MY RECOLLECTIONS AND REMINISCENCES

xiii + 106pp. Hardcover binding. Frontispiece and 12 monochrome plates, collated and complete. Condition: Overall good. Some rubbing, minor stains and spots of edgewear to boards and spine. Previous owners’ signatures to front pastedown, light foxing throughout and to edges of textblock. Small creases to some of the plates, slight splitting to gutters between some of the pages.

From https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/248008687/william_alexander-millar: (Millar) ...gained fame as a rugby union player, who represented South Africa from 1906, 1910, and 1912 to 1913. He was also selected to captain the victorious Grand Slam-winning South African side in 1912 to 1913 on their tour to Great Britain, Ireland, and France. During the Second Boer War, he was seriously wounded in his shoulder to the point that doctors thought that he would be an invalid for the rest of his life, yet he recovered with determination. By 1903, he had recuperated and began to play rugby union again. During World War I, Millar joined the Cape Town Regiment and was sent to German South West Africa. When he returned from SWA in late in 1915, he joined the Coldstream Guards with the rank of 2nd Lieutenant and was dispatched to the Western Front. Millar was shot seven times in World War I, most seriously the last time during the German Spring Offensive in March of 1918, eight months before the war's end. In that offensive, 75,000 British troops were taken captive, including Millar. After his right elbow was shattered in a near-fatal shooting, he was confined as a prisoner-of-war in a camp in Stendal in Prussia. After a visiting Dutch diplomat at POW camp interceded on his behalf, he was sent by a train down to the coast to England for medical treatment. He returned to Cape Town in 1919 before returning to England to be demobilized and for further treatment of his arm, which he refused to amputated. In 1924, when the British & Irish Lions toured South Africa, he refereed the last two Tests of the series in Port Elizabeth and Newlands (Cape Town). He married in 1914 and the couple had two daughters.

Size: 8vo (18,6 x 12,6cm)

Cape Town & Johannesburg: Juta & Co. Undated, c. 1926