This is a biographical tribute to Harry Crandon, who was awarded the Victoria Cross for rescuing a comrade under intense enemy hearth during the Boer War in 1901. Just after his navy career he settled in my residence metropolis and is buried right here. With a summary of the war to provide the motion into viewpoint, and a brief account on how the Victoria Cross became set up.
Stress amongst the two unbiased Boer republics of Transvaal and the Orange Cost-free Condition and British interests in South Africa experienced been developing up for many years, right until diplomacy finally broke down. In early Oct 1899, and the 1st Army Corps mobilised in England. On 11 October 1899, Boer commando units invaded British territory laying siege on the garrison cities of Kimberley and Mafeking in Cape Colony, and Ladysmith in Natal.
Battling on property soil in mounted commando models, in some conditions that contains 3 generations of the similar family, the Boers ended up a formidable enemy. With excellent firearms and smokeless ammunition, and camouflaged in the drab colours of their everyday farming outfits, competent Boer marksmen realized how to conceal by themselves in the rocky terrain and snipe from long-selection, as the British advanced in parade floor manner throughout the open veldt. Then with great horsemanship leave the scene prior to the British could react successfully.
British aid forces made a two-pronged advance throughout which they experienced three significant reverses in mid-December, at Magersfontein and Stormberg in the Cape, and at Colenso in Natal, which arrived to be recognized as ‘Black Week’. As the Natal Discipline Power struggled northwards they suffered their worst defeat of the marketing campaign at the infamous battle of Spion Kop on 24 February 1900, in advance of reaching Ladysmith 4 times later. Kimberley, underneath Cecil Rhodes, was retaken at about the very same time, and the aid of Mafeking on 17 May well 1900, which experienced been under the management of Robert Baden-Powell, who afterwards set up the environment-popular Boy Scout motion, prompted a frenzy of Imperial hysteria in Britain.
Ultimately, Lord Roberts, whose son had been killed in motion while profitable a posthumous Victoria Cross at Colenso, took over command. His working experience turned the tide and British forces entered the Boer capital of Pretoria on 5 June 1900. The British then launched a campaign, largely in the eastern Transvaal, to monitor down the Boer commanders, whilst the Boers took to guerrilla methods, attacking isolated outposts, offer convoys and patrols.
In Oct 1900, Herbert Kitchener took command, and countered Boer approach by dividing the place into fenced sections, guarded by blockhouses. With his ‘Scorched Earth’ plan, the farms of hostile Boers had been burned to diminish their possibilities of refuge. Their people were being set in protected compounds, which arrived to be recognised notoriously as Focus Camps, exactly where the loss of life-price was high. Not remarkably, the Boers commenced to drop heart, but sporadic battling by the ‘bitter-enders’ ongoing to continue to keep British troops on alert. Hostilities finally finished formally when a peace treaty was signed on Lord Kitchener’s eating table at Vereeniging, on 31 May 1902.
A young Liberal MP named David Lloyd George manufactured a title for himself by speaking from the war, and the daring exploits of a youthful information reporter known as Winston Churchill were being making him ‘rather famous’. Seventy-8 Victoria Crosses were being awarded for the marketing campaign, one particular of them becoming Harry Crandon.
Henry George Crandon was born on 12 February 1874, at Wells in Somerset, England, the son of William Crandon and his wife Helen (formerly Hewlett).
He entered the 18th Hussars in 1893, and saw services in India from 1894 to 1898, when he went to South Africa. He was stationed with the British garrison at Ladysmith when the Boer War started, and he was existing in the defence of the city until finally it was relieved by General Buller’s Natal Area Power on 27 February 1900.
British forces captured Pretoria on 5 June 1900, and on 4 July 1901, Non-public Crandon was element of a British patrol advancing by way of hostile region at Springbok-Laagt, east of Pretoria. He was performing as an advance scout with a companion when a Boer commando unit totalling 40 rifles opened up a devastating hearth on them at a array of 100 yards. He and his comrade, Personal Berry, commenced to fall again to report the incident to the device, but Non-public Berry was strike in the hand and shoulder, and his horse was hurt as it fell to the floor. Personal Crandon rode back to assist, and with enemy bullets raining down on him, he dismounted, aided the wounded person into his personal saddle, and led them absent on foot for about a 1000 yards till they have been out of variety. He returned a defensive hearth right until the main body arrived to support them.
The award of Victoria Cross to Private Crandon was declared in the London Gazette for 18 October 1901, and he obtained the medal from Lord Kitchener at Pretoria on 8 June 1902. For his services in South Africa he also obtained the Queen’s Medal with five clasps.
On his discharge he settled in Swinton near Manchester, now section of the Metropolis of Salford, and gained work on the estate of Sir Lees Knowles. He was a member of the Guard of Honour when King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra frequented Salford in 1905, becoming introduced ahead of them at the royal carriage when they unveiled the Boer War memorial adjacent to Salford Royal Clinic. Shortly following this he immigrated to the United States.
When the Great War commenced he returned to the colors and enlisted with his previous regiment in South Africa in Oct 1914. He was wounded in the still left foot for the duration of the initial battle of Ypres on 13 May perhaps 1915, and on his recovery he served two yrs in the Balkans, Salonica, Egypt and Palestine.
On his discharge in 1919 he returned to settle in Swinton. He attended the VC reunion held on 9 November 1929, hosted by the Prince of Wales in the Royal Gallery at the Residence of Lords. On 8 June 1946 he was a single of 150 VCs invited to a particular dinner at the Dorchester Lodge. In November 1948 he took the salute for the Royal British Legion drumhead at Swinton Cenotaph. Nonetheless, quickly right after this he was the sufferer of a road incident in which he been given two leg fractures and facial injuries which set him in clinic for several months.
Harry Crandon died at his house, 39 Kingsley Road, Swinton, on 2 January 1953, aged 71, and he was buried in the Church of England area of Swinton Cemetery. His medals are with the 13th/18th Hussars (now the Mild Dragoons). There is a headstone at his grave and the Royal British Legion Housing Affiliation has named Crandon Court in Pendlebury to honour his title.
The Victoria Cross is awarded for: ‘Conspicuous bravery and devotion to nation in the existence of the enemy’. It was instituted by the royal warrant of Queen Victoria in the direction of the stop of the Crimean War in 1856, and men who fought in that campaign became the initially recipients.
Queen Victoria took a great fascination in the award and in the layout of the medal, and the Duke of Newcastle had some curiosity in the generation of the award in his capability as the Secretary of Condition for War. Prince Albert recommended that it must be named after Victoria, and the authentic motto was to have been ‘For the Brave’, but Victoria was of the view that this would direct to the inference that only those who have got the cross are thought of to be courageous, and made a decision that ‘For Valour’ would be much more ideal. The layout was not to be notably ornate and not of higher metallic price. All the medals have been cast by Hancock’s in London, utilizing bronze from the cascobels of guns which Russian forces had captured from the Chinese and the British had captured from the Russians at Sebastopol. Rank, very long support or wound was to have no special influence in who experienced for the award. The first recipient announcements were printed in the London Gazette for 24 February 1857 investiture took location in Hyde Park, London, on 26 June 1857, when 62 Crimean veterans obtained the medal from the Queen herself. It at first carried an once-a-year pension of £10, which grew to become £100 in 1959, and was elevated to £1000 in 1995.