It was in South Africa that the Legion of Frontiersmen was first conceived by Roger Pocock whilst serving as a captain with the famous Waldron Scouts during the Anglo-Boer War of 1899- 1902.

It was Pocock's experiences as a Mountie in the frozen North-West of Canada, as well as those in the red-skin rebellion of 1880, combined with those in the Boer War, that led him to thinking of the idea of forming a chain of 'Listening Posts'. These Listening Posts would be not only across the frontiers of the British Empire but, indeed, throughout the world.

At the turn of the century it was often necessary to ride hell for leather for days and often nights in order to get to the nearest telegraph station before being able to send vital information to the nearest military garrison. Thus in 1904, Capt Pocock founded the Legion of Frontiersmen in London.

Applications poured in from every point of the compass, and amongst these were:

• Sir Ernest Shackleton explorer and leader of the 1914-16 Antarctic expedition in which his ship was crushed in the ice packs;
• Joseph Conrad who saw service in the Boer War and was the author of some of the world's most famous sea-faring adventure stories;
• Patrick Hastings who also served in the Boer War and was later to become one of the greatest criminal lawyers of all time, living to receive the accolade of Knighthood from the hands of the King
• Capt Frederick Courtney Selous, big game hunter and naturalist, Chief Intelligence Officer to the column organised bv Cecil John Rhodes to defeat the Matabele King, Lobengula, and annex Matabeleland; (Rider Haggard of Zululand, though not a Frontiersman, had modelled Allan Quartermain on Selous),
• Capt Robert Falcon Scott, RN, of South Pole fame who, after reaching the Pole, perished with his party during a blizzard. With them was Capt Oates, also a Frontiersman, who died that the others might have a better chance to live.
• Dan Driscoll, known in the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902 as the 'King of the Scouts' who founded and commanded the corps of irregulars Driscoll's Scouts, and later became Commandant General of the Legion in World War I;
• William le Queux: best selling novelist of the 1920s;
• Lord Baden-Powell who, as a colonel, had commanded the relief force that had come up from Bechuanaland to relieve the laager at Bulawayo during the Matabele Rebellion of 1896 and later, the hero of Mafeking.
• Another w as Capt Cherry Kearton, big game hunter and greatest photographer of wild life as well as being amongst the first. He too, saw service in the Anglo-Boer War.
• Amongst other illustrious personages on the roll of the Legon were Lord Roberts, General French, General Alfred Turner, Lord Kitchener and many others too numerous to mention. All had seen active military service in Africa.

Within a few weeks of its founding, a horseman who had answered Pocock's call, unshaven, unwashed, exhausted and dead-beat, his horse foaming at the bit and ready to die (he did die in fact) rode up to a small railway station and dismounted.

On entering the station, he rapped out an order to the only railway official he saw to telegraph the Natal Command that Zulu Impis were already on the march with the declared intention of killing the entire European population, men, women and children.

As our founder had visualised, this timely communication from one of his newly formed 'Listening Posts' enabled the Commander at the Fort in Durban to dispatch a force that was to destroy the power of the Zulu King.

Cecil Rhodes hired Fred Burnham, the great American Scout, for service with the Pioneer Column in the capture of Mashonaland in 1890 and, later, against Lobengula, the Matabele King, in 1893. In this fight the odds against the tiny English force which marched into Matabeleland were colossal, in spite of their Hotchkiss and Gatling guns. Lobengula had 80 000 spearmen and 20 000 riflemen armed with nine pound Martini-Henrys, which were modern arms at that time, and thousands of rounds of ammunition. The English force comprised the Victoria Column of about 400 men, under Major Allan Wilson, and the United Salisbury Columns of less than 300 men under Major Patrick Forbes.

At Ihbembezi on November 1, 1893, in broad davlight, this tiny force destroyed the power of the Matabele, killing thousands of the enemy and putting Lobengula to flight.

Burnham and Forbes both became Frontiersmen many years later but Allan Wilson died in the heroic action at Shangani.

John Boyes (later Lieut-Col) ran away to sea at the age of 13 and served in all sorts of ships from fishing smacks to a man-of-war. Tiring of the sea, he arrived in Rhodesia in time to see service in the Matabeleland Rebellion in 1896. He then found himself caught up in an inter-tribal war in East Africa and threw his weight in with the Wakikuyu becoming a blood-brother of the leading Chief which, in time, led him to become the uncrowned king of the tribe that was to emerge as the Mau Mau. His influence, however, enabled the British Governor to retain nine-tenths loyalty of this tribe of some million souls. Johan Colenbrander (later Lieut-Col) had arrived in Matabeleland in 1888 as interpreter to Cecil John Rhodes' concession-seeking parties. By virtue of his command of the Zulu language and his calm and friendly manner, he won the confidence of Lobengula, the Matabele King. He was later sent down with an 'impi' (a Matabele regiment) to intercept the Pioneer Column at Tuli to ensure that Rhodes was not up to any funny business.

Major Pretorius, the great Boer scout, big-game hunter, Intelligence Officer and author was yet another Frontiersman whose greatest exploit was, perhaps, the tracing of the great sea-raider, the German battle cruiser 'Konigsberg', to her lair in the Rufiji River during the German East African campaign in the 1914-18 War.

This ship had been the scourge of all allied shipping that passed through the Indian Ocean from the Far East, India, Australasia, round the Cape or through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea.

Pretorius found that great activity was taking place under heavy concealment, so he built an observation post almost under her bows in the jungle that grew almost to the water's edge, so close that sometimes he could hear the crew talking.

He observed that there was something strange about the warship's armourment: "God", he whispered, "the barrels of her guns have been replaced with wooden ones, probably coconut palms". From this information he deduced that these guns had either been or were about to be mobilised as field pieces and sent up to the front to support the German forces in the fierce battles now raging. He favoured the latter assumption, as this would account for the feverish activity, the sound of machine tools and incessant hammering- he must get a message to his Commander-in-Chief, General Smuts, but how?

There was only one way and that was to go himself through enemy lines. This he did in the best tradition of the Frontier. Those guns never reached their destination but were captured intact. Major Pretorius received an immediate award of the Distinguished Service Order and promotion to Lieut-Colonel.

The clarion call announcing the beginning of World War I rang out loud and clear. Frontiersmen from all over the world began arriving in England from abroad. They had come under their own steam and paying their own expenses, most of them electing to serve with King Edward's Horse (The King's Overseas Regiment).

Members of the Manchester Squadron, Legion of Frontiersmen, were so anxious to get to grips with the Huns that on the day war broke out, they offered their services as a complete unit to the British War Office. When this was refused, they paid not only their own fares to Belgium but those of their horses as well and joined the 9th Belgian Lancers, first going into action with the 9th Lancers on the 16th August 1914 - a week before the famous 'Old Contemptibles' joined battle at Mons.

Brigadier W.D. Hearn, late Officer Commanding The Queen's Own Cape Town Highlanders, was one of the Frontiersmen from the Manchester Squadron w ho served with the 9th Belgian Lancers in 1914, receiving the Ysier Medal from the King of the Belgians.

Frontiersmen were arriving from everywhere: 100 from China, 20 from South America, and 130 as individuals. All were sent to a remount depot to break-in wild horses that were being sent to Britain from America. As well as those horses being rounded tip in the New Forest, the ancient Royal hunting ground in Hampshire that had been planted in that beautiful part of southern England by the Normans after the Conquest.

30 Frontiersmen served throughout the duration of World War 1 as Mounted Police in London. Meanwhile, Col Dan Driscoll of the Legion of Frontiersmen raised the 25th (Frontiersmen) Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers at War Office behest.

Within 14 days from commencement of selective recruiting of men with frontier experience, the Battalion sailed for East Africa and fought throughout that cam-paign under Driscoll with Capt Selous, DSO, as his Intelligence Officer and Lieut Wilbur Dartnell being awarded a posthumous VC.

Out of the 1100 original men who went into battle in May 1915, only 80 remained on Battalion strength by December 1916; the rest were reinforcements.

In Canada, the entire Legion Commands at Moose Lake and Medicine Hat, some 600 Frontiersmen in all, enlisted in the newly raised Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry on the outbreak of the War and were among the first Canadians in action in World War I. They were in the line at Ypres in the first gas attack- barely 20 survived! Meanwhile, the Legion in Canada raised the 210th (Frontiersmen) Battalion for services with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Nearly every original non-commissioned officer of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment was a Frontiers-man.

Of the Australian and New Zealand Frontiersmen who joined the Anzacs and fought with tenacity and gallantry in Gallipoli, France and Flanders, some 1500 died in the Dardanelles alone. They died, as Frontiersmen would wish to die, facing their enemy, gun in hand.

Of the eleven VCs awarded to New Zealand in World War I, Frontiersmen won six.

Evelyn ffrench, one of the early members of the Leg- ion and the world's greatest horseman, was wounded in seventeen places with shrapnel while serving in the Ypres Salient during the 1914- 18 War and was unfit for further trench warfare. He joined the Royal Air Force and became a pilot at the age of 42. He was killed in a crash just after the Armistice was sounded. In the Sav-age Club, London, the War Memorial is a closed door. Blocking the doorway is a broken aeroplane propeller, in the form of a cross, and is a perpetual reminder at this famous club that the death of this Frontiersman closed the Great War.

On the outbreak of the 1914- 18 War, some 800 South African Frontiersmen offered their services to the Gov-ernment and were asked to enlist as individuals in any regiment or corps of their choice, or in either the Im-perial Light Horse or the Rand Rifles 'en bloc'.

Later they were to endure the hardships of a lightn-ing campaign in German South West Africa, followed by an even harder one in German East Africa, in both cases adding laurels to their battle standards. Other Frontiersmen, who, as individuals, had joined regiments of their choice in South Africa, proceeded to the United Kingdom as the South African Brigade, from whence they went to France and Belgium with the 9th Highland Division and covered themselves with glory in the epic of Delville Wood.

South African Frontiersmen played an important part in the quelling of the Rand Uprising in 1922 and General Smuts was so impressed with their achievements that he joined the Legion as a Frontiersman!

By the time the clarion call to arms again rang out in 1939, strong contingents had already been formed in Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, the United Kingdom and Kenya, with lesser formations in Australia, India, Malaya, China, Egypt and many other isolated, but nevertheless, important, 'Listening Posts'. At this period in time, the whole concept of warfare was revolutionised. This was the era of the blitzkrieg the quick, violent campaign intended to bring speedy victory be intensive land, sea and air attack. A lightning war of devastating aerial bombing was quickly followed by heavy armour closely supported by infantry and artillery.

Traditionally the Legion was essentially a mounted force, originally geared for operating in wild and rugged terrain. Quickly realising this, Frontiersmen from all over the world abandoned their spurs and flocked to join modernised regiments or corps of their choice the days of the sabre, the lance and the carbine were over!

Amongst the first troops to have moved into position were Frontiersmen detailed to guard the coastline of New Zealand, whilst Canadian Frontiersmen were embodied as a battalion of the Defence Forces as well as presenting a Spitfire to the Canadian Air Force for immediate combat.

Mounted Frontiersmen of Northern Command in the U.K. patrolled the Yorkshire Moors to watch for possible landings of German paratroopers.

Meanwhile, 600 South African Frontiersmen either joined regiments or corps of their own choice or, once again, followed the First World War pattern and joined the Rand Light Infantry en masse.

When the total dead of the two World Wars was finally totalled up, it was found that at least 11 000 men of the Legion of Frontiersmen had laid down their lives in the highest tradition of the Frontier - facing their enemy, the; had crossed the last frontier of all.

19O4 saw the commencement of the Mau Mau Rebellion in Kenya with its frightful murders, rape and torture. The Mount Kenya Squadron of the Legion of Frontiersmen, under Major Logan Hook, LMSM, went into immediate action in support of the Police while regular and territorial units of the army were still in the cumbersome process of mobilisation.

Thus, it was in Africa that a Frontiersman, his horse falling dead at his feet, first brought the news of the 1906 Zulu Rebellion to the Natal Command. And, now it was in Africa again that a unit of the Legion of Frontiersmen was amongst the first in action against the Mau Mau. It was probably, the last ever likely to see action again as a Unit of the last of the great Corps of Irregulars - the Legion of Frontiersmen. In Canada and New Zealand the Legion of Fron-tiersmen, under Dominion and Provincial Charters, holds high its head and is deeply committed, as it always has been, to voluntary police duties and civil defence in their respective areas of the world.

And in the United Kingdom, under Brigadier Shoosmith, LMSM, the Legion of Frontiersmen parades its Regimental Colour with pride in the City of London that was the birthplace of the Legion in 1904.