The two medals for the Boer War were the QSA (Queen South Africa medal) and the KSA (Kings South Africa medal). You could win the QSA by itself, but you could only win the KSA with a QSA. You got a KSA if you served for 18 months or more. The KSA came with clasps for “South Africa 1901” and “South Africa 1902” while there were another 24 that could be won with the QSA.
The fact that he was awarded a QSA with five clasps means that he must have been involved before the fall of Pretoria in June 1900. So I doubt very much that you will find him on the 1901 census. If you can discover which clasps he received you can work out what he did in South Africa.
He is probably wearing the ribbons for the two medals in the photograph. By colour do you mean ribbon? He would have received the medal as well.
I think that 2/1110 is his regimental number with “2/” meaning the second battalion. But I cannot tell you which regiment used that way of numbering. This would have been on the rim (edge) of both medals, along with his rank, initials, name and regiment. Even if you find his regiment you will have to go to Kew to look through the medal rolls (in WO100) to see which clasps he received. Or you can find an expert in that particular regiment who has bothered to print off a set – there could be up to 500 pages covering the whole regiment.
The best next step is to either visit Kew yourself or to employ a researcher to look to see if his papers survive (in WO97). These are in alphabetical order so you do not need his regiment. It will take about 20 minutes to confirm if they survive or not. You could try -
http://www.roll-of-honour.com/Databases/BoerDetailed/index.html - to see if he was taken prisoner or wounded, but the site is down at the moment.
There was almost certainly a break in service between the Boer War and WW1 so you have two chances of finding some papers.
Ken
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Topic: Boer & WW1 Lookup please (Read 3530 times)