Cape Garrison Artillery - view from the medal roll

The standard reference for colonial units is Stirling's The Colonials in South Africa (London, William Blackwood, 1907) which is widely used. I have taken the text below from Stirling and added nuggets from the scarce but useful The Armed Forces of South Africa, Major G Tylden (Johannesburg, Africana Museum, 1954). To this is added information derived from The Register and especially it's casualty roll and medal roll.

Raised 1891 as the Cape Garrison Artillery and Engineer Corps. The “Engineer Corps” was dropped from 1897. Volunteer status was dropped in January 1899. Mobilised in October 1899, the strength being 373. Throughout the war they did much good work. During 1900 they were chiefly employed on the western railway and west of the line. A section was for some months operating under Sir C Warren and other leaders against the Griqualand rebels. The corps assisted in garrisoning various important posts. Some were in Jacobsdal when that town was attacked on 25th October, and some were in the relieving force. In his telegram of 31st August 1900 Lord Roberts deals with an attack on Kraaipan station, in which he remarks: "Sergeant Southrood, Cape Garrison Artillery, behaved with great gallantry".

In 1901 detachments of this corps garrisoned, along with the Cape Town Highlanders and various locally raised troops, the towns in the extreme west of Cape Colony and sundry posts right up to the border of German South-West Africa, which were successfully held against repeated attacks.

A detachment was part of the little garrison of O'okiep. These men are unfortunatley not able to be identified.

Lieutenant J C Campbell of the CGA was, when serving with an armoured train, unfortunately killed in an accident north of Pretoria on 8th May 1902.

The Mentions gained by the corps were:

LORD ROBERTS' DESPATCH: 2nd April 1901.—Driver Rodger (DCM).

LORD KITCHENER'S DESPATCH: 23rd June 1902. — Lieutenant Colonel T E Lawton (DSO); Captain J Sampson; Company Sergeant Major W G Duncan; Sergeants W Lewis, RGA, F C Honey, W Carruthers (DCM), W Vye (DCM).

There are a total 958 names on the QSA roll of the Cape Garrison Artillery (WO100-240). Apart from Kitchener’s Horse above a number of men served in other South African units. But men from “overseas” units such as Lord Strathcona’s Horse (1), Army Service Corps (2), Canadian Infantry (1), Canadian Artillery (1), Royal Scots Fusiliers (1 officer), Royal Irish Regiment (1) and a sailor from HMS Monarch chose to join the CGA. Trpr 8457 RJM Horne of the Imperial Yeomanry secured himself a commission in the CGA.

The unit only suffered 10 battle casualties with just one man being killed, Gnr 637 GM Stephens at Brugspruit, four wounded and the remainder missing or POW. Three died of injuries and a further 17 died from disease.

The medal rolls reveal an unexpected and startling statistic, of the 958 men who served with the CGA 76 are marked as deserters – 7% of the unit. The medal roll simply states “deserter”, no place or date is given. Deserters were additionally marked “no medal”, one may assume the desertion took place during the war. The CGA was demobilised on 30 June, 1902 releasing every enlistee but continued as a part-time unit.

None of these men are noted in the Official casualty rolls – more new data only available in The Register. However, it raises the question, “why are they not on the official casualty rolls?”. Was the unit admin slack in that respect or as the unit was not involved in the front line then these desertions were not considered for “casualty reporting”? Every deserter was an original enlistee in the CGA which may indicate they were simply bored with rear echelon soldiering. Only nine deserters have been traced to serve in another South African unit.

Given the unit’s lack of frontline service they did not earn any battle bars as a unit. A QSA with a battle bar indicates service in another unit such as Kitchener’s Horse. State clasps, Cape Colony, Orange Free State are common, Transvaal, less so.

Given the flow of men into and out of the unit the King’s South Africa medal is scarce to the CGA. There are 444 men on the roll.

When researching the history of a unit the medal roll should not be ignored as a source of new information and insights.