George Garrity

Private George Garrity

94th Regiment of Foot

Private George Garrity was one of a small group of British soldiers whose medal entitlement recorded service through virtually the entire Peninsular War. Serving with the 94th Regiment of Foot, known as the Scotch Brigade, he qualified for ten clasps to the Military General Service Medal, the maximum number awarded to any member of his regiment.

Later accounts report that Garrity was born near Falkirk, Stirlingshire, around 1792 and enlisted at Dunbar in September 1808 at approximately sixteen years of age. These personal details remain subject to confirmation from his surviving service, pension and Scottish parish records.

Garrity served with the 94th Foot in the 2nd Brigade of Sir Thomas Picton’s celebrated 3rd Division. His first confirmed clasp was for Fuentes d’Onor, fought in May 1811, when Wellington prevented Marshal Masséna from relieving the besieged fortress of Almeida. From that point, Garrity’s medal entitlement traces the regiment’s advance across the Iberian Peninsula and into France.

In 1812, the 94th participated in the capture of Ciudad Rodrigo and the assault on Badajoz, two of the most important and costly siege operations of the campaign. At Badajoz, British troops attacked heavily defended breaches under intense fire before forcing their way into the fortress.

Garrity also qualified for the Salamanca clasp. Wellington’s victory there in July 1812 shattered Marshal Marmont’s army and demonstrated the effectiveness of rapid manoeuvre against an exposed enemy flank.

The following year, Garrity was present for the campaign culminating at Vittoria, where the Allied victory ended effective French control of Spain and forced Joseph Bonaparte’s army toward the Pyrenees.

As Wellington’s forces crossed into France, Garrity continued serving through the actions represented by the clasps Pyrenees, Nivelle, Nive, Orthes and Toulouse. Toulouse, fought on 10 April 1814, was the final major battle of the Peninsular War, taking place shortly before news of Napoleon’s abdication reached the opposing armies.

Following the war, the 94th Foot returned to Ireland and was disbanded in Dublin in December 1818. Reports that Garrity returned to Falkirk and received a Chelsea out-pension of five pence per day remain plausible, but require confirmation from the original pension and discharge records.

The Military General Service Medal was sanctioned in 1847 and issued retrospectively to surviving veterans whose qualifying service was confirmed. Garrity’s officially named medal bears ten clasps:

Fuentes d’Onor, Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz, Salamanca, Vittoria, Pyrenees, Nivelle, Nive, Orthes and Toulouse.

A 2013 Lockdales auction catalogue described the medal as correctly named to George Garrity, 94th Foot, and stated that the medal and all ten bars had been confirmed against the official roll.

Specialist medal research records that only four officers and nineteen other ranks of the 94th Foot received the Military General Service Medal with the regiment’s maximum ten-clasp entitlement. Garrity was therefore one of only nineteen other ranks whose medal represented the complete qualifying Peninsular service of the regiment.

The Military General Service Medal was not a gallantry decoration and Garrity received no individual London Gazette citation. His distinction rests instead on endurance, sustained service and survival through ten major actions during one of Britain’s longest and most demanding military campaigns.

Reports place his death at Falkirk in 1852, although this remains unverified pending examination of the relevant Scottish records. His rare ten-clasp medal remains an enduring record of an ordinary infantryman’s extraordinary length of service from the Portuguese frontier to Wellington’s final campaign in southern France.