George Bone and the British Army 1889-1899

British Soldiers in Peace time uniforms 1870s or 1880s

On the 25th March 1889 in Gosport, George William Bone joined the Regular British Army as a Royal Engineer as he had a trade as a Wheelwright and having served in the South Hampshire Volunteers.

The Army was in a state of evolution and was far from its' completion. Indeed only lessons learnt during the Boer War and again on the bloody fields of France did they finally remove some of the notions and tactics that had been used so effectively against Napoleon a century before.

All Royal Engineers are trained as Infantry men and able to fire their Lee Metford (later Lee Enfield) rifles and cope under fire. They would also be given further training in their field of expertise as well as more general duties and skills.

The Uniforms had moved away from the traditional scarlet towards Khaki which was unofficially adopted in India in the 1950s but spread to General use after the battle of Gennis in 1885. A double breasted tunic was issued and was to be maintained by the soldier. Failure to do so would have led to disciplinary and pay stoppages for wear and tear.

For head gear the home regiments were issued helmets similar to the Prussian Pickelhaube in black with the regimental badge at the front. For active service in Africa and India the more practical Pith helmet was issued. However this was uniformly white and was obviously fairly visible over a distance and so soldiers were allowed to dye them. This was generally done with Tea but by the advent of the Boer War a cloth cover was provided for the helmet.

Gear was to be carried in pouches on belts and valise to distribute weight and allow soldiers to move more freely in combat with the pack as the standard kit carrier being relegated to marches and advances but not necessarily needed on the battlefield.

The Lee-Metford rifle was the standard rifle used by the British soldiers in the 1880s and was used up to and during the Second Boer War. The rifle used the Lee patterned rear locking bolt system which made clearing the breach easier than the predecessor the Henry-Martini as the bolt was above the trigger so the rifleman only had to move his hand a small way before pulling it to 60 degrees rather than the Mauser's 90. This should make the rifle more user friendly and up the rate of fire of the average infantryman. Indeed it had a rate of fire of 20 rounds a minute with the record being 38 aimed shots in a minute! This is despite having a magazine of 10 rounds and would require reloading the bullets which were either individually mounted or on strips of five .303 rounds.

This would have been the rifle George was trained with and used for most of his military career. It was, however being phased out by the time of the Boer war as it was still using black-powder loaded cartridges giving off smoke when fired. As the Metford could not be remodelled for cordite loaded cartridges without regular re-rifling and so an alternative was sought out.

The Lee Enfield rifle was basically the same pattern as the Lee Metford but with a squarer shaped rifling which had a greater durability with the increased heat and pressure of the cordite's reaction.

Both rifles were incredibly accurate over a range of 800 yards for the Lee-Metford and 550 for the Enfield and up to 1800 and 3000 respectively.

British troops were trained to volley fire in tight formation which could provide a deadly wall of fire. This had been standard drill for two centuries and had beaten many an advancing army. At the beginning of the First World War the German army believed that one British unit was solely armed with machine guns when in fact they were just well drilled rifle men armed with Enfields. Independent fire was not taught and soldiers were generally only allowed to fire when told to by their officers thus lowering the rapidity of shot. British officers were also prone to ordering their men to fix bayonets at the beginning of battles thus adding extra weight to the end of the barrel which severely affected their aims. Further to that they were trained to fight in close order infantry formations. These tactics worked against colonial armies at Omdurman where the enemy was lightly armed and would charge en-masse but the Boer would soon prove that an entrenched enemy with modern field guns and with trained marksmen would make short work of these formations.

Barracks life was fairly repetitive with early morning drill and inspection. As a wheelwright he would have been kept fairly busy with maintenance and training of young sappers in how to carry out the trade. As a Corporal he would have aided a Sargent in command of a squad.

Unfortunately, at the moment I know little of his military career beyond the Boer War and although it

Corporal Bone, Second from left, Second row

is possible he had served in India or Africa in any number of colonial conflicts I cannot say for certain.

I have been sent some pictures from his life, which I was exceptionally grateful for, including a picture of him in the Royal Engineer's champion tug of war (Catch weight?) team from Ireland 1897-8.

In 1898 he married Mary Ann Williams in St Mary's Church and together they moved to the Curragh Camp in County Kildare, Ireland where they would have lived in the married quarters or in the communal Engineers barracks. At the Curragh the divisions were hurriedly trained and amassed for the rising trouble in Africa.

As the tensions grew George found himself on a boat bound for South Africa as part of the defencive force to protect British interests.

This was a War that for the fighting man held little interest.Where as World War One would attract a jingoistic attitude, this was another Colonial bush fire to stamp out as far as they were concerned.

Whilst some were no doubt moved by the plight of the Uitlanders or that some of the younger lads were excited to see action I cannot help but think that George had an eye on the horizon and his wife and young son who was born in January 1899. Family myth says that he never saw his boy Albert born but at the moment but he did and didn't depart to South Africa until the summer of that year. It was a long cruise south taking several weeks in which they would carry out ship duties and have morning inspections and maintain their kit. I can't help but think that in the quite or boring times he may have had thoughts about what they would face in Africa, the war, the battles and duty mixed with feelings of regret at leaving Mary and his boy, that he barely knew behind in Ireland.

Who do you think you are?

George W. Bone's enlistment papers in 1889

Wednesday night I saw the episode of the BBCs Who do you think you are? featuring Minnie Driver.

It followed her attempts to find out more about her family and especially her father who had never spoken of his war service. He had, in fact been decorated for his conduct at the Battle of Heligoland Bight in 1939.

Family history is not always as fascinating.

Sometimes you will find generations of Agricultural labourers. There are some nuggets that really catch your eye - or someone who was involved with a major event. Unfortunately this is fairly rare.

Often all you will be able to gain is a snap shot of life from a census, get an idea of age, occupation, dates of birth/marriage/death etc. you can pad it out with some research into trades. For example my Second Great Grand Aunt Ada Williams was a machinist at Chatham Dockyard Ropery according to the 1911 census.

A visit to the site or reading up on the subject would give you a clearer idea of what life entailed for her.

As someone with a fascination for military history I find myself looking at the Soldiers and Sailors in the family - two of whom paid the ultimate price and died for their nation. My Great Great Grandfather George W. Bone who fell in the Boer War and my Great grand uncle Donald Homersham who was killed on the Somme in October 1916 three months after being awarded the military medal for bravery.

When reading around the subject of trench warfare and of the hot bloody fields of South Africa it is easy to draw comparisons to the lives of your family and wonder if they felt the same way or saw the same things.

Despite the frustratingly small amount that can be available for lower class families through history, there is a lot for you to find out, more than you would think. With all the genealogy websites out there it is really easy to get started and to map your family tree out.

As a starting tip I'd suggest you try and get as much starting information is possible such as your parents, grandparents and if possible great grand parents to give you as good a starting position as possible. As Censuses have a 100 year shelving period so the most recent you can get hold of is the 1911 and goes back as far as 1841. Beyond this you have to rely on Parish records for christenings, marriages and funerals which creates a sort of glass ceiling that only those with time and money to go in search of these records.

The other glass ceiling is the pay wall that plagues users. I've tried to do as much for free as possible but I'm hitting the pay wall and hitting it hard. There are a couple of documents that will clear up a lot of questions and the question of how George William Bone died during the Boer War. I do find it fairly frustrating but there it is.

It is something that is fascinating and is a worthwhile thing for at least one person in the family should undertake at some point. It is a sad fact that so much information about our ancestors are lost and anecdotes only last a few generations. 

George Bone early life up to the Boer War

As my research into my Great-great Grandfather George William Bone continues I thought I would

document and share what I have discovered so far about his life leading up to his tragic death.

In the beginning I was handed the attached note by my Grandad (who had married George's Granddaughter Audrey Bone) when I first started working on the family tree.

It was intriguing and I took it very much at face value some twelve years ago and didn't research it. In 2004 I started messing around on Genesreunited and managed to clear up a couple of other details but it has only been in the last couple of months since casually starting on Ancestry.co.uk to pass the time that I have discovered the following narritive of his early life.

The Bone family were settled in the village of Westbourne in Sussex where William Bone (b. 1812) was an agricultural worker toiling in the fields a vocation he was joined in by his son Albert (b. 1841).

Albert married Louisa Terry (b. 1845 in West Wittering, Sussex) before 1863 and settled in to West Wittering and started having children.

Bertha (1863), Ann (1864), Edith (1868) and Emily (1870) all appear on the censuses and survive into adulthood. George William Bone was born in 1871 in Westbourne, Sussex and was the first of five boys. Albert (b. 1880), Arthur (b. 1882), Archibald (b. 1884) and Bertram (b. 1887).

The boys all seem to have wanted to better themselves and all learnt a trade. This was probably caused by the shift away from manual agricultural labour during the 19th Century, even Albert senior became a gardener as work in the fields dried up. George was a wheelwright, Arthur a groom, Archie a draper and Bertram a saddler with only Albert being different and becoming a shipping clerk.

Whether through coincidence or not, all the Bone boys joined the army. George joined the Royal Engineers in 1889 as did Albert in 1908, the others joined the Army service corp (Archie in 1900, Arthur in 1901 and Bertram in 1905).

George Signed up on the 25th March 1889 and was issued the army number 23654.

At the time of writing I have little details about his career prior to the Boer War. According to the 1891 census he was aboard a vessel serving as "Crew" in Northumberland.

He ended up at Brompton Barracks in Gillingham, Kent. It was here that he met Mary Ann Williams, possibly through her brother Richard who signed up on 23rd January 1894 and went on to become a sergeant electrician. Mary (b.1878 - 1948) was the second eldest of eleven surviving children (according to the 1911 census, Rebecca, Mary's mother, had had 12 children by her husband Richard, a retired Royal Engineer, Sadly one had died) and they lived at number 9 "Best town." Chatham in 1891. According to the author of Bygone Medway - after an exhaustive search, this is in fact where Hards town Chatham is now.

St Mary's Church circa 1905

Mary and William were married at St Mary's church in Chatham on 22nd March 1898.

War was looming though and regular soldiers were already being gathered to go to South Africa. As a master Wheelwright George would have been invaluable on the vast African Savannah where great convoys of supplies tracking back and forth laden with supplies.

The muster point was the Curragh Camp, County Kildare with his pregnant wife, though the wedding certificate states he was already at Curragh when he married Mary.. According to family myth he never saw his son Albert who was born 25th January 1899 as he had already departed for the Cape. If he had, he would have departed before the rest of the gathered forces who left later in the year. It is conceivable though, as an engineer that he might need to arrive before the fighting line regiments.

His career in Africa though is another story.

George Bone and the Boer War Pt I

One of the dark periods of British history is the Anglo Boer war period at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. I will go on to talk about this at length in another blogpost however.

The conflicts was fairly costly and cost my family two family members - my Great Great Grandfather Homersham and my Great Great Grandfather Bone and it is the latter I want to write briefly about.

George Bone was born in Sussex in 1871 and eventually joined the Army as a Royal Engineer rising to the rank of Corperal Master Wheelwright with the army number; 23654.

Whilst serving at the Royal Engineers Barracks he met Mary Williams whom he married in March 1898 at St Mary's church in Gillingham.

As an army wife she joined with him when he moved to other barracks and their first and only child, Albert Richard Bone was born on 25th January 1899 at the Curragh Camp in Ireland. Unfortunately George never met his son - he was already in South Africa serving with the Army in the Boer War.

He received the South Africa medal 1899-1901 with clasps for Wittebergen, Driefontein, Paardeberg, Modder River and Belmont.

Although I was told he died after Belmont it would appear that the chronology is out of order and that he actually died after Wittebergen or in a skirmish not long after that in 1900. The legend is that he was shot in the liver during the battle and took three days to die.

He was buried in Lowersfontein at the British War Grave Cemetry where he rests to this day. His name also appears on the Boer War Memorial in Brompton Barracks.

I want to find out more about him, I have been trying in the past but am going to make a concerted push for information so I would be grateful for any pointers. None of my direct family were killed in the First or Second World War and for me this is like the quest many undertake for an uncle, their grandfathers, cousins in the Somme or at Dunkirk. I will write more as things come to light.