Thanks Shaun, I'd looked on the Internet but didn't spot the info you found.
That gives me dates for where Albert was in South Africa.
He was born in 1858 in Reading so 21 during the Zulu wars and the war against Sekhukhone but why in the Royal Scots Fusiliers where he'd have had to wear a kilt and a drummer which, perhaps wrongly, I thought were usually younger lads.
I've also been looking for any info regarding Albert's enlistment and his discharge but it seems scarce, I know where he was in 1871 and 1891 from the censuses but he's missing in 1881 so presumably still in the army somewhere. He married in Q2 1890 so must have been around Reading for a while prior to that especially as his bride came from a village some miles from Reading
He's not an ancestor of mine, he's the father of my favourite uncle who married my father's eldest sister but I do have his 1879 South Africa medal and I'm trying to find out as much about him as I can. My uncle and aunt had one child, a son, but he died without children and it's been left to two cousins to sort out the estate and they gave me my uncle's and Albert's medals. My uncle fought in the Crimea, was shot through the neck, twice on ships that were torpedoed and his latter career was the highly dangerous one of checking munitions stored in an ordnance depot, some of which were WW1 16" naval shells and the cordite charges that propelled them, making sure none were 'sweating' which could have led to a catastrophic explosion. I want to record their lives as it seems a shame that their stories are forgotten.
