Serjt. D. Dinimus Cape Mtd. Rifles

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Serjt. D. Dinimus Cape Mtd. Rifles 

 

This man is one of only 46 out of the 10210 recipients of this medal to have served in all three wars of 1834-5, 1846-7 and 1850-3, for which the medal was awarded.

Dinimus enlisted in the Cape Mounted Riflemen at Cape Town on 26 April 1831 at the age of 24. He served the next 22 years on the Eastern Frontier at Grahamstown, Fort Beaufort, and at many of the outlying forts such as Wiltshire, Peddie, Brown, Albert, etc. 

Discharged at Grahamstown on 30 April 1853 and granted a pension for life of 11 3/4 pence per day (WO/12/10574).

In the War of the Axe 1946-7 some 40 warriors of Chief Tola in March 1846 overpowered the escort and released a native prisoner being taken to Grahamstown for trial for stealing an axe at Fort Beaufort. A Hottentot prisoner, to whom the native was manacled, was killed.

 

War was formally declared on 31 March 1846 following the failure of Chiefs Sandile and Tola to return the prisoner or to surrender the murderers. The major action of the war took place near the Gwanga River crossing of the road between Fort Peddie and King Williams Town on 8 June 1846, when a troop of the 7th Dragoon Guards and a squadron of the Cape Mounted Riflemen clashed with Chiefs Siyolo and Umhalla and 600 natives. 

 

It was estimated that 400 natives were slain or died of wounds. 

 

Sergeant Dinimus was stationed at Fort Peddie at the time so he probably was one of the C.M.R. men involved in this famous cavalry charge. 

On 20 December 1852, 119 men of the C.M.R. were involved in the Battle of Berea against Chief Moshesh in Basutoland. The force of 2 500 men under the command of Major-General George Cathcart, was the largest British Army to take the field in South Africa since Blouberg nearly half a century before, when Britain took back the Cape from the Dutch.

 

Detachments from four infantry battalions, 12th Royal Lancers, C.M.R. (250), Royal Artillery and Sappers & Miners made up the force. In the final attack 119 men of the C.M.R. participated, out of a combined total force of 400. Nearly a tenth of the force were killed; 32 in all, including 27 of 12th Lancers and 2 from the C.M.R.

 

The muster rolls of the C.M.R. for November/December 1852 record Dinimus as serving in the field, so he could have been with Cathcart's force. It was here during the Battle of Berea that while fighting alongside the 12th Lancers that the CMR earned the enduring respect of their military colleagues.

 

Perhaps Dinimus was one of those who was in the thick of the fighting. Mackay in his Reminiscences of the last Kaffir War (sic) records these events as follows:

 

“The battle of Berea now began, and tens of Lancers and C.M. Rifles were ordered to charge squadrons of mounted Basutos. Captain Oaks, 12th Lancers, Major Armstrong, C.M.R., Captain Carey, C.M.R., Ensign Simkins, C.M.R. and a few troopers (about thirty-six in all), observing cattle moving away to their right, galloped off in that direction, and were returning in high glee with their booty, when to their dismay they found their line of retreat cut off by about two thousand of the enemy.

 

This small party was nearly annihilated. The officers called out to the men that it was death or glory, and the men nobly responded to the sentiment; hastily forming themselves compactly for a deadly charge at the masses of swarthy horsemen in their front, they waived their swords and lances in the air, and with a wild hurrah charged at the irregular ranks of the enemy.

 

The cowardly Basutos fled right and left from the few gallant Britons, leaving an open space for their retreat, but sent a destructive irregular fire after them.

 

They continued their retreat, followed by numerous enemy, and when they began their decent down the rocky pathways, a heavy cross-fire was kept up at them by numbers of the enemy who had taken cover behind rocks and stone walls. Twenty of this party were left on the heights dead, besides those who were wounded.”