Autograph Letter Signed ‘Frederic’ on the troopship to South Africa, to his sister Maudie in England, thanking her for the trouble she took for him in town, describing the rough seas and the rolling boat which makes it difficult to write by VICTORIA CROSS. Lieutenant Frederic Brooks Dugdale, Boer War VC

R.M.S. Carisbrook Castle, undated. 3 pp. 8 x 5 inches, in good condition. Frederic Brooks Dugdale VC (1877-1902). He was 23 years old, and a lieutenant in the 5th Lancers (Royal Irish), British Army during the Second Boer War when the following deed took place on 3 March 1901 near Derby, South Africa for which he was awarded the VC. On 3rd March, 1901, Lieutenant Dugdale, who was in command of a small outpost near Derby, having been ordered to retire, his patrol came under a heavy fire at a range of about 250 yards, and a Sergeant, two men, and a horse were hit. Lieutenant Dugdale dismounted and placed one of the wounded men on his own horse; he then caught another horse, galloped up to a wounded man and took him up behind him, and brought both men safely out of action. He was killed in a horse riding accident whilst riding with the North Cotswold Hunt, near Charingworth in Gloucestershire on 13 November 1902. “They say last night was the roughest ever seen in these parts so I’m jolly glad I slept through it and only heard about it at breakfast from poor people that hadn’t slept at all.”