A V L H  On the field--1902

A V L H Sergeants and Staff Sergeants--1902

A V L H  NCO"s, 1902

Lastly  --The Officers of the A V L H 1902

Photograph is of members of the AVLH circa 1912 to 1920 kindly supplied by Hilary Eade, Granddaughter of Stanley Lloyd of the Jorehaute Company who retired in 1939 plus memorabilia

01 AVLH group	AVLH Badges
AVLH Shoulder 1	AVLH Shoulder 2

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 March 2004
We have to thank Dr Imdad Hussain, Professor of History and Dean of the School of Social Sciences  of the North Eastern Hill University Shillong for this very informative item  taken from a paper he created 

THE SURMA VALLEY

LIGHT HORSE

A FORGOTTEN

CHAPTER IN THE

HISTORY OF CACHARS

INDUSTRY

Dr Imdad Hussein

Without doubt few events had left a more lasting impression upon European tea planters in Assam and Cachar  than the massacre of Englishmen, women and children in Northern Indian during the summer of 1857. The lessons they learned of their own exceedlingly isolated and vulnerable situation miles away from the nearest civil station were not easily forgotten . The result was the development in North Eastern India of the Volunteer movement that was to become one of the pillars of the colonial internal security system in India .

Until August 1857, however, things were rather quiet in Assam and eastern Indian generally. Bengal had remained unaffected and its interposition between northern Indian and the north-east each gave a sense of immunity to the planters, missionaries and government officers. But after Jagadishpur in Bihar rose a rebellion considerable anxiety began to show itself among the local officers and planters. None could ignore the fact that a large proportion of the men of the 1st Assam Light Infantry Battalion at Dibrugarh came from that region.
There were no regular regiments of the Bengal Army stationed in territories beyond what was the Eastern Frontier of Bengal before the First Anglo-Burmese War (1824-26). Assam was defended  by two local battalions of the Assam Light Infantry, the first located-at Dibrugarh and the second at Gauhati, the Headquarters of Assam's Commissioner. The Sylhet Light Infantry with its Headquarters at Cherrapunji was responsible for the defence of Sylhet and Cachar_

For the numerous frontier outposts_there were several companies of irregulars somewhat on the lines of what today are called the para-military forces. The locals and the- irregulars  were-fairly well armed and ­in Assam there were soon anxious reports of anti­ British intrigues developing. In this situation   Donald Mackay of the Assam Company immediately brought to be-notice of the-Bengal Government the-want-of _ European Troops-in Assam . Calcutta could spare none and so sent two Battalions of European sailors, or "Jack Tars" in the parlance of the day. The first consisting of about 104 men under Lieutenant Davis was stationed at Dibrugarh, and the second under Captain Brown that followed was sent to Sibsagar. Cachars' planters had little reason for worry. At least not until March 1858, when the 34th Bengal Native Infantry Mutineer at Chittagong and began to move north, towards Sylhet and Cachar. On the 18th an engagement took place between the mutineers and a detachment of the Sylhet Light Infantry -at place-called Latu. Though its distinguished Commanding Officer Major Byng lost his life in the encounter the mutineers were completely routed and fled in twos. and threes into Cachar. The tea planters quickly joined in the hunt for the rebels and as Cachar's Superintendent Major Robert Stewart told the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal at Calcutta of:"They (the mutineers) were tracked up Jay-the Koakie-Scouts these Scouts were men of Kookie Village in the lands of the Cachar Tea Company, supplied by me_ with firearms and I beg to bring to your Honor's favourable notice the conduct of. Mr. James Davidson, the –Manager of the  Company, who directed them and who during the five days the mutineers were wandering in the wilderness, kept me continually supplied with excellent and^- reliable information. concerning-their movements."
Immediate anxiety for Assam and Cachar soon passed over. But the future continued to haunt the Europeans, both planters and officials  And there were good reasons for it.  In 1860 occurred an uprising in neighbouring Jaintia bills which the Sylhet Light Infantry had no difficulty in crushing. In Assam a serious agrarian disturbance took place in  the following year at Phulaguri near Nowgong in which a British Officer was killed. In January 1862 the Jaintias, again rose up in open rebellion. This time the Sylhet battalion, whose strength had in the past few months been reduced as part the post mutiny army reform and reorganization found itself rather weak to control and the uprising soon turned too extensive for the local authorities to handle it. The Jaintia uprising and the continued disturbances in several tribal areas led to a re-examination by the Bengal Government of the defence of North East India. There was some reluctance in taking this up as the question of the defence of Bengal had only recently been settled after the completion of the army and police reforms of 1860 - 61. Nonetheless in May 1862 Brigadier General St. George showers, the celebrated GOC of the Presidency Division was directed to proceed to the Jaintia Hills to assume personal command of the operations and to report on the military requirements of the region.
For some three years before this, the question of locating European troops in north eastern India had been the subject of a protracted correspondence between Assam , Bengal and the Government of India. It started with the Mutiny itself when Colonel Simon Fraser Hannay, the Commanding Officer of the 1st Assam Light Infantry and the senior most military officer in the region suggested as-a measure of security that a European Artillery Company should replace Dibrugarh's Local Artillery Battalion, which was composed wholly of Hindustanies. Differences among both Civil and Military Officers of the relative merits of artillery over infantry for service in the north east considerably delayed the submission of formal proposals for European troops. It was only in January 1862 that Bengal's Lieutenant Governor Sir John Peter Grant could ask for a military garrison of five Native Infantry Regiments and a few European troops, both artillery and infantry.  

General Showers who submitted a lengthy report on the defence of the North East Frontier in September 1862 endorsed Grant's recommendations. But the GOC made it clear that European troops were not required for the defence of the region from the military point of view, and that this part of his recommendation was made only to satisfy the planters, to inspire confidence in them and give a stimulus to their development. The Commander-in-­Chief  Sir Hugh Rose in forwarding Showers report to the Government of India further emphasized the political reasons for European regiments. But he was concerned equally about the health of such regiments and therefore, should Government agree, he would locate the bulk of these in Shillong   (Whose suitability as a miIitary Station was then being favourably reported) with just a few companies in Dibrugarh.

That a large military garrison commanded by a Brigadier General was required for the North East was generally agreed upon by the both Bengal and Supreme Governments. But as regards European regiments Grant's successor Sir Cecil Beadon had with good reason considerable misgivings. There had been an unusually high rate of mortality among the Jack Tars in Upper Assam and the Khasi Hills did not need them. He therefore told Sir John Lawrance, the Viceroy and-Governor General, that he had " no wish to seen an European Soldier stationed anywhere to the eastward of Calcutta on Dum Dum.
When in March 1864  the Government  of India  finally decided upon the military garrison and created the Eastern Frontier Command with four a half regiments of Native Infantry  and one battallion  of Artillery  there was no mention of European Regiments . It was in these circumstances that the planters in Assam and Cachar took to volunteering.

The uncertainties before the tea industry in the years immediately following the Revolt of 1857 - 58 and the almost total dependence of the planters upon the. Government for their security, especially though the agency of European troops, had made them some what lukewarm to the idea of Volunteering The-tea boom had not yet occurred and the expansion of the industry in Cachar was still a few years in the future. The Volunteer movement had began during the Mutiny when the necessity for organized self defence prompted Englishmen to enroll themselves into volunteer units in Bihar, Punjub and other places where there was an immediate threat to life and property. Calcutta too had its volunteer group. Significantly it was General Showers who first suggested such a step for Cachar when he was on his way to the Jaintia hills. Major Stewart thus recorded_ in May 1862 that of "(General Showers) called my attention to the possibility of forming a volunteer Rifle corps in Cachar from among the European residents as one of the most likely measures to insure future peace and security and quietness in the District and prevent internal disturbance".

Major Stewart said that the General had assured him of-his "hearty co-operation" of in any such movement that the planters might organize and promised not only to depute competent drill instructors but also provide arms form Government arsenals. It was not for nothing that General Showers' sympathy for the tea planters should go beyond what his profession demanded. It was also personal  Showers had developed a keen interest in the industry. Of his seven sons four went into tea. The eldest, Major Eden Showers, left the Indian Army to join Octavius Steel and during 1895 and 1900 was Commandant of the Surma Valley Light Horse. He was killed in South Africa , in the Boer War in April 1900. Another son, Charles James; who was with the Jorehaut Tea Company and also with the Salonah Tea Company, briefly commanded the Assam Valley Light Horse. It too was an age when the involvement of Government officials and military officers in the tea plantations was not frowned upon. Colonel Hannay had already opened a large estate near his cantonment in Dibrugarh. And after his death in 1861 it passed (along with his widow) into the hands of Major Charles Holroyd, well known in Assam for his role in hanging Maniram Dewan in 1858. Again, Major General Herbert Raban, who had organized Assam Police in the early 1860's had brought the Goloonga estate and put a younger son as its manager in 1866.

In early 1865 the move towards volunteering in Cachar began in earnest, On 23 May Major Stewart wrote to Calcutta for uniforms, helmets and other accoutrements. Letters were also dispatched the same clay to the Commandants of the Calcutta Volunteers and the Punjab Crops in Lahore for copies of rules, regulation and by laws. Notice for a general meeting was issued on 6 June and when it met on the 19 the members formed the Cachar Mounted Volunteers. Two days later measures were, taken to from another unit at Hylakandy. The Sylhet Volunteer Rifles Crops was formed much later in 1880.

The Assam tea planters followed suit during August and September 1965. In Dibrugarh some sixty planters formed a unit of troopers with Major Comber, the Deputy Commissioner, as Commandant. In Sibsagar another body of forty one effectives enrolled themselves under one Sherlock Hare, For administrative purposes these two units formed on corps, the Upper Assam Volunteer Cavalry. At Golaghat, the scene of much restlessness among the Hindustanis  --,a detachment of the 1st Assam Light Infantry during August 1857, the planters formed the Golaghat Rifle Volunteer Corps, an infantry unit  under W D.A. Beckett of the Assam Company as Commandant. Like the Cachar and Sylhet Volunteers arms and- ammunition were supplied from Government stores and instructors from the regiments were deputed for drill and training.­
Arrangements were also made at the same time for the periodic inspection of the volunteers corps by senior military officers.
The volunteer movement in Assam and Cachar  gave a degree of security to the Tea Planting community There is, however, sufficient evidence to suggest that one of its less commendable features was a spirit of arrogance that military training bred among the planters. This is borne out in their relations with the tribes in the hills bordering tea estates. Until then the planters appear to be reasonable lot and were conciliatory towards the tribes. In the Sibsagar and Lakhimpur districts of Assam , for instance, many Nagas, had found employment in the tea estates and_managers were on friendly terms with them. From about the middle of the sixties this attitude had definitely changed. Conciliation  gave way to aggression; the Naga's right of way though gardens was sternly stopped, and is at least two instances managers had been guilty of unprovoked violence of trading nagas. Such was the conduct. of some of-these-planters that the Commissioner Colonel Henry Hopkinson warned that unless they were reined in the planters would at any moment involve the Government in costly frontier-wars.

 in Cachar the recklessness of the planters showed itself in, pushing tea gardens deep into-exposed tribal  territory south of the district towards what was-then the  Lushai hills. And like Hopkinson in Assam , Cachar's Deputy Commissioner such as the designation of-the district officer now was, the highly regarded John Ware Edgar had been equally^- critical of the planting community. The Lushais themselves resented encroachments into what they considered their traditional hunting and rubber tapping grounds. Little wonder that their frontier raids in the late sixties and early seventies should be directed at the tea gardens . It was such developments in Assam and Cachar that the Inner Line Regulation was enacted in 1873-7
By the closing decades of the nineteenth century the concept of the volunteer movement under went a change: it was no longer confined in the security Europeans against internal danger but was now considered -as a supplement to the Indian Army. As the Viceroy Lord Dufferin emphasized in 1888 its function was to fill up the gap in the event of European troops moving out beyond Indian frontiers on active service  A corresponding change accordingly occurred in the organization of the Assam and Cachar volunteer units. On 6 April those in Cachar became the Cachar Mounted Volunteer Rifles Crops and were amalgamated with the Sylhet Crops to become on 26 September 1884 the Cachar and Sylhet Mounted Rifles. In August 1886 its title was changed to the Surma Valley Light Horse, and this remained unchanged till the British left India . like wise, the Assam units too had undergone transformation as the Assam Valley Light Horse.

The Surma Valley Light Horse saw active service in the Manipur operations in 1891 following the killing at lmphal of the Chief Commissioner James Quinton and other officers. Units also took part and distinguished themselves in the Boer War in South Africa in 1900 and in the campaign against Kuki rebels in 1918 -19. The Assam Valley Light Horse  took part in several frontier operations; including the Abor Expedition of 1911.-12.  How important the Assam and Surma Valley Light Horse were to the British will be seen in the issue to them of the newly introduced rapid fire maxim guns at a time when no Indian was allowed to go near them.

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Assam Valley Light Horse --

How it all started 

from information by kind permission of Mike Nancollas

A number of volunteer forces were raised in Assam as they were in many other regions of India from 1815 onwards and particularly after the Indian Mutiny in 1857, for the protection of local populations and installations. And it is recorded that the following units existed in this area of North East India.

The Sibsager Mounted Rifles

The Darrang Mounted Rifles

The Lakhimpur Mounted Rifles

The Newgong Mounted Rifles

On the 6 November 1891 these units amalgamated and were designated the

Assam Valley Mounted Rifles who were to form part of the Assam Valley Administrative Battalion.  In turn they were reorganised and The Corps was designated The Assam Valley Light Horse by G.G.O. No 1086 dated 25 September 1900 and their Headquarters were in Dibrugarh.  

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WJC (Bill) Charlier was a member of the regiment from 1946 until disbandment in 1947. Please see Bill's full story on the Bill Charlier page on CORRESPONDENTS 

Above is the the silver rhino which was given to all serving  members at disbandment in 1947

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Three AVLH photographs -kindly supplied through the good offices of Alan Wood  by Bob Powell Jones  from the collection of his late  father-in-law  Macdonald Smith 

AVLH in the thirties in camp at Dibrugarh-
Macdonald Smith  is on the far left back row


Dibrugarh Camp

Please note Brahmaputra river in background

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Mesapotamia 1919
 Macdonald Smith is in centre 


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ASSAM VALLEY LIGHT HORSE

   Michael Nancollas has supplied this section.  Mike is hoping to get more information and also permission for us to be able to show the photographs from the Museum--we thank him for his help and permission to use his notes

This is the story of The Corps of the Assam Valley Light Horse Cavalry and   Squadron Staff Sergeant Major  Frederick Williamson & Mrs Rene Williamson

A short history of the    AVLH

Among the various papers left to me by my Grandmother Mary Elizabeth NANCOLLAS nee SIMMONS was a box of photographs.  Many were anonymous, in that the reverse bore no indication of who they were.  Some had various notations some with names and some with other comments.  “Isn’t this an awful one of me”  “Me on my pony”

One picture was of a lady in white with a baby and a lone soldier standing by her side. – a family group;  but who and where?  

  After many years touting the photos around my relatives, I visited Aunt Beatrice (Betty) at Brighton to see if she had any photos of my great Grandfather Alfred SIMMONS or any of his brothers or sisters.  I knew her Grandmother was (Teresa) May SIMMONS .Alfred’s sister before she married into the WALKLEY family.  What a surprise it was to find that she had a picture of the same lady in white with the baby and lone soldier.

As you can expect the purpose of my visit was soon forgotten as Aunt Betty related her story.  The baby in the picture was her and her mother and father Rene and Fred Williamson.  I had met Auntie Rene and Uncle Fred when I was ten (1951) when I went to see them with my Dad.  They lived in Brighton in Hollingbury Road .

  Among all the other things I was told was the fact that Uncle Fred was in the

  CORPS of ASSAM VALLEY LIGHT HORSE

  They lived in India and Betty (Beatrice), June, John & Gloria, (twins) had been born there before they all returned to England in 1925 to live at Brighton .   In an old address book of my Grandmother I found Rene & Fred Williamson c/o The Post Office, Makum Junction , Upper Assam . India   I was determined to find out more about this unit and this is the story that unfolded.   
by Michael Nancollas.

Modern Assam is tucked away in the very north East of India joined now by only a very narrow corridor to the rest of the country.  At the time of the British Raj India and some of what is now Pakistan formed part of the region then known as Assam .  Even today after many years since India and Pakistan split, the borders are still in dispute.  It is here that the story of the Assam Valley Light Horse unfolds.

The History of The Assam Valley Light Horse

From Roger Perkins book [1]Regiments and Corps of the British  Empire and Commonwealth 1789-1993 I found some references to the AVLH accounts 1914‑1915; 1915-1916 1916-1917 which are held in the National Army Museum Chelsea.

From 1815 –1917 Volunteer units trained for local defence to protect vital railway and telegraph installations in India .

From 1860 onwards following the uprising, the Government of India gave active support to the raising of permanent part time Volunteer units in many parts of Bengal , Madras , Bombay , Assam , & Burma .

The authorities encouraged higher standards of training by providing the services of regular officers as Adjutants and experienced BNCO’s as permanent instructors.  (British Non Commissioned Officers)

The Accounts held in the Army Museum are in a single bound black book and give a host of information about the Corps but importantly Frederick Williamson’s name appears.  The Accounts for these years are similar to those Army lists held in the India office but they do give more information about the non commissioned officers.  In the 1914 accounts it shows Fred as being Squadron Staff Sergeant Major seconded from the 14^th Hussars of India’s reserve cavalry brigade

There was a short write up describing the beginnings of the Volunteer bodies that were set up in India as one of the non-commissioned officers.

The India Office collection in the British Library was hopefully going to provide more information.  Reference to the Indian Army Lists was helpful and the names of officers could be traced over the years.  The following information was gleaned from the records.

A number of volunteer forces were raised in Assam as they were in many other regions of India from 1815 onwards and particularly after the Indian Mutiny in 1857, for the protection of local populations and installations. And it is recorded that the following units existed in this area of North East India.

The Sibsager Mounted Rifles

The Darrang Mounted Rifles

The Lakhimpur Mounted Rifles

The Newgong Mounted Rifles

On the 6 November 1891 these units amalgamated and were designated the

Assam Valley Mounted Rifles who were to form part of the Assam Valley Administrative Battalion.  In turn they were reorganised and The Corps was designated The Assam Valley Light Horse by G.G.O. No 1086 dated 25 September 1900 and their Headquarters were in Dibrugarh.

A description of the town from a 1901 guide says about the area:-

DIBRUGARH, a town of British India , in the Lakhimpur district of eastern Bengal and Assam , of which it is the headquarters, situated on the Dibru river about 4 m. above its confluence with the Brahmaputra . Pop. (1901) 11,227. It is the terminus of steamer navigation on the Brahmaputra , and also of a railway running to important coal-mines and petroleum wells, which connects with the Assam-Bengal system. Large quantities of coal and tea are exported. There are a military cantonment, the headquarters of the volunteer corps known as the Assam Valley Light Horse; a government high, school, a training school for masters; and an aided school for girls. In 1900 a medical school for the province was established, out of a bequest left by Brigade-Surgeon J. Berry-White, which is maintained by the government, to train hospital assistants for the tea gardens. The Williamson artisan school is entirely supported by an endowment.

On the 1^st May 1906 The Shillong Volunteer Rifles amalgamated with the Corps as a dismounted detachment G.G.O. 100 of 1906.

  The Corps motto was           “Sempar Paratus”                 (Always Ready)

In 1914 The Corps of AVLH had troops at Sibsagar, Jorhat, Lakhimpur, Mangaldai, Shillong and Darrang.

At that time their establishment was:[2]   6 Troops

1 Reserve Squadron   1 Infantry Company

Enrolled strength 1912-1913 - 588      Efficients- 506

Their Uniform was Khaki Drill.  Their Mess Uniform was Blue with white facings.
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The photograph of Uncle Fred had become a reality.  His badges showed him to be a Staff Sergeant at the time although we know he progressed to being Sergeant Major by around the mid 1920's.  The Indian Army Lists were able to provide the names of the officers of the Corps.

Having now got the bit between my teeth I trawled around for any references to the AVLH or its predecessor units.  After some time I found a note in the Collins Collection[3] in Cambridge University indicating that there were some photographic records of the Corps in 1902.  This was a real find and brought the environs of the Corps to life. 

In a wooden box designated “Franz Kapp's Prize” on a silver pate on top of the box was an album of photos from 1902 showing all the men of the Corps photographed in uniform in their various troops with officers.  Far too many to be included here but the index I have prepared gives some ideal of the range of photographic history in the collection.

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      Peter Inglis-Smith has supplied these photographs and  we thank him for his permission to use the pictures on this website and recognise his copyright

These  photographs are of  the AVLH Troops dated between 1920 and 1930

These  photographs are of  the AVLH Troops dated between 1920 and 1930

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Again we are indebted to Mike Nancollas for allowing us to use this piecs on the koi-hai website--thankyou Mike

Wellesley St. George Ashe. 

(sometime of the Assam Valley Light Horse)

Wellesley Ashe was born on 25th February, 1881 , at Johnstown House, Duleek, Co. Meath. Duleek had been the scene of James II’s final retreat at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. Wellesley was the second son of Rev. Henry A. Ashe, Church of Ireland rector of the parish, and his wife Nannie Louisa, née Tyner.

Their elder son, Norman d’Acourt, died in August, 1886, aged 7. Wellesley ’s only sister, Gwendolyn Constance Kirwan, later married a cousin, Charles Orpen. Wellesley was sent to Norfolk to be tutored by Mr. Gedge, a friend of his father’s. In January, 1896 he was sent to Portora Royal School , Enniskillen (having been offered the choice of Rugby which he refused.) He saw the name of Oscar Wilde, disgraced the previous year, erased from the honours board. The Portora headmaster writes of Wellesley Ashe, "He was a keen sportsman, playing cricket and rugby, the latter as a back, and winning at athletics - high jump and long jump."

He left Portora in 1900 and joined the Dublin City Artillery. In 1901 he departed for the South African war as a subaltern under Col. Munro. He served the last eight months of the war in the 21st Bn., Imperial Yeomanry, under Lt. Col. A. Weston-Jarvis and earned the Queen’s Medal.

During the war, with many others, he contracted enteric fever (typhoid). Too weak to move, he was left under a sheet of corrugated iron with a can of water. The Boers re-occupied the area but did not find him. United once more with his own troops, he was put in a tent with other typhoid-stricken officers whom he saw die, one by one, after taking food. Fasting for weeks, he finally accepted a raw egg. During this interlude, when the slightest movement could have killed him, he was given an orderly who threw an epileptic fit over his recumbent form.

After the war Wellesley Ashe worked for Lord Roberts’s Workshops and SSAFA, service charities, in London . He had a flat in Chelsea , dined off gold plate at the Lord Mayor’s banquet, and enjoyed dinners and balls, many years later recalling the shocking poverty of Edwardian London. He still held a commission (one of many in his life) in the Dublin City RGA. but he hankered for the sun and space of Africa . One day in 1905 he saw a poster recruiting ex-officers to join the BSAMP (British South Africa mounted police.) He staked his savings on the City and Suburban (a race still run) promising himself that, if he lost, he would take up this offer. In due course he sailed again for the Cape . He served as a constable for three years, sending home well illustrated letters. One of his early tasks was to locate "Kruger’s gold" - the reputed treasure of the Boer president. Ashe’s troop followed a trail to a well where some native Africans had been poisoned. Tracks of wagon wheels led on into the mountains and petered out. In Africa Ashe made a great friend, Lee. Riding out one day, Lee was bitten in the thumb by a snake which had crept into his saddle overnight. Wellesley was required to hack off the thumb without delay.

Charles Orpen, his sister’s husband, was a planter in Assam . Wellesley went to stay with them and became a tea planter himself , subsequently working for the Moran Tea Company whose chairman was Lord Kingsale. Wellesley was remembered for riding the estate with a retinue of about 15 dogs.

In 1911 the government sent an expedition into the Himalayas in order to subdue the Abor hill tribesmen who had murdered a Mr. Noel Williamson and Dr. Gregorson and others. By this time Wellesley Ashe was a member of the Assam Valley Light Horse, a volunteer cavalry regiment largely made up of planters. Those of the A.V.L.H. who were prepared (as they all were) to serve as N.C.O.s were embodied. Corporal Ashe served under Maj. Gen. Bower in charge of a Maxim gun. The expedition included a detachment of the 32nd Sikh Pioneers, one of whom, Lord Kingsale’s only son, was mentioned in despatches. In 1912 Wellesley Ashe was awarded the India General Service Medal.

Came the Great War and he was appointed 2nd Lt., Indian Army Reserve of Officers. From December, 1914 to June, 1915 he was a squadron officer, 17th Cavalry (Bengal Lancers). He was then sent to Aden as temporary O.C., Aden Troop, and took part in operations there. He once found himself with a shipload of camels in the Red Sea . He went next to Marseilles and, in November, to Bombay .

From February to April, 1916 he was on remount duty in India , Egypt and Mesopotamia and then returned to France , attached to the 38th Central India Horse. In that year also his father and mother died in Ireland . On 9th December at Crowborough , Sussex , he married Lord Kingsale’s youngest daughter, Estelle de Courcy.

He served in the trenches, partly with a machine-gun detachment, until May, 1917 when he was released from the army, suffering from phlebitis. His record of service was sent to him in January, 1918 by the Adjutant, 17th Cavalry, Lahore .

After World War I Wellesley returned to India where he was joined by his wife. She had a child, Wellesley, who lived only three days. She was expected to die herself and her brother Michael de Courcy (Connaught Rangers and Sikh Pioneers) travelled across India to be with her. She survived and with Wellesley returned to England .

In the ’twenties he went to Canada alone to work on a ranch, exploring prospects for raising his family there. His father-in-law decided that Estelle’s health was not up to it and he returned to England .

Wellesley and Estelle Ashe had six children, all boys except Sheila, their second child born in 1920 (later known as Leigh).

In 1935 the family took a house in Connemara , moving to Roscommon on the outbreak of World War II and later to Perthshire in Scotland , where Wellesley joined the Home Guard. After the war they lived in Mayo and Tipperary , returning in the ’fifties to England where, in Sussex in 1958, Wellesley Ashe died. His ashes were taken to Ireland and laid by his father’s grave in the churchyard at Duleek.

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