Jullus Antonius Aurellus Schulz.

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"Julius Schulz was born in Berlin, Germany on 6 July 1823, the son of Dr Johann Heinrich Schulz. He studied at the Royal Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin 1845-49 and qualified as a medical doctor. Schulz served as Sub-doctor with the 4th Company of the Emperor Franz Grenadier Regiment from 1 April 1849 to 1 April 1850. He was decorated on instructions of the King of Prussia with a
commemorative medal for military personnel minted on 23 August 1851, for the campaign of 1848-49. It is said that his family had the highest connections and moved in Court circles. Schulz was issued with a passport No 4547 by the Minister of the Interior in the name of the King of Prussia on 12 August 1855 (copy included). In this document he is described as being 5’9” in height, blond, having a normal nose and mouth and oval chin, and lean in stature. The passport was issued for travel via Hamburg to London for study purposes.
At the outbreak of the Crimean War Britain had difficulty expanding the army because of the policy of voluntary enlistment. As a result, foreign mercenary troops were recruited for service in the Crimea, forming the British German Legion, British Swiss Legion and British Italian Legion.

In all 16,559 officers and men enlisted, the British German Legion comprised of 441 officers, 539 NCO’s and 8,702 troops. Four regiments, 4,250 strong, were sent to the seat of war; they were stationed at Kulilee, on the Bosporus, when peace was proclaimed, but did not qualify for the British Crimea campaign medal.

At the age of 26 Schulz was appointed as Surgeon to the 2nd Light Dragoons of the British German Legion on 1 September 1855 and he joined the regiment at its camp near Hythe, England. 138 officers and 3,615 other ranks landed at Scutari between 5 November 1855 and February 1856, but none were considered to qualify for the Crimea campaign medal. His name on the Nominal Roll, tells us that he was 5 feet 7 inches in height, and that he had a wife in Berlin. 2,362 men of the British German Legion accepted the British Government’s offer of settlement in the Eastern Cape Colony. With them came 331 wives and 155 children. The towns of Berlin,
Hamburg, Stutterheim, Frankfort and Potsdam bear witness to this today. Schulz’s obituary however states that he “came to Natal in the vessel Lady Selborne with certain rights and introduction as an officer of the Staff, and that he immediately commenced to practice as a
doctor”. The rights of introduction may be related to the rumour that his wife’s father, Carl Nixen,was the illegitimate son of a German Prince and a servant woman.

Julius Schulz arrived in Natal to take up a grant of land at Stanger, given to him by Queen Victoria.However in the Natal Government Notice No 10 of 1858 he announces his admission to practice as a Physician. His Durban home was in Albany Grove and in 1963 it was occupied by the Salvation Army. He was also granted land at Westville, right opposite the present day Bergtiel Westville Museum. Later he became the Police Surgeon and was the Public Health Officer of the Borough of Durban from 1874 until his death in 1891.
Schulz had four sons and three daughters. All were sent to Germany for their education and then returned to South Africa. The three eldest sons qualified as physicians. The eldest Dr Aurelius Schulz became a noted explorer spending a great deal of time in Madagascar and on the East Coast.

Another doctor son became the District Surgeon on the Rand. The youngest son was expelled from the University for duelling, and was killed in 1900 in the relief advance on Mafeking.

The wife of Dr Schulz founded the Seamen’s Institute. Dr Schulz himself was Secretary of the Institute for more than 20 years. Dr Julius was a member of the Grand Lodge of Mark Masters of England etc. He was a P.M.W.S. of the 18th Degree (certificate included).Schulz was appointed Surgeon on 13 March 1873 (gazetted 10 April 1873) of the newly formed Royal Durban Rifles, an antecedent unit of the present day Durban Light Infantry. He held this post for fifteen years, resigning in June 1888. 102 men of the Royal Durban Rifles qualified for the South Africa 1877-79 medal. The regiment did not cross the Tugela River, and accordingly did not qualify for the 1879 clasp. A search of the medal rolls of all colonial units has revealed only three of the 14,350 recipients with the rank of Surgeon. Schulz is the only man with the letters M.D. behind his name. He resigned his commission due to ill health in 1888. He died in Durban on 10 March 1891 and is buried in the main West Street Cemetery. His funeral was one of the largest gatherings seen in Durban. Flags were at half-mast from the City Hall and many buildings. Merchants put their shutters up."

Julius Schulz was born at Westville outside Durban on 22 March 1866, the third son of Dr Schulz MD to study medicine at the University of Berlin, the Alma Mater of his father, grandfather and great grandfather, all of whom were doctors. He was expelled for participating in duelling contests and never completed his studies. He joined the Victoria Column on 4 October 1893 as a Corporal. In the later 1896 war in Rhodesia he served firstly as a gunner with the Bulawayo Field Force and then as a Trooper in the Gwelo Burghers. Schulz was one of 49 men of the Victoria Column as part of Major Forbes’ reduced force of 94 men who retreated to Bulawayo after Major Wilson and his brave band of 34 men of the same column fought to the death on the opposite bank of the Shangani River. The retreating Column was attacked on 8th, 10th and 12th December and finally met up at the Longwe River on 14th December with a relief force sent out from Bulawayo. Schulz wrote a 19 page report, which is included in full, on his experiences in this war and in particular of the Shangani Patrol and his escape. In it he states that if it was not for Commandant Raaff’s intervention, they would have not escaped. He comments on Major Forbes’ poor leadership. A few paragraphs are now quoted.

“Now comes the most dramatic scene of the whole war. Moving on after the fighting, we found
ourselves in dense bush and among huge rocks and boulders, and then as night fell, and when it
was still raining heavily, a very difficult passage faced us, placed as we were – two guncarriages,
men failing for want of food, and ammunition running short.
Our officer in full command Major ------ expressed his desire to rest in that spot for the night,
and thereupon Captain Coventry came to me with the order to pick out the sick horses, which,
together with the gun-carriages, the latter’s linchpins being withdrawn, were to be left behind,
and place them in the centre of the laager. But then, with the lightning flashing most vividly, and
the thunder rolling continuously, Commandant Raaff mounted a stone, and with his features
discernible only in the flashes of lightning, spoke these words:
“Men, I feel that I am called upon by God to speak, and to get you out of the nest we have been
brought into, and now to take command into my own hands. Therefore, we shall march twenty
miles tonight, and in silence. All bits to be taken out of the horses mouths, there must be no
jingling and no smoking, and the two Maxims must be carried”.
We were ready to follow him gladly, for we had full confidence in him, and we proceeded to clear
from the laager we had built. But it was now found that we were all too weak to carry the guns,
and so we mounted them on what available animals there were, and then, in the dead of night,
left, the only occupants of the deserted laager being the gun carriages, left standing as they were.
We fought our way down, through days of suffering, until we reached safety. During this time
Major -------- had been silent, but now, when we reached SAFETY, the voice of the martinet
sounded forth once more, and amongst other things, he tried to belittle Commandant Raaff. But
allow me, as one who fought under him, and who saw, together with my comrades, what the
actual position was, to say that Commandant Raaff was the man who led the Patrol on the
retreat down the Shangani, and that he was kindness and consideration itself not only to the
wounded but also to the others. As regards the former, he often denied himself, to give to them.
He was, indeed, one of Africa’s most famous soldiers – one who fought for England in nearly all
the Kaffir wars in South Africa.”

Schulz attested for Boer War service in ‘A’ Squadron of the Rhodesia Regiment on 15 February 1900. His occupation is given as mining. He was killed in action at Ramathlabana six miles south of Mafeking on 31 March 1900. Colonel Plumer’s losses that day were 8 killed, 29 wounded including him and 11 made prisoner. Nearly all of these were of the Rhodesia Regiment. In July 1899 Colonel Baden-Powell had been sent to South Africa to raise two regiments in order to protect the borders of Rhodesia and the Bechuanaland Protectorate in the event of war. Recruiting began on 10 August 1899, and the two regiments, namely, the Rhodesia under Colonel Plumer, and the Protectorate under Colonel Hore, were raised, trained, and equipped before war broke out in October. This is clear evidence that Britain anticipated the war well ahead of the declaration. Hibbard states that only the S.A. Light Horse, Kitchener’s Horse and the Rhodesia Regiment were awarded single bar Relief of Mafeking to the QSA. The Rhodesia Regiment roll only reflects 29 names, all of ‘A’ Squadron. After Schulz’s death, his sister, in a letter to Major Everest, claimed that her brother had a 6,000 acre farm at Thaba Induna. This may well have been a fact. In Dr Jameson’s letter to Captain Wilson of 14 August 1893 (L.O.5/2/34), he states that each member of the force would be entitled to mark out a farm of 3,000 morgen in any part of Matabeleland. A quitrent of 10 shillings a year would be charged. Members would be allowed four clear months after the end of hostilities to mark out their farms. The letter furthermore refers to gold claims, stating that a volunteer would be entitled to 15 claims on reef and 5 alluvial claims. The fact that Schulz gives his occupation upon enlistment in the Boer War as “mining”, may indicate that he had exercised his rights to both a farm and to mining claims.
His name appears, spelt as Schultz, on the roll of Rhodesians who fell in the South African War 1899-1902 in the Memorial Shrine next to the Bulawayo Post Office.”

Brilliant post LH. He certainly had an eventfull life.

The original source of the information given by littlehand should be credited.

Brett