2nd Battalion, 24th (The 2nd Warwickshire)
Brevet Major Gonville Bromhead, V.C.
cover 1879 (6 Aug.) E.L. to Paris, endorsed at left "No stamps procurable in N.C., G. Bromhead Major 24 Regt." bearing Dundee Natal "NO. 34 P.O./13/8/18/79/NATAL" indented shield cancellation, "T" and "6d" due h.s., backstamped "G.P.O./20 8/1879/NATAL", "NEWARK/F/OC 1 79", and after being re-addressed "PARIS/BE/2/OCT/79"; the letter, written on the inside of the envelope, is headed "Landman's Drift". Photo.
Details
cover 1879 (6 Aug.) E.L. to Paris, endorsed at left "No stamps procurable in N.C., G. Bromhead Major 24 Regt." bearing Dundee Natal "NO. 34 P.O./13/8/18/79/NATAL" indented shield cancellation, "T" and "6d" due h.s., backstamped "G.P.O./20 8/1879/NATAL", "NEWARK/F/OC 1 79", and after being re-addressed "PARIS/BE/2/OCT/79"; the letter, written on the inside of the envelope, is headed "Landman's Drift". Photo.
Further details
Extract:
I would have written before but I have done nothing lately but march about this blessed country. We have just had the horrid news we are very likely to serve out our term of foreign service out here and I expect the next place I shall write from will be Pretoria. Our 1st Battln. passed through here in great joy a day or two ago on their way home. If the King does not give himself up we shall have the pleasure of hunting him which will I fancy be a long job.
Note:
Lieutenant Bromhead won the V.C. for his part in the celebrated defence of Rorke's Drift. Since he was the senior surviving Lieutenant of the battalion, he had actually succeeded to the command of "G" company before the action at Rorke's Drift when Lieutenant Pope died at Isandhlwana, so his promotion was not a double jump.
The letter is addressed to his sister; his brother Brevet Major Charles James Bromhead served in the same battalion.
The Battalion stayed at Pinetown until January 1880 when it embarked for Gibraltar.
I would have written before but I have done nothing lately but march about this blessed country. We have just had the horrid news we are very likely to serve out our term of foreign service out here and I expect the next place I shall write from will be Pretoria. Our 1st Battln. passed through here in great joy a day or two ago on their way home. If the King does not give himself up we shall have the pleasure of hunting him which will I fancy be a long job.
Note:
Lieutenant Bromhead won the V.C. for his part in the celebrated defence of Rorke's Drift. Since he was the senior surviving Lieutenant of the battalion, he had actually succeeded to the command of "G" company before the action at Rorke's Drift when Lieutenant Pope died at Isandhlwana, so his promotion was not a double jump.
The letter is addressed to his sister; his brother Brevet Major Charles James Bromhead served in the same battalion.
The Battalion stayed at Pinetown until January 1880 when it embarked for Gibraltar.