Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, 3 clasps, Cape Colony, Tugela Heights, Relief of Ladysmith (2102 Corl. E. Mabey, Somerset Lt. Infy.) edge bruising, otherwise good very fine £250-300

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Collection of Medals to the 13th Regiment and Somerset Light Infantry.

View
Collection

Edwin Mabey was born in the parish of Haselbury Plucknett, near Crewkerne and enlisted in the Somerset Light Infantry in November 1887, aged 20 years. Advanced to Lance-Corporal in November of the following year, he served on garrison duty on Gibraltar from 1891-93 and in the East Indies from 1893-95, in which latter year he returned home and was placed on the Army Reserve.

Called up on the outbreak of hostilities in South Africa, Mabey was severely wounded at Grobelaar’s Kloof, on the Colenso kopjes, on 21 February 1900. His service record states that his wounds were ‘Severe, head, arm and rt. leg’, while an accompanying original newspaper cutting goes further:

‘A Very Wounded Corporal

Corporal E. Mabey, of the 2nd Somerset, was wounded at Colenso. He had a bullet in each arm, two bullets in his head, another through one of his thumbs and a sixth one in his left leg. He lay four weeks in hospital at Mooi River, but is now quite well again and on his way to the front.’

Mabey was discharged in November 1900. See also Lots 341 and 343.