EK 1914 Mystery German medal to British recipient

[lilo]

At Kings' College there are not only his diary with his papers !

If I have well read this entry :

'''Unpublished account by Macleod entitled 'A secret service agent in South-West Africa: Ironside's story as told to me and from notes he left behind', detailing the service of FM (William) Edmund Ironside, 1st Baron of Archangel and Ironside, as a British agent in South Africa, German South West Africa and British Bechuanaland, 1902-1904, including the search for outlaw Boers north of the Orange River, 1902-1903, the Bondelzwart and Hereros Rising in German South West Africa, 1903-1904, Ironside's covert conscription into the German army disguised as a Boer transport driver, 1904. 1 vol.''''

(http://www.kcl.ac.uk/lhcma/cats/macleod/ma32-01-.htm)

??it contain the Unpublished account by Macleod entitled 'A secret service agent in South-West Africa: Ironside's story as told to me and from notes he left behind'

As this account can clear all the matter, I have already sent an email to the Kings' College (finally I found it).

Now we will wait till their answer !

Lilo

Edited January 12, 2009 by lilo

[Chris Boonzaier]

Whatever the real story turns out to be... I am really, really eager to hear it.

Cant wait for you to post it!

best

Chris

[Ralph]

I have had some e-mail correspondence with "lilo" and mentioned that there appears to have been two medals that may have been possibilities

Preussiche Kriegsverdienst Medaille

Deutsche Kreigsverdienst Medaille.

I believe both the above were awarded to Foreign Soldiers in the pay of the German Army.

Unfortunately I do not have much knowledge on German Awards(yet) so I might be hopelessly off track on this - If so please be gentle with me!!!

Ralph

[Arthur R]

For what it's worth as a story, if not necessarily accurate history: from South African author Lawrence G, Green's To the River's End (1948) --

--- extract ---

One day during the German-Hottentot War the Cape Mounted Police officer at Rietfontein [in the northern Cape] sent this message by helio: "European arrived here in exhausted state, alleges name is Ironside, Imperial officer employed on special service, please verify and instruct."

The exhausted man who had trudged through the desert and across the border was no impostor. He was Captain Ironside of the Royal Artillery, later Field Marshal Sir Edmund Ironside. In the early years of this century Ironside was posted to Roberts Heights as an intelligence officer. He learnt to speak Afrikaans like a Transvaal Boer; then he grew a beard and slipped across into German South-West Africa to find out whether the German military forces were being built up for the native wars -- or some more important campaign.

Ironside was accepted by the Germans as an Afrikaner and employed as a transport rider. He had his dog with him, a mongrel which he had befriended in Pretoria; and one night Ironside was alarmed to find the dog still wearing a collar bearing the name 'Captain Ironside R.A.'. This mistake might have proved fatal, but apparently the Germans had never looked at the collar.

Months passed before the suspicions of the Germans were aroused. Then they played an old trick on Ironside. He had pretended that he knew no English. He awoke one night to find a German asking him questions in English. It is not easy to catch a man like Ironside off his guard, and sleepy though he was, he replied in Afrikaans. Nevertheless, he saw that the game was up and at the first opportunity he took a waterbottle and some food and headed for Rietfontein.

Ironside's maps of the border, with every waterhole marked accurately, were used long afterwards, in the 1914-1918 War and again in 1922 when the Bondelswarts rose in revolt. He must have been an ideal intelligence officer and a fine linguist. I am told that he got on well with the Germans for months by holding forth on every possible occasion as a great admirer of the Kaiser!

--- end of extract ---

Very dramatic and rather a "ripping yarn", but who knows ...

It'll be interesting to see what King's College comes up with.

[Arthur R]

Further to the above, some other thoughts on GSWA a century ago.

-- There was also a British Army spy named Alexander Scotland who served in the Schutztruppe in GSWA around that period. In WWII he was a lieutenant-colonel in charge of interrogating German PoWs -- he wrote memoirs entitled The London Cage.

-- The 'Kalahari 1907' clasp to the SWA Denkmunze was not issued to British troops but to a squadron of the Cape Mounted Police, which hunted down a fugitive Herero leader named Morenga, who had escaped across the border into the northern Cape. Inspector Francis Elliott, who commanded the detachment, was awarded the DSO and the Prussian Order of the Crown 2nd class with swords. One of the CMP troopers was Hubert Wakefield, who rose to be a general in the defence force in the 1930s, and in photos of him taken between the world wars you can see the distinctive SWA Denkmunze ribbon on his tunic.

-- Late in 1906 a gang of Boers, led by a man named Ferreira, crossed into the Cape from GSWA, and raided several dorps as they headed towards the Transvaal, reputedly to stir up trouble against the British administration there. The Cape Mounted Riflemen were sent from the eastern Cape to to hunt them down, and the raiders were duly caught, tried, and imprisoned (only to be released under a general amnesty when the Union of SA was established in 1910). No medals for this operation.

It was suspected that the Germans had been behind this "Ferreira Raid", and in 1907 the Cape government prepared a war plan, the Western Defence Scheme, as a contingency against a German invasion from GSWA.

[landsknechte]

"Lord Ironside could speak 16 languages, once posed for two years (1900-02) as a Boer in the German army in Southeast Africa, so impressed his Prussian superiors that the young spy was awarded the German Military Service Medal."

From TIME.... sounds like the start of some half truths, mix ups and gobbeldygook....

As soon as someone starts to claim 16 languages I begin to have my doubts...

I've got a cousin that's conversant in 15, some people are just freakish prodigies in that sort of thing. Granted, it's just as likely that he was fluent in a handful of them, and then could merely as for directions to the nearest bathroom in the rest.

I can't help but think of Black Adder though: "...when I joined up, I never imagined anything as awful as this war. I'd had fifteen years of military experience, perfecting the art of ordering a pink gin and saying "Do you do it doggy-doggy?" in Swahili."

[lilo]

Hi All,

as promised here following is the answer from the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives at King's College:

'Please accept my apologies for not replying sooner. Unfortunately, I don't think I can answer your question about the medal awarded to Ironside. As you may realise, we do not actually have any of Ironside's papers, we only have an unpublished account by Macleod. I do not know whether he says any more about Ironside's medal. You would be very welcome to come in to look at the Macleod papers but I realise that this may not be possible for you. I am very sorry that we would not be able to undertake detailed research on your behalf.

Regards'

As you can see, unfortunately, as stated in the answer, I cannot look at the Macleod papers from myself : only a person that visit the 'Centre' can do it.

However, in the mean time, I contacted a well learned collector/researcher of the British Archives and active OMRS member that have done large searches in the UK archives for the 'foreign' MOD to British subjects. He advised me that He think the award of a German medal to the late Field Marshal as 'most unlikely that this happened' and that 'I have found no reference to any British officer having been awarded any German decoration for services during the Anglo-Boer war'.

Regards

Lilo

Edited January 31, 2009 by lilo