A South African Sojourn, looking for Charlie's footprints.

Charles Percival Duce was my paternal grandfather. He was born in Bradford, Yorkshire on 30/11/1881. The family story is that he ran away from home to join the army. I can find no record of military service in the family previous to his action. He was recorded in the 1901 census as being in residence at the Cowley Barracks in Oxford. Although recorded as being 20, he would actually have been 19 on the 31st March. He was now Private C P Duce 6671 of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry and destined for South Africa to fight in the Second Boer War.

This is the earliest picture I have of Charlie and I guess it was taken on the occasion of his 21st birthday,  that would be after the end of the hostilities (31/5/1902). He has now gained his Lance Corporal stripe and is wearing the Queen's South Africa Medal with 3 clasps indicating the theatres of action he was involved in. His 4th clasp is either not yet presented or as yet not attached. Here is that medal as it appears today. Any medal experts reading this will notice that the clasps are in the wrong order. Cape Colony should be the lowest, then Orange Free State followed by Transvaal with the South Africa 1902 at the top. The fact that he wasn't awarded the King's South Africa as well means that his service must have been confinded to within the period of 1st January and 31st May 1902.

Q

This is the reason for the reference of "looking for Charlie's footprints" in the blog title. I don't suppose for a moment that we will encounter anything personally pertaining to him, but it would be great to be able to gain some empathy and insight into his youthful but formative experience. He was destined to remain a soldier for most of the rest of his working life.

Chasing Charlie is just a small part of our plans for this holiday. Let me show you the complete itinerary which is detailed on the spreadsheet below. Full credit for much of this planning must go to Cameron Roy, who is married to our daughter in law's sister Helen. Cameron is a South African national and former pupil of that most august institution, Pretoria High School. He will be accompanying us on the flight out and up until we part after the Kruger Park visit.  

Sorry that the above is rather fuzzy, but it is a screenshot of the spreadsheet. You can try to expand the picture but I think you'll just get bigger fuzzy. Then again you could just wait and read it as it unfolds day by day. First blog should be published around 13th January next year.