DRISCOLL’S SCOUTS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIV, Issue 305, 22 November 1934, Page 3

DRISCOLL’S SCOUTS.

FAMOUS BOER AVAR COMPANY. Founder of tho famous Dirscoll’s Scouts of the Boer War, and since 1932 Commandant-General of the Legion of Frontiersmen, LieutenantGeneral Daniel P. Driscoll died on August 6 at Mombasa, says the Exchange. He was seventy-two. He was the most picturesque figure in the most picturesque of ail volunteer armies. His own story is largely the story of the Legion of Frontiersmen which he helped to create. The Frontiersmen were largely members of the many irregular units formed during the South African AVar. On the eve of this war Driscoll left a prosperous engineering business and rushed off to South Africa where he obtained a squadron of Frontier-Mounted llifies immediately on landing. Then he formed his body of Scouts, which did splendid work over the wide area of the campaign and earned the congratulations of Lord Kitchener. It was at this time that Driscoll was awarded the D.S.O. For many years he remained Commander of the Legion, which was given its greatest opportunity at the beginning of the Great AVar. FIRST BRITISH IN ACTION.

In August, 1914, a band of Frontiersmen paid their passage to Belgium and fought with the Belgian Lancers. They claim to have been the first British in action.

In February, 1915, Lioutenan.tColonel Driscoll took a battalion, composed largely of Frontiersmen, to German East Africa. This was the 25th Royal Fusiliers (Frontiersmen), the only battalion to go'-on active service without training. The circumstances under which they fought must have been among the strangest of the war. The men were tossed by wild buffalo, knocked down by charging rhinoeeri, chased by elephants and stalked by lions. They marched for thousands of miles through jungles, wasted by fever and harried by frequent shortages of water and food. Twice the battalion charged with bayonets against machine guns? At the end of the war its three years’ campaign was voted a brilliant success. From its South African beginnings the Legion has now spread to every part of the Empire. Colonel Driscoll" had not, in the last few years, taken an active part in its organisation, but even at the age of seventy, when he attended a parade in Africa, he was a striking figure in his uniform, with wide, flapping Stetson hat, chaininail epaulets, blue patrol jacket, breeches, boots and spurs.