Donald Dickson Farmer

Some men perform one courageous act and are remembered forever. Donald Dickson Farmer did something even more remarkable. After carrying a helpless officer away from almost point-blank enemy fire, he refused to remain in safety. He returned directly to the firing line, continued fighting and was eventually captured. That decision at Nooitgedacht transformed a Scottish boy soldier into the first Cameron Highlander to receive the Victoria Cross.

Lieutenant-Colonel Donald Dickson Farmer VC, MSM was born on 28 May 1877 at 5 Winchester Row in Kelso, Roxburghshire, Scotland. He was the son of Thomas Farmer, a pastry cook and confectioner, and Joanna Farmer, née Clark. His family moved several times during his childhood, but Farmer’s ambition was already fixed on military service. In March 1892, while still only fourteen, he enlisted in the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders. Biographical accounts record that he claimed to be eighteen in order to enter the Army.

After training at the regimental depot in Inverness, Farmer joined the 1st Battalion overseas. He served in Malta and Gibraltar before being promoted to corporal. In 1898 he accompanied the Cameron Highlanders to Egypt and the Sudan, where he fought at the battles of Atbara and Khartoum during the final campaign against the Mahdist forces. His participation in both actions was recognised by the Queen’s Sudan Medal and the Khedive’s Sudan Medal with clasps for The Atbara and Khartoum.

The battalion was subsequently sent to South Africa for the Second Boer War. By then Farmer had become a sergeant and was serving with the 1st Battalion’s Mounted Infantry Company. He campaigned through Cape Colony, Johannesburg, Diamond Hill and Wittebergen, remained in South Africa through 1902 and was twice mentioned in despatches. Yet the action that defined his life occurred during one of the war’s fiercest and most confused engagements.

On 13 December 1900, Boer forces launched a surprise attack on Major-General Ralph Clements’ camp at Nooitgedacht in the Transvaal. Lieutenant James Walter Sandilands and fifteen Cameron Highlanders went to assist an outlying picquet that had already suffered severe casualties. Concealed among trees, the Boers opened fire from approximately twenty yards away, killing two men and wounding five, including Sandilands, who was left completely helpless.

Farmer immediately moved through the close-range fire, reached the wounded officer and carried him away. The official Victoria Cross citation recorded that he “carried him away under a very heavy and close fire to a place of comparative safety.” Instead of remaining with Sandilands, Farmer returned to the firing line and continued the defence until he was taken prisoner. He was back at Rustenburg a few days later and subsequently rejoined his battalion.

The award of the Victoria Cross was announced in The London Gazette on 12 April 1901. Farmer was twenty-three years old and became the first soldier of the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders to receive the decoration. On 15 August 1901, the Duke of Cornwall and York, later King George V, presented Farmer with the Victoria Cross during a ceremony at Pietermaritzburg in Natal.

Farmer remained a professional soldier after returning from South Africa. He became a colour-sergeant in 1905 and married Helen Hall Menzies “Nell” Bonnar, the sister of one of his Cameron Highlander comrades. The couple established their home in Army married quarters and raised a family while Farmer continued advancing through the senior non-commissioned ranks. By the beginning of the First World War, he had completed more than twenty-two years of military service and had become an experienced regimental sergeant-major.

In 1914 Farmer was serving with the 10th Scottish Battalion of The King’s Liverpool Regiment, better known as the Liverpool Scottish. He travelled to France with the battalion in early November and served on the Western Front as its regimental sergeant-major. His experience was particularly valuable to the Territorial soldiers as they adapted to trench warfare, winter conditions and sustained enemy fire.

In June 1915, Farmer received a commission as quartermaster and was posted to the Liverpool Scottish’s second battalion. He was later appointed adjutant and returned to active service. During the closing stages of the war he helped organise concentration and demobilisation work, managing the movement of troops returning home. His long and distinguished service was also recognised by the Meritorious Service Medal, and he eventually attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel.

Farmer maintained a close connection with the Army and his former regiments after leaving full-time service. During the Second World War he served in the Home Guard, helping to train men for the defence of Britain. In August 1950, he attended a reunion of South African War veterans at Inverness, where he was reunited with Major-General James Sandilands, the officer whose life he had saved at Nooitgedacht half a century earlier.

On 26 June 1956, Farmer joined surviving holders of the Victoria Cross at the centenary review in Hyde Park, attended by Queen Elizabeth II. It was the fulfilment of one of his final ambitions. Six months later, on 23 December 1956, Lieutenant-Colonel Donald Dickson Farmer died at the Radium Institute in Liverpool at the age of seventy-nine. He was cremated at Anfield Crematorium, where his ashes were placed in the Garden of Remembrance.

Farmer’s medals, including the Victoria Cross he earned by returning to danger after saving another man, are preserved at the Highlanders’ Museum at Fort George. His legacy rests not only upon the rescue of Lieutenant Sandilands, but upon more than six decades of loyalty to his soldiers, his regiment and his country.