THE MILITARY GENERAL SERVICE MEDAL TO PRIVATE HUGH JONES, 45TH (NOTTINGHAMSHIRE) REGIMENT (THE POST 1880 1ST BATTALION THE SHERWOOD FORRESTERS - THE DERBYSHIRE REGIMENT), INVALIDED, MEDICALLY UNFIT FOR FURTHER SERVICE, AT CEYLON IN 1824. Military General Service Medal 1793-1814, 4 clasps, Vittoria, Pyrenees, Orthes, Toulouse (officially named, impressed in serifed block capitals: HUGH JONES, 45TH. FOOT). Scattered minor edge knocks and rim bruises, otherwise Good Very Fine or perhaps a little better.
With copied medal roll extracts (2, original and published) confirming medal and clasps, and 2 pages of copied service papers.
The original medal roll records Hugh Jones as having seen service under Captain Ridgewood in the Peninsula.
Born circa 1791, Hugh Jones's service papers state that he was born in the parish of Llennor in the county of Anglesea, Wales (Llenor, present day Llanor, is actually a small village located on the Welsh mainland, on the Llyn peninsula in the county of Gwynedd, just south of the island of Anglesea). Jones enlisted into the 45th Foot at Longford, county Longford, Ireland, on 4/5/1812, for unlimited service. At time of enlistment Jones was 21 years of age. He saw service with the 45th Foot for 12 years and 92 days, and was eventually discharged on 19/6/1824, suffering from "chronic hepatitis and unfit for further service". In addition to service at home and in the Peninsula and France, Jones saw service in the East Indies from 13/8/1819 to 19/6/1824. At the time of discharge Jones was 33 years of age, stood some 5 feet 4.5 inches high, and was described as being a miller by trade. He could not write, and signed his discharge papers with "his mark" (a cross). Private Jones discharge papers were drawn up and signed at Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) on 1/1/1824, after which Jones, unfit for further service as a result of illness, was invalided to England and discharged on 19/6/1824.
The 45th Foot played a leading role in the campaigns in the Peninsula and southern France, seeing service in Spain from 6/8/1808 during the first Peninsular campaign, right through to the final battle of the second campaign in the Peninsula and southern France, at Toulouse, on 10/4/1814. As a result, the regiment took part in virtually every battle from Rolica to Toulouse.
The 1st Battalion 45th Foot played a prominent part in all four of the actions for which Hugh Jones received clasps. At Vittoria, 21/6/1813, the 45th Foot saw service with General Picton's 3rd Brigade, which had by then earned the nickname the "Fighting Third". The 45th Regiment led the attack on the right flank of the French army, being the first regiment across the Mendoza bridge, and afterwards took part in the attack by the Third Division on the centre of the French army, after which the Third Division played a leading role in driving the French back towards Vittoria in a confused general retreat. Despite the scale of the victory at Vittoria, one of Wellington’s greatest during the Peninsular campaign, the 45th lost only 4 men killed and 4 officers and 66 other ranks wounded, the wounded including the regiment’s commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Ridgewood, who died of his wounds the following day. During the Pyrennees campaign, 25/7/1813 to 2/8/1813, the 45th played a prominent role in the second battle of Sorauren, 30/7/1813, taking part in a charge that led to the regiment capturing over 300 French prisoners. At Orthes, 27/2/1814, the 45th were prominent during the advance of the right wing of Wellington’s army, losing over 130 officers and men in a concerted attack that once more saw Naponeon’s army driven from the field in confusion, the 45th’s casualties on this occasion including two Lieutenant-Colonels, Forbes and Greenwell, both wounded. At Toulouse, 10/4/1814, the Third Division took up a position on the right flank of the British attack, during which they bore the brunt of the fighting on that flank, with the result that the 45th once again suffered heavy casualties, its commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Forbes, being killed in action, and 7 other ranks also being killed, along with 8 officers and 69 other ranks wounded.
The 45th returned to the UK in 1814 after almost six years continuous service in the Peninsula and France, landing at Monkstown, Dublin, Ireland, on 24-25/7/1814. The regiment remained in Ireland until 1819, embarking at Cork for Ceylon on 29/1/1819 some 800 strong. P.H. Dalbiac in his “History of the 45th” (London 1902), notes that the posting to Ceylon, during the latter years of Hugh Jones’s period of service with the 45th, saw the regiment severely affected by illness and disease, Dalbiac recording that “nothing but sickness marks the years 1822 and 1823”, so much so that by the time the regiment was ordered to embark for service in Burma in 1825, only 362 officers and men of the regiment were fit for embarkation, despite the fact that the regiment had received numerous drafts of recruits during the years 1819-1825. When the regiment eventually returned to the UK, only 22 men of the 800 who had embarked at Cork for Ceylon in 1819 returned with the regiment, Private Jones being one of the numerous casualties sustained by the 45th as a result of the widespread sickness and disease that afflicted the regiment while it was stationed in Ceylon.
Jones did not see service during the campaign of 1825 in Burma, having previously been invalided to England, and as a result did not receive the Army of India Medal with Ava clasp.
