Record of Service:--South African War, 1899-1901--Employed with the Mounted Infantry, advance on Kimberley, including actions at Belmont and Modder River; operations in the Transvaal from June to 29th November, 1900; operations in Cape Colony, operations in the Transvaal, 30th November, 1900, to March, 1901; operations in Orange River Colony, March to June, 1901. Despatches, London Gazette, 10th September, 1901--Vaal, June to 29th November, 1900; operations in Cape Colony. Queen's Medal and five clasps, D.S.O. Soudan, 1905--Operations against the Nyam-Nyam tribes in Bahr-el-Gazel Province; Despatches, London Gazette, 18th May, 1906. Egyptian Medal Clasp. Soudan, 1906--Operations at Talodi in Southern Kordofan--Clasp to Egyptian Medal. Soudan, 1906--Operations in Blue Nile Province. Promoted Temporary Lieutenant-Colonel, London Gazette, 22nd January, 1915.] [_To face p. 28._] Major Julian Ryan, D.S.O., who had gone back to Brigade Headquarters on the morning of the 22nd, to arrange about ammunition and transport, as he put it himself in a letter, "sized up trouble" when "the Regiment disappeared into nothingness." It was he who left a record of the work done by the six men of the search party to whose efforts, as to his own, the safe return of a single man of the Munster Fusiliers is chiefly due. Having reported at Brigade Headquarters, and having received the reply that no help could be given, Major Ryan split his men into patrols of two and sent them out. At 8 p.m., when it was very dark and the enemy's fire unceasing, the men, whose names, unfortunately, are not recorded, came back reporting: "Very few officers left; many casualties; Colonel wounded; two senior Majors killed. Send orders." Major Ryan, fully aware that daybreak would see the end of the gallant Battalion if nothing were done, redoubled his efforts. "It was 10 o'clock before the Brigadier's orders got to me to get orders out to the Battalion to retire, and even by then I had not a single unwounded man left of all the four companies that had gone out at 7 a.m. to show me where they had got to. Once more I called on my trusty six who had located them at dusk, and sent them out in three parties, again with definite orders to come back to me at a certain point where I was alone but for a few stray men and no officers. By midnight, to my relief, I got the remnant of the four companies in, worn out and starved, as their officers had fallen and many men, in the advance. All they could do was to follow my guides in. I called for volunteers and took a party out with stretchers and got some wounded in, but drew blank for the Colonel and Major Thomson. The Adjutant had come in unwounded, but dead beat, and could not say where the Colonel was.