Roll of Honour 2023

P AGE 1

M ATABELE W ARS 1896

S T . E DWARD ’ S S CHOOL , O XFORD R OLL OF H ONOUR

N AME WILLIAM HERBERT CLARKE (C OMMISSIONER )

L EFT SES 1886

R OLL N UMBER 525

S ET / H OUSE NA

A RRIVE SES 1882

D IED 24:05:1895

W HERE INSIGNA, MATABELELAND S ERVING WITH GWELO VOLUNTEERS FIELD FORCE

A GE 26

Buried Bulawayo, Zimbabwe Remembered Gweru Memorial (outside today’s Zimbabwe Military Museum) and The St. Edward’s School Chapel (Brass Plaque)

Born Westcote Barton, Oxon 1869, the younger of two SES brothers. Very little is remembered of his time at the School. Known as ‘Nobby’. He served with the British South African Police and was present in both the two Matabele Wars. These were conflicts fought between the British South African Company and the Matabele people at first, later the Shona tribes in the rest of Southern Rhodesia. In 1893 he was included in the ‘Johannesburg Times’ Prisoner of War official list for a short while. Together with the C.E. Lamb (Roll 515) one of only ‘two OSE who served in Bechuanaland’ (Chronicle). ‘Nobby’ Clarke was known to have been in this region of the world for six years and went through the First Matabele War unscathed. He had just returned from a successful scientific and exploratory expedition across the Zambezi and Lake Tanganyika, when the second rebellion broke out and he joined the Salisbury Column as a ‘Native Commander’ charged with the relief of Bulawayo, then under siege. Just how Clarke met his death is a subject of debate, the most likely being from fever, although against his name on the Gweru Memorial there are no details shown.