CAMPAIGN GROUPS AND PAIRS
1117
Three: Lieutenant-Colonel Ewen Montgomery Lang, Indian Army
INDIA GENERAL SERVICE 1854-95, 1 clasp, Waziristan 1894-95 (Lieutt., 1st Bn. 1st Gurkhas); BRITISH WAR AND VICTORY MEDALS,
small M.I.D. emblem (Lt. Col.) mounted as worn, good very fine and better (3) £240-280
M.I.D. London Gazette 12 January 1920.
Ewan Montgomery Lang was born on 2 May 1870. He was commissioned from the Royal Military College, Woolwich, as a 2nd
Lieutenant in the Royal Artillery on 27 July 1889. He was appointed to the Indian Staff Corps, attached to the 1st Gurkhas in March
1892 and was promoted to Lieutenant in July the same year. Serving with the 1st Battalion 1st Gurkha Rifles during the Waziristan
campaign, 1894-95, he took part in the action at Wana in which the battalion bore the brunt of the fighting and casualties. Lang was
appointed Adjutant in May 1899 and promoted to Captain in July 1900. He was appointed a Double Company Commander of the 1-1
G.R. in October 1903 and last appeared in the Indian Army List in 1907. Lang reappeared in 1917 as Commandant of the 4/39th
Garhwal Rifles, ranked as Major and Acting Lieutenant-Colonel. The regiment was renamed the 4/39th Kumaon Rifles in November
1917 and 1/50th Kumaon Rifles in April 1918. Lieutenant-Colonel Lang died in 1948. With copied research. M.I.D. not confirmed.
1118
A fine Indian campaign group of three awarded to Lieutenant-General Edwin Venour, Commandant of the 5th Bengal
Native Infantry, late 3rd Goorkhas, who was severely wounded in July 1857 when attached as a volunteer to the 10th
Foot during a costly attempt to relieve Arrah: he was afterwards mentioned in despatches for his leadership of
Goorkha skirmishers in the Bhootan operations and commanded the 5th Bengal Native Infantry in the Second Afghan
War
INDIAN MUTINY 1857-59, no clasp (Ensign, Attached to 1st Bn. 10th Foot), officially engraved naming in running script;
INDIA GENERAL SERVICE 1854-95, 1 clasp, Bhootan (Lieut., 3rd Goorkha Regt.), initial and ‘3’ inverted; AFGHANISTAN 1878-80,
no clasp (Lt. Col., 5th Ben. N.I.), the first two with contact marks and edge bruising, very fine or better, the last good
very fine (3) £1400-1600
Edwin Venour was born at sea aboard the Repulse in January 1837, the son of a Doctor of the Bengal Medical Service. Privately
educated at Bromsgrove and at Queen’s College, Oxford, he successfully applied for a Cadetship in the H.E.I.C. in February 1857 and
was appointed an Ensign in the 40th Bengal Native Infantry on his arrival at Calcutta that April.
As a result of the outbreak of the Indian Mutiny, however, he was quickly attached to the 10th Foot as a volunteer, with whom he
participated in a costly endeavour to relieve Arrah in July 1857. The force in question, which included a party of men of the 10th Foot
under Captain Dunbar, was disembarked from two steamers at Bihari Ghat, several miles from Arrah, on the 29th. On reaching the
outskirts of the town, the force - largely conspicuous for its white drill uniforms - moved along an embanked road and thence to a
gathering of mangrove trees, where, without warning, it was hotly engaged by the mutineers from just 30 yards range. Captain Dunbar
was among the first of many to be cut down, and others lost their rifles in their attempt to flee the devastating fire by jumping down the
embankments of the road. At length, the surviving officers - Ensign Venour among them - managed to regain order and form a square in
a field some 400 yards away. There they remained under fire until dawn, when an attempt was made to get back to the steamers, but
their subsequent journey was a nightmare, the mutineers keeping up a constant fire from behind assorted rocks and trees, so much so
that discipline collapsed when the Bihari Ghat was finally reached, the majority making a disorderly dash for the steamers’ boats. It was
at this juncture that Venour was severely wounded, a moment described by a fellow volunteer officer from the 40th Bengal Native
Infantry, Lieutenant H. Waller, in his official report of the action:
‘Upon getting down to the nullah, Ensign Venour and I got into a boat with some of the men, and, while I was shoving the boat out, we
tried with a rifle to shoot some of the fellows who were making a mark on me. He knocked over one, but, unfortunately, got shot
himself immediately after through the thigh, and dropped. I tied up his leg as well as I could, and, getting some more help, I succeeded
in getting the boat off; but the fire was so hot, as they saw a chance of our getting away from them, that I and four other men left the
boat and swam ashore, being fired at the whole way across. Ensign Venour also left the boat a short time afterwards, and, although
wounded, managed to swim ashore; the fire from the village the whole time was most severe, killing and wounding a great number ...’
Two V.Cs were awarded for this action, both of them, unusually, to civilians, Messrs. W. F. McDonnell and R. L. Mangles of the Bengal
Civil Service. For his own part, Venour was sent home on sick leave for 18 months, and advanced to Lieutenant.
Not long after his return to India, in July 1861, he was appointed to the 3rd Goorkha Regiment, of which unit he became Officiating
Adjutant in October 1864. Venour subsequently participated in the Bhootan operations of 1866, serving with his regiment in the right
column of the Doar Field Force, and was present at the capture of the Buxar, the Bala Pass and the Tazagaon stockades. For his ‘good
work when in charge of the skirmishers in the affair at the Bala Pass on 4 February 1866’, he was mentioned in despatches and thanked
by the C.-in-C.
Advanced to Captain in February 1868, Venour went home on sick leave later that year, and was posted to the 5th Bengal Native
Infantry soon after his return to India in November 1871.
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