbreak of the First World War, though the experience of skirmishing and chasing Boers across the veldt was little preparation for the machine guns and artillery of the Western Front. On my mother’s side, my grandfather Tom Verrinder and his brother both served in the 9th Lancers during the First World War, and my grandfather knew a number of the older enlisted men and officers of the regiment who had served during the Boer War at the same time as Edward Gordon.
This blog is a work in progress and will be expanded as more photographs are added.
PhotographsThis image and the close-up below it shows almost 500 officers present at the Relief of Kimberley. Several copies are known to exist, including one in the Gordon family collection. Captain E.R. Gordon is identified in the caption as No. 167.
