Percy Anderson

 

Regiment:  21st (Empress of India’s) Lancers

Percy Anderson was born at Poona in 1880. His father Charles was a Colonel in the Indian Army, and his mother Constance came from Wokefield Park, Berkshire. By the time he was 10 Percy had been sent home for his education and lived with his uncle at Wokefield House. He went to Harrow and the Military College at Sandhurst. Commissioned into the 21st (Empress of India’s Lancers) in January 1900, he joined them at the Cavalry Barracks Hounslow, and in 1905 married Anne Hathorn the daughter of the late Colonel Hatthorn of the Coldstream Guards. In 1910, now a Captain and an accomplished horseman winning the Irish Grand Military in 2 consecutive years, Percy was posted to the Cavalry School in Netheravon. Percy and Anne lived at Ratfyn House near Amesbury. The 21st Lancers had left for Egypt and the Cavalry and Camel Corps in 1912, and 4 months before the War they moved to Agra in India. A month later Percy was posted to re-join them. The Lancers spent the next year on the notorious North West Frontier quelling various uprisings encouraged by the Turks and Germans. Percy was killed on a hot and dusty day, 5th September 1915, in a successful cavalry charge against the tribesmen. He is remembered on the Delhi Memorial.