Alexander Edward Murray

On 17 August 1897, in the broken mountain country of Upper Swat, a British cavalry officer who was also reporting the campaign for The Times went forward under close fire to help rescue a wounded infantry officer surrounded by enemy swordsmen. His horse was shot beneath him, another officer in the rescue party was mortally wounded, and the man they were trying to save was killed before he could be brought to safety. The surviving officer was Alexander Edward Murray, Viscount Fincastle, and the action at Nawa Kili would earn him the Victoria Cross and make his name one of the most distinctive in the history of the 16th Lancers.

Alexander Edward Murray was born at Portland Place, London, on 22 April 1871, the only son of Charles Adolphus Murray, 7th Earl of Dunmore, and Lady Gertrude Coke. Educated privately and at Eton, he entered the British Army and was commissioned into the 16th Lancers on 30 May 1892. His early career quickly carried him to the imperial frontiers. From 1895 to 1897 he served as aide-de-camp to the Viceroy of India, Victor Bruce, 9th Earl of Elgin. In 1896 he joined the Dongola Expedition in the Sudan, where his service brought entitlement to the Queen's Sudan Medal and the Khedive's Sudan Medal with clasp.

The following year brought the campaign for which he is best remembered. During operations on the North-West Frontier, Murray served with the Malakand Field Force attached to the Guides Cavalry and later with the Buner Field Force as aide-de-camp to Brigadier-General Sir Bindon Blood. He was present at Landakai, where contemporary biographical accounts record that a horse was shot beneath him, and he was mentioned in despatches three times during the frontier fighting. His India Medal entitlement is recorded in the near-contemporary Military History of Perthshire as carrying two clasps.

At Nawa Kili on 17 August 1897, Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Bellew Adams, Lieutenant Hector Lachlan Stewart MacLean, Viscount Fincastle and five men of the Guides moved forward through what the official citation described as "very heavy and close fire" to reach Lieutenant R. T. Greaves of the Lancashire Fusiliers. Greaves had been wounded and was surrounded by enemy swordsmen. During the rescue he was struck again and killed. MacLean was mortally wounded, while the horses of Adams and Fincastle and two troop horses were shot. The London Gazette of 9 November 1897 announced the award of the Victoria Cross to Murray and Adams, while recording that MacLean would also have been recommended had he survived.

Queen Victoria personally presented Murray with the Victoria Cross at Windsor Castle on 28 February 1898. His position during the campaign was unusual because he remained a serving cavalry officer while also acting as a war correspondent for The Times. His direct experience of the campaign soon found another form. In 1898, together with Percy Clare Eliott-Lockhart, he published A Frontier Campaign: A Narrative of the Operations of the Malakand and Buner Field Forces, 1897-1898, an important contemporary account of the fighting on the frontier.

War called him again in South Africa. Murray went there in 1899 as aide-de-camp to Major-General Sir Herbert Chermside and served through the Second Boer War. His recorded operations included Colesberg, the relief of Kimberley, Paardeberg, Poplar Grove, Karree Siding, and subsequent operations in the Transvaal and Orange River Colony. His Queen's South Africa Medal was awarded with four clasps, and his South African service also brought a further Mention in Despatches.

Late in 1901 Murray raised a new Imperial Yeomanry formation that became the 31st Battalion, widely known as Fincastle's Horse. On 22 January 1902 he was formally appointed to command it with the temporary rank of lieutenant-colonel. The appointment is confirmed in the London Gazette. The battalion, recruited largely in Scotland, reached South Africa in May 1902 and took part in operations in Cape Colony before the conclusion of the war. Murray later relinquished the command and resumed duty with the 16th Lancers.

His service was not confined to battlefield honours. In 1906 Murray was appointed a Member of the Royal Victorian Order for services connected with the Prince of Wales and the marriage of King Alfonso XIII of Spain. Regimental records also identify his Spanish honour as the Order of Isabella the Catholic, 3rd Class. His recorded medal group further included a Jubilee Medal, identified in the reconstructed entitlement as the Queen Victoria Diamond Jubilee Medal of 1897. The Royal Lancers records the Royal Victorian Order, the Spanish decoration, the Jubilee Medal, the Sudan awards, the India Medal and the four-clasp Queen's South Africa Medal among his honours.

Murray married Lucinda Dorothea Kemble in January 1904. On the death of his father on 27 August 1907, he succeeded as 8th Earl of Dunmore, 8th Viscount Fincastle, and to the family's other titles. He subsequently left regular military service to attend to the family estates, but his active career was not over.

When the First World War began in 1914, Lord Dunmore returned to military service and served on the Western Front as a staff officer. His First World War service brought the 1914 Star, British War Medal and Victory Medal, and he was Mentioned in Despatches four times. His ribbon for the Victory Medal therefore carried the appropriate Mention in Despatches oak-leaf emblem. He was also wounded twice. Most significantly, his staff service during the Battle of the Somme was recognised in the 1917 New Year Honours with appointment as a Companion of the Distinguished Service Order. The published honours list identifies him as "Major Alexander Edward, Earl of Dunmore" among the DSO recipients, and later official Gazette material styles him VC, DSO, MVO.

By the end of his military career, Murray's ribbon group reflected service across three major theatres and two generations of warfare. Alongside the Victoria Cross, Distinguished Service Order and Royal Victorian Order were his Queen's Sudan Medal, India Medal with two clasps, Queen's South Africa Medal with four clasps, 1914 Star, British War Medal, Victory Medal with Mention in Despatches emblem, Queen Victoria Diamond Jubilee Medal, Spanish Order of Isabella the Catholic, 3rd Class, and Khedive's Sudan Medal with clasp. The India Medal two-clasp and QSA four-clasp entitlements are supported by the 1908 Military History of Perthshire, while the regimental history independently records his principal British and foreign honours.

In the years after the First World War, Lord Dunmore moved increasingly into public and royal service. He served as Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms in 1924 and as a Lord-in-Waiting from 1930 to 1936. He was also a Deputy Lieutenant of Inverness-shire. These appointments placed the former frontier cavalry officer within the ceremonial and political life of the British establishment, decades after the action that had earned him the Victoria Cross.

The Second World War brought a deeply personal loss. His only son and heir, Captain Edward David Murray, Viscount Fincastle, served with the 4th Battalion, Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders and was killed in France on 5 June 1940. The death meant that when Lord Dunmore eventually died, his titles would pass not to a son but to his grandson.

Alexander Edward Murray died in London on 29 January 1962 at the age of ninety. His life had stretched from Victorian cavalry warfare in the Sudan and India through the Boer War, the First World War, and into the nuclear age. Yet the defining moment of his military reputation remained those few minutes at Nawa Kili in 1897, when a young lieutenant and war correspondent moved into close fire to help a wounded comrade. More than sixty years later, the names attached to him still summarized an extraordinary career: Alexander Edward Murray, 8th Earl of Dunmore, VC, DSO, MVO, DL.