Page 55 - Who Was Sapper Brown

The 71st Highland Light Infantry were relieved in Mathiatis by the 1st Battalion of the 20th Regiment
[Lancashire Fusiliers], under the command of Lieutenant Colonel F L Eldridge, on 14 December 1878.4

The Highlanders were doubtless in high spirits when they embarked on the troopship HMS Orontes on
15 December en route for Gibraltar and home, though a total of five of their complement are reported to

have died during their five month sojourn in Cyprus.5, 6, 7

The only clearly identified grave in Cyprus of a 71st Highlander is that of Major James Argyll Spalding
Inglis, who stayed on as Commissioner of Famagusta after his regiment left for home. He was the first

burial in Famagusta Military Cemetery, having died on 1 April 1883 as Commissioner of Nicosia. He
had retained his lineage to the 71despite the regiment having amalgamated with the 74(Highland)
st th
Regiment of Foot in 1881 to become the 1st Battalion, The Highland Light Infantry.8

British troops (primarily the 71st Highland Light Infantry, the 20th Regiment of Foot and the 31st

Fortress Company of Royal Engineers) and their families only used the Mathiatis cantonment in any
significant numbers from the end of August 1878 to the end of April 1879. There is, incidentally, a record

of a temporary post office having been established there in October 1878 and the cantonment being
demolished at the end of 1881.9

There was a large reduction in the size of the Cyprus garrison in the spring of 1879. Five of the companies

(half the battalion) of the 20th Regiment of Foot left Mathiatis on 24 April 1879 for Larnaca, there to
embark for Malta.On 1 May the headquarters and remaining five companies left Mathiatis for Troodos
10
where they established the first camp.

The health of the 20th Regiment of Foot appears to have been excellent while stationed at Mathiatis, with

no record of fatalities during their time there.11 They did not return there after April 1879, spending the
winter of 1879 – 1880 at the newly constructed permanent camp at Polemidia, outside Limassol. The 20th

Regiment of Foot spent one more summer at Troodos before leaving Cyprus on 6 October 1880. Only
one soldier from this regiment lost his life in Cyprus.12 He is 372 Private P. Gallaghan, who died on 7

September 1879, and is buried in Troodos Military Cemetery.13

4 Smyth, B (1889), History of the XX Regiment 1688 – 1888 (London: Simpkin, Marshall and Co), pp. 279 – 280.
5 ‘Report, 1 March 1879, by Surgeon General A D Home VC, KCB, Principal Medical Officer, Nicosia, on the medical his-
tory of the troops stationed in Cyprus since July 1878’ (presented to the House of Commons 28 April 1879). Home confirms

that five men from this regiment died before it left Cyprus on 15 December 1878. He also mentions when the first soldier of
the 71st died: ‘On the day after the camp [Chiflik Pasha] was formed, one soldier of the 71st died of heat apoplexy’. The Muster
Books (WO 16/1739) and Casualty Returns of the 71st Foot (WO 25/3418) in The National Archives confirm that this soldier
was 586 Private James McGlashan, who died on 24 July 1878. He would have been buried near the camp, on the outskirts of

Larnaca.
6 Army Medical Department Annual Report (1878).
7 Casualty Returns of the 71st Foot (The National Archives: WO 25/3418).

8 Oatts, L. B. (1969), Famous Regiments – The Highland Light Infantry (London: Leo Cooper Ltd), p. 61.
9 Castle, Wilfrid and Cyprus Study Circle (1987), 3rd edn. Cyprus 1353 – 1986, History, Postal History and Postage Stamps
(London: Christie’s-Robson Lowe). See p. 78: ‘Temporary Post Offices: Mathiati, Zugoh, Siliko’, in Chapter 3: ‘Military Postal

Services in Cyprus: British Period, 1878 – 1960’.
10 Smyth, B. Op cit, p. 280.
11 Report, 1 March 1879, by Surgeon General A D Home VC, KCB. Op cit. ’The 71st was relieved by the 1st Battalion of the
20th Foot from Halifax, on the 12tb of December. On arrival the battalion proceeded to Mathiati in two marches, and it has been

quartered at that cantonment up to the present time; its health has been excellent, the average number of men in hospital having
been only 3 per cent.; the illnesses in nearly every instance were of a very light kind’.
12 Army Medical Department Annual Report (1879).

13 Harfield, A. G (1978), ‘British military presence in Cyprus in the 19th century.’ Journal of the Society for Army Historical
Research Vol.56, No. 227, pp.160 – 172.

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