Major H S Dalbiac

Henry Skelley Dalbiac, born in June 1850, was from Durrington near Worthing. He commanded the 34th Company IY Middlesex Yeomanry from its raising in Dec 1899. He led a brave and reckless mounted charge at Senekal on 25 May 1900, against a large force of Boers and was killed in action. He had previously been an Artillery officer, from 1871 to 1888, and the photo shows him in the uniform of the Royal Horse Artillery. He had seen service in Afghanistan where he took part in the relief of Kandahar in 1880. He also served in the Egyptian campaign of 1882, distinguishing himself, and being wounded at Tel-el-Kebir. His medals included the 4th Class Order of the Medjidie. His grave is in Senekal, South Africa. In his history of the 34th Company IY, William Corner described Major Henry Dalbiac when he first saw him in the stables at Knightsbridge Barracks at the end of December 1899:
‘Major Dalbiac now passed along our lines, scrutinising each man, speaking a word here and there, and asking sundry questions. This was the first sight of our O.C. a man who was to stamp our company with a measure of his own strong individuality, and who was only too soon to leave us but the remembrance of an example of entire regardlessness of danger, of reckless daring and unconquerable gallantry. He was a very handsome man, of exquisitely cut classical features. Quiet, subdued, sad-eyed, as now, he often was. Unofficially, he would speak to one in that quick, soft, half-lisping musical speech of his; but as a soldier, or in the saddle, his whole nature seemed to change, he blazed up with the untameable energy, movement and habit of speech of one possessed.

Regimental Details | Soldiers