Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria, to include the Brian Ritchie Collection (Part II)

The outstanding campaign group to General Sir E. F. Chapman, K.C.B., Royal Artillery, Lord Roberts’ Chief of Staff and Quarter-Master of the Kabul to Kandahar Field Force, who later introduced the brothel system for British soldiers in India and became Master Gunner of St James’s Park

(a) The Order of St John of Jerusalem, Esquire’s breast badge, silver and enamel, maker’s mark AP, white enamel badly chipped

(b) Abyssinia 1867 (Lieut. E. F. Chapman, 21st Bde. R.A.)

(c) Afghanistan 1878-80, 2 clasps, Ahmed Khel, Kandahar (Bt. Lieut: Col: E. F. Chapman, R.A.)

(d) Kabul to Kandahar Star 1880 (Bt. Lt. Col. E. F. Chapman, Ryl. Artillery)

(e) India General Service 1854-94, 1 clasp, Burma 1885-87 (Major Genl. E. F. Chapman, R.A.)

(f) Jubilee 1887, clasp, 1897, silver, unnamed as issued, silver medals cleaned and lacquered, contact marks and pitting generally, otherwise nearly very fine and better (6) £2500-3000

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Brian Ritchie Collection of H.E.I.C. and British India Medals.

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Edward Francis Chapman, the son of Henry Chapman of Woodford, Essex, was born on 14 November 1840, and was commissioned Second Lieutenant in the Royal Artillery on 12 June 1858. In 1867-68 he served in the Abyssinian Expedition as A.D.C. to the officer commanding the Royal Artillery, and was mentioned in despatches (London Gazette 30 June 1868). Promoted Captain in 1872, Major in 1878 and Lieutenant-Colonel in 1879, he served in both campaigns of the Second Afghan War, firstly as Assistant-Quartermaster-General to Sir Donald Stewart’s Kandahar Field Force, which on the invasion of Afghanistan in 1878 occupied Kandahar and Kelat-i-Ghilzie. In early 1880 it was also decided that all the Bengal troops should be concentrated at Kabul and their places at Kandahar be taken by troops from the Bombay Presidency. As soon as the hand over was complete, Stewart left Kandahar with Chapman as D.A.Q.M.G. on 29 March 1880 with 7,000 men of the Ghazni and North Afghanistan Field Force to open up communications with Kabul where Roberts had wintered in the Sherpur cantonment.

On 19 April 1880 Chapman was present on the line of march when Stewart was attacked twenty-three miles south of Ghazni by 15,000 Afghan horse and foot, who swept down from a long undulating ridge near Ahmed Khel. The Afghan onslaught put the British under extreme pressure and it was only Colonel Lyster’s success in rapidly forming his regiment, the 3rd Gurkhas, into company squares at the critical moment that saved the day. Colonel H. S. Anderson (qv) tried to emulate the tactic at Maiwand but failed with tragic results. British losses at Ahmed Khel were 17 killed and 115 wounded whilst the Afghans suffered 1,000 dead and in excess of 2,000 wounded. Ghazni was occupied by Stewart’s cavalry without a shot being fired shortly afterwards, and on 22 April the force had another encounter six miles south east of Ghazni at Arzu where Chapman was also present. Arzu was principally an artillery engagement carried out to dislodge a party of the enemy who had taken post there and in the village of Shalez. In May the Ghazni Field Force became the Third Division of the Kabul Field Force and moved into the fertile Logar valley near Kabul where it remained in occupation until the policy of withdrawal from northern Afghanistan was put into effect.

Following the British disaster at the Battle of Maiwand west of Kandahar, Roberts at Kabul received authorization on 3 August from the Viceroy, Lord Ripon, to march to the relief of the Kandahar garrison which was now besieged by the victorious Ayub Khan. Chapman was appointed Chief of Staff to Roberts’s Kabul-Kandahar Field Force which made its epic march of three hundred and thirteen miles between 9 and 31 August 1880. The approach of Roberts’s force caused considerable dread in southern Afghanistan, and by this time Ayub himself was anxious to depart for home in Herat realising there was little more that he could achieve. His escape route, however, was blocked by the warlike Zamindawar clans. In an article describing the march to Kandahar, published in Blackwood’s Magazine in February 1902 (p.260 et seq.), Chapman commented on the deserted nature of the countyside, which, of course, as Quartermaster he found exasperating in the extreme: ‘After leaving Khelat-i-Ghilzai we found the entire country deserted; the villages for a hundred miles had been abandoned, and the people had gone, taking flocks and herds and household goods, but burying their precious things, with grain and flour, in the fields, under the hearths, or even under dung-hills, hiding them in the roofs of their houses ...’

Two marches on from Khelat, Roberts learned that Ayub Khan had raised the siege of Kandahar and had withdrawn to the left bank of the Argundab. The news was a day or two old, and as his movements depended on the enemy’s he sent ahead Brigadier-General Hugh Gough with a small force to Robat where heliograph communications were to be opened with General Primrose in Kandahar and the actual state of affairs in and around the city were to be ascertained. Roberts would have gone as well but he was prostrated with fever, and so he sent Chapman instead. Riding rapidly Gough reached Robat at midday on the 28th, flashed his presence to Kandahar and received in return the welcome news that Ayub was still close to the city - intelligence which Chapman quickly sent back to Roberts, who later wrote, ‘On the advice of Lieutenant-Colonel Chapman, whose intimate acquaintance with the neighbourhood of Kandahar gained while serving on Sir Donald Stewart’s staff, was now most valuable to me, I determined to take up a position to the west of the city, with my right on the cantonment and my left touching Old Kandahar. This enabled me to cover the city, gave me command of a good supply of water, and placed me within striking distance of of Ayub Khan’s camp.’ On 31 August, the eve of the battle of Kandahar, Chapman was again detached from the main force to reconnoitre Ayub’s strongly entrenched position north of the city, and in Roberts’ words ‘was of great assistance to Brigadier-General Gough’.

For services in the Second Afghan War, Chapman received a Brevet Lieutenant-Colonelcy, and was twice mentioned in despatches. In 1881 he was further rewarded with a C.B., and that same year appointed an A.D.C. to the Queen, and Military Secretary, with the rank of full Colonel, to the Commander-in-Chief in India, Sir Donald Stewart. In 1885-86 he served in the Burma expedition, and between 1885-89 was Quartermaster-General, India. While Q.M.G. he introduced a system of organised native brothels for British Other Ranks in the hope of reducing the incidence of V.D. Promoted Major-General in 1889 and Lieutenant-General 1893, he was Director of Military Intelligence at the War Office, 1891-96, and G.O.C., Scotland, in 1896-1901. He became General on 15 March 1896 and was appointed a Knight Commander of the Bath on 6 May 1906. General Chapman reached the apogee of his branch in 1913, being appointed Master Gunner of St. James’s Park. He died on 12 May 1926.

Refs: Debrett’s Peerage, Baronetage, Knightage and Companionage, 1921; Roberts In India, The Military Papers of Field Marshal Lord Roberts 1876-1893; The Second Afghan War (Hanna); The Afghan Campaign of 1878-1880 (Shadbolt); Forty-One Years in India (Roberts).