Christmas pudding for the Belgians... who's delivering?

[mconrad]

A news agency picture, apparently from late 1914.  Two Belgian soldiers are in the foreground, but who is that on horseback?  Mountie? Frontiersman?

 

 

 

Edited 14 February , 2020 by mconrad
Placement

[FROGSMILE]

Legion of Frontiersmen, almost certainly.  Not only do the three uniform features of campaign hat, gauntlets and shoulder chains refer implicitly, but that unit’s first and very early operational deployment in WW1 was to Belgium.  There was much print media coverage of their arrival, etc. at the time. I seem to recall that some of their arms were provided by the Belgian government.  In part this was a retort to the fact that their offer to serve had not received a positive response from the British War Office, the implication being that they were at worst a bunch of fantasist cranks and at best naive adventurers.

Edited 14 February , 2020 by FROGSMILE

[healdav]

Bit strange. The Belgians don't have Christmas puddings, and whenever I took one into the office, had never heard  of them and weren't particularly impressed i.e. didn't really like them.

[FROGSMILE]

1 hour ago, healdav said:

Bit strange. The Belgians don't have Christmas puddings, and whenever I took one into the office, had never heard  of them and weren't particularly impressed i.e. didn't really like them.

 

I strongly suspect it was much more about publicity.  There was quite a bit of controversy about the LOF deployment at the time I seem to recall.

[Keith_history_buff]

To avoid being shot as francs-tireurs, if captured, they referred to themselves as the British Colonial Horse. 
https://www.greatwarforum.org/search/?q="British Colonial Horse"&updated_after=any&sortby=relevancy

[Terry_Reeves]

As I understand it his name was Nicholas.

 

TR

 

 

[FROGSMILE]

16 hours ago, Terry_Reeves said:

As I understand it his name was Nicholas.

 

TR

 

 

 

Who was? Franc?

Edited 16 February , 2020 by FROGSMILE

[FROGSMILE]

17 hours ago, Keith_history_buff said:

To avoid being shot as francs-tireurs, if captured, they referred to themselves as the British Colonial Horse. 
https://www.greatwarforum.org/search/?q="British Colonial Horse"&updated_after=any&sortby=relevancy

 

Interesting, Keith, the thread confirms that they were armed with Belgian issue, Mauser carbines.