Description
Queen’s South Africa, 2 bars, Tugela Heights, Relief of Ladysmith, Br J. Drown, N.V.A.C.
A rare award to a Bearer of the Natal Volunteer Ambulance Corps, the corps was raised quickly at the start of the war, with a strength of about 1,000 men, it was supplemented by about 1100 Indians who formed the Natal Indian Ambulance Corps led by Mahatma Gandhi.
He had just joined 2 days before they left for the Front, on the 14th December they reached the front and the Field Hospital at Chiveley on the 15th, that day they were engaged in their first test, at the Battle of Colenso. The task of these brave volunteers was to run under fire onto the battlefield and take away the wounded men, who were then taken to a hospital by the Indian Ambulance Corps.
The corps is well remembered for the lives they saved at Spion Kop, as the British took heavy casualties the Volunteers of the N.V.A.C. would run in under fire to save the wounded and the Indian Corps then carried them all the way from Spion Kop to the base hospital at Frere, which was more than 20 miles away.
Nominal roll records he served between 11th December 1899 and 12th March 1900, when the short lived unit was disbanded.