GUNNER G.J. LEMMENS, CITY IMPERIAL VOLUNTEERS. Queen’s South Africa Medal, 3 clasps, Witte

GUNNER G.J. LEMMENS, CITY IMPERIAL VOLUNTEERS. Queen’s South Africa Medal, 3 clasps, Cape Colony, Transvaal, Wittebergen (officially named, impressed in plain block capitals: 1055 GR : G.J. LEMMENS, C.I.V.).

Medal accompanied by biographical details, copied medal roll, confirming medal and clasps, extracts 1891 and 1901 census, Honorable Artillery Company enlistment record, Naturalisation Certificate and US Patent Office record.

Gustave Jean Francois Lemmens (circa 1875-1940) was born in Brussels, Belgium, circa 1875, and is recorded in the 1891 census as a 16 year old schoolboy resident at St Mary’s College, Goring, Aldermaston, Berkshire. Lemmens enlisted into the Honorable Artillery Company in 1899 and is recorded in Basil Williams and Erskine Childers’s “The HAC in South Africa” as a gunner with “A” Battery, Honorable Artillery Company. In 1900 Lemmens became a naturalised British citizen, and is recorded on his naturalisation certificate as then being an electrical engineer. Lemmens subsequently saw service in South Africa during the Boer War with the City Imperial Volunteers and is recorded in the 1911 census as a 36 year old, unmarried, “Director of a Public Company (Provision Trades)” , a visitor in the York Hotel, St George Street, Ryde.

Lemmens obtained a United States patent jointly with a Percival John Fryer on 13/12/1916, for “insecticide, sheep dip and the like”

Lemmens saw service in South Africa alongside Erskine Childers (1870-1922), who subsequently became a supporter of Irish republicanism, smuggled guns into Ireland aboard his yacht “Asguard”, took the anti-treaty side during the Irish civil war and was executed by the pro-treaty forces in 1922, after being caught carrying a pistol (which ironically had been given him as a gift by Michael Collins, the Commanded in Chief of the pro-treaty side in the civil war).

For further details of the services of the City Honorable Company and the City Imperial Volunteers during the Boer War, see Erskine Childers’s “In the Ranks of the C.I.V.” (London 1900) and Basil Williams & Erskine Childers “The HAC in South Africa” (1903).