Description
Object description
3 volumes of his manuscript memoirs (circa 340pp), written during the late 1920s and early 1930s, recording in literary style his birth and early childhood during the late 19th century in Higher Broughton, Manchester (including recollections of the annual military garrison parade and review at Heaton Park), followed by a farming and horse-breeding apprenticeship at Gosberton in Lincolnshire and a subsequent period of travel in Mexico and the southern United States of America (late 1890s), military service in South Africa with the Imperial Yeomanry (77th Company) during the Second Anglo-Boer War of 1899 – 1902, largely uneventful except for an involvement in the abortive operations against De Wet's forces on the Rhenoster river (August 1900) and a few minor skirmishes before being found medically unfit for field service and spending the rest of his time as an orderly at Kroonstad, returning to the UK in the summer of 1901, commission as a 2nd Lieutenant in the 5th (Ardwick) Volunteer Battalion of the Manchester Regiment and training with the Foot Guards at Chelsea Barracks in London, transferring to the 3rd Battalion The Welsh Regiment (Militia) in late 1902, serving also as Honorary Secretary of the Manchester branch of the National Service League (whose President, Field Marshal Lord Roberts, is much praised by Mandley), call-up as a Captain in the 11th Battalion The Welsh Regiment shortly after the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 (commanding B Company), training on the south coast of England and at Aldershot until September 1915 when the Battalion proceeded to France, initial deployment in the Somme sector alongside French units and first experiences of trench warfare before being transferred to the Salonika front in November 1915, the inhospitable and primitive conditions encountered there (including having to build roads to move military equipment), helping with the construction of defences around the town of Salonika until he was evacuated back to the UK via Malta with acute malaria in April 1916, returning to France in July to join the 16th Battalion The Welsh Regiment on the Somme and subsequently in the Ypres sector until October 1916 when he was again evacuated back to England on medical grounds, spending December 1916 to June 1917 with a reserve battalion at Kinmel Park camp in north Wales before being sent back to Salonika and staff duties at 28th Division HQ until the end of the war in November 1918, his reflections on the condition of Britain in the immediate postwar period and a lengthy condemnation of David Lloyd George, the memoirs concluding with an account of a voyage to Norway in 1929 in the German four-mast barque HERZOGIN CECILIE [Note: Mandley achieved some success as a playwright in later life, and his interests in this field are referred to at various places in the memoirs].
Content description
3 volumes of his manuscript memoirs (circa 340pp), written during the late 1920s and early 1930s, recording in literary style his birth and early childhood during the late 19th century in Higher Broughton, Manchester (including recollections of the annual military garrison parade and review at Heaton Park), followed by a farming and horse-breeding apprenticeship at Gosberton in Lincolnshire and a subsequent period of travel in Mexico and the southern United States of America (late 1890s), military service in South Africa with the Imperial Yeomanry (77th Company) during the Second Anglo-Boer War of 1899 – 1902, largely uneventful except for an involvement in the abortive operations against De Wet's forces on the Rhenoster river (August 1900) and a few minor skirmishes before being found medically unfit for field service and spending the rest of his time as an orderly at Kroonstad, returning to the UK in the summer of 1901, commission as a 2nd Lieutenant in the 5th (Ardwick) Volunteer Battalion of the Manchester Regiment and training with the Foot Guards at Chelsea Barracks in London, transferring to the 3rd Battalion The Welsh Regiment (Militia) in late 1902, serving also as Honorary Secretary of the Manchester branch of the National Service League (whose President, Field Marshal Lord Roberts, is much praised by Mandley), call-up as a Captain in the 11th Battalion The Welsh Regiment shortly after the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 (commanding B Company), training on the south coast of England and at Aldershot until September 1915 when the Battalion proceeded to France, initial deployment in the Somme sector alongside French units and first experiences of trench warfare before being transferred to the Salonika front in November 1915, the inhospitable and primitive conditions encountered there (including having to build roads to move military equipment), helping with the construction of defences around the town of Salonika until he was evacuated back to the UK via Malta with acute malaria in April 1916, returning to France in July to join the 16th Battalion The Welsh Regiment on the Somme and subsequently in the Ypres sector until October 1916 when he was again evacuated back to England on medical grounds, spending December 1916 to June 1917 with a reserve battalion at Kinmel Park camp in north Wales before being sent back to Salonika and staff duties at 28th Division HQ until the end of the war in November 1918, his reflections on the condition of Britain in the immediate postwar period and a lengthy condemnation of David Lloyd George, the memoirs concluding with an account of a voyage to Norway in 1929 in the German four-mast barque HERZOGIN CECILIE [Note: Mandley achieved some success as a playwright in later life, and his interests in this field are referred to at various places in the memoirs].
History note
Cataloguer SWW