THE SECOND WORLD WAR CAMPAIGN GROUP TO ACTING LIEUTENANT-COMMANDER DOCTOR S.L. PAYNE, ROYAL NAVAL VOLUNTEER RESERVE, THE SON OF MAJOR SOMERS LESLIE PAYNE, CONNAUGHT RANGERS, WHO WAS THE COMMANDING OFFICER OF A COMPANY OF THE CONNAUGHT RANGERS AT SOLON IN INDIA IN JUNE 1922 AND WHOSE MISHANDLING OF EVENTS AT SOLON TURNED WHAT BEGAN AS A PROTEST INTO THE INFAMOUS CONNAUGHT RANGERS MUTINY. Five: 1939-45 Star, Atlantic Star, Pacific Star, 1939-45 Defence and War Medals (unnamed, as issued).
All medals Extremely Fine, virtually as struck, as issued.
Accompanied by original, official box of issue, addressed to Lieutenant-Commander S.L. Payne, R.N.V.R., Durnington Hill, Worthing, Sussex.
Group also accompanied by biographical details and extracts Navy Lists of the period.
Somers Leslie Payne (1918-1999) was born 7th March 1918, the son of Major Robert Leslie Payne. He is recorded in the December 1939 Navy List as a Temporary Sub-Lieutenant (Special Branch, Electrical) Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (seniority 9/9/1939), serving aboard HMS Warspite, and in the February 1943 Navy List as an Electrical Lieutenant (seniority 7/3/1940), in the December 1944 and January 1945 Navy Lists as an Electrical Lieutenant serving at the shore base, HMS Golden Hind, and in the July 1945 Navy List as a Lieutenant (Temporary Acting Electrical Lieutenant-Commander). Lieutenant-Commander Payne died in Worthing Hospital on 20/10/1999.
Somers Leslie Payne was the son of Major Robert Leslie Payne (1880-1942) Connaught Rangers.
Major Payne was born in Cork. He was first commissioned 2nd Lieutenant, 5th Battalion Connaught Rangers (Roscommon Militia), 9/6/1898, transferred from the Militia to the regular army in 1899, being appointed 2nd Lieutenant, 1st Battalion Connaught Rangers on 18/10/1899. Payne was promoted Lieutenant, 17/9/1901, Captain, 8/2/1906, Major, 1/9/1915, and retired with the rank of Major on retired pay, 30/11/1921, subsequently being appointed Major, Reserve of Officers, 25/11/1922
Payne first saw active service with the 1st Battalion Connaught Rangers during the Boer War, seeing service with the Mounted Infantry in South Africa, during the Relief of Ladysmith, including actions at Colenso, the operations of 17-24 January 1900, action at Spion Kop, operations of 5-7 February 1900 and the actions at Vaal Krantz, the operations on the Tugela Heights 14-27 February 1900, the action at Pieter's Hill, operations in Natal, March-April 1900, Cape Colony, south of the Orange River, April 1900, in the Cape Colony north of the Orange River, April 1900, in the Orange River Colony, May-June 1901 and February-March 1902, and Cape Colony, February - May 1901 and June 1901 to 31st May 1902 (awarded Queen's South Africa Medal with 4 clasps and King's Medal with 2 clasps).
During WW1 Payne initially saw service with the 1st Battalion Connaught Rangers in France, entering that theatre of operations on 28/9/1914 (the 1st Connaughts were stationed in India when WW1 broke out, embarked from Karachi for France on 28/8/1914, arriving at Marseille on 26/9/1914, having stopped over in Egypt 14-19 September, and disembarked at Marseille on 28/9/1914). In France, Payne subsequently saw service as Brigade Major, North Midland Division, 10 January to September 1916 and as Deputy Assistant Quartermaster General, 4th Division, from 31 December 1916 to the cessation of hostilities (awarded DSO, 1914 Star and bar trio and mentioned in dispatches).
Major Payne's Distinguished Service Order was announced in the London Gazette of 25/3/1915 (page 2941),
"The Connaught Rangers, Captain Robert Leslie Payne"
The regimental history records that, when the 1st Battalion Connaught Rangers sailed for India in October 1919, Major Payne was in temporary command of the battalion. Later, in June 1920, Payne was Acting Commanding Officer of the company of the regiment stationed at Solon, and it was largely due to Major Payne's mishandling of the situation that what initially began on 1/6/1920 as a protest by men of the regiment turned into a full-blown mutiny.
THE CONNAUGHT RANGERS MUTINY
On 28 June 1920, a company of the Connaught Rangers stationed at Jullundur refused to perform their military duties as a protest against the activities of the British Army in Ireland. On the following day, the mutineers sent two emissaries to another company of Connaught Rangers, commanded by Major Payne, stationed at Solon, about twenty miles away in the foothills of the Himalayas. The soldiers there took up the protest as well and, like their counterparts at Jullundur, flew the tricolour of Ireland, wore ‘Sinn Féin’ rosettes on their British Army uniforms and sang rebel songs.
The protests were initially peaceful, but on the evening of 1st July around 30 members of the company at Solon, armed with bayonets, attempted to seize their rifles from the Cmpany magazine. The soldiers on guard opened fire, killing two men and wounding another. That incident effectively brought the mutiny to an end, and the mutineers at both Jullundur and Solon were placed under armed guard. Following the mutiny, 88 mutineers were court martialed and one man was sentenced to be shot by firing squad, Private James Daly, 77 men were sentenced to imprisonment and 10 were acquitted. Private Daly was shot by firing squad at Dagshai prison on 2/11/1920, the last member of the British armed forces to be executed for mutiny.
At one point during the mutiny, as events spiralled out of his control, Major Payne even went so far as to organise an impromptu firing-squad, ordering men from another regiment to execute some of the protesting Connaught Rangers, the execution only being prevented by the intervention of a Catholic priest. The following description of that attempt to execute the protesters has been extracted from Anthony Babbington' "The Devil to Pay, The Mutiny of the Connaught Rangers in India, July 1920" (Leo Cooper, London, 1991).
The mutineers were paraded at six o'clock that morning and Major Payne told them that they were going to be employed that day in building a road through the camp. As the necessary tools had not arrived, he said he was going to dismiss them for the time being but a fatigue party would be detailed to take down a marquee which at present was standing on the route the road would follow. Among the twenty men he Payne detailed for the fatigue were most of the recognised leaders of the mutiny, and thinking this was simply a stratagem to separate them from the others, they refused to fall in as a party. This angered Payne, and he went off to fetch a squad of armed guards from the South Wales Borderers. Then he marched the mutineers out of the camp to a compound a few hundred yards away, where he drew them up with their backs to a wall and formed the guard into a single line facing them. Again he order the fatigue party to step forward, and when no one moved he ordered the guard to drag them out forcibly. A scrimmage ensued with the guard getting the worst of it, at which point Payne ordered the South Wales Borderers to load their rifles and take aim. At that moment a Roman Catholic chaplain came running up and stood in front of the mutineers, imploring the guard not to fire. Moments later a superior officer to Payne, Colonel Jackson, a Staff Officer from the headquarters of the 16th Indian Division, to which the Connaught Rangers were attached, came on the scene and gave Payne the order not to fire.
With the exception of one man (who died in prison at Dagshai), by the middle of the following year all of the convicted mutineers had been transferred to prisons in England to serve out the remainder of their sentences. At the conclusion of the Irish War of Independence, following negotiations between the Irish Free State and the British government, the mutineers were released from prison, and returned to Ireland early in 1923.
In 1936, following a long campaign, the Irish government awarded pensions to the freed mutineers to compensate them for the pensions they had forfeited for having mutinied. Private Daly's body was repatriated from India to Ireland for re-burial in 1970.
For further details of the Connaught Ranger's mutiny see Leon Babbington's "The Devil to Pay, The Mutiny of the Connaught Rangers in India, July 1920".
HMS Warspite was one of five Queen Elizabeth class battleships built for the Royal Navy during the early 1910's, and was completed during WW1 in 1915. During the First World War she took part in the battle of Jutland. During the Second World War she saw service during the Norwegian campaign in early 1940, prior to transferring to the Mediterranean later that year, where she took part in fleet actions against the Royal Italian Navy, and also took part in convoy escort duties and the bombardment of Italian troops ashore. HMS Warspite was damaged by German aircraft during the battle of Crete in mid-1941, necessitating six months of repairs in the United States. Those repairs were completed after the start of the Pacific war, in December 1941, wherupon Warspite sailed across the Pacific to join the Eastern Fleet in the Indian ocean, in early 1942, Warspite sailing for home in mid-1943.
HMS Golden Hind was a shore base in Sydney, New South Wales. Commissioned 20/11/1944, she was the headquarters for the British Pacific fleet.
