Wyndham was commissioned into the
16th (the Queen's) Lancers in October 1884. He was promoted to
captain on 10 September 1890, and became an
adjutant in March 1892, a position he resigned in August 1894. He attended the
Staff College, Camberley, from 1897 to 1898. On 21 September 1899 he was appinted to be a deputy assistant adjutant general in
Natal. On the outbreak of the
Second Boer War just a few weeks later, Wyndham went to South Africa where he was seconded to serve on the
staff, and was present at the
Relief of Ladysmith. He was promoted to
major on 1 April 1900. During the latter parts of the war he was in command of a
mobile column. For his services, he was
mentioned in dispatches (including the final dispatch by Major General
Lord Kitchener dated 23 June 1902), and received the
brevet rank of
lieutenant colonel, dated 29 November 1900, and returned to the United Kingdom on the steamer
Dunvegan Castle in April 1902. The residents of his home village of
Upwey, Dorset, had decorated the village on his arrival there. Two months later, he was received in audience by King
Edward VII, who personally presented him with the
King's South Africa Medal. He was promoted to substantive lieutenant colonel in September 1904 and brevet colonel in October 1905 and was made a MVO in June 1908. As British
military attaché, an appointment he received in May 1907, in
St. Petersburg,
Russia, in 1909 he first warned his
Austro-Hungarian counterpart that an
Austro-Hungarian General Staff officer was supplying top secret information to the Russians. This information, however, ended up on the desk of
Alfred Redl, head of counter-intelligence at the
Evidenzbureau in Vienna, who unfortunately was the very spy being sought. He had been made a substantive colonel in September 1908. Wyndham, relinquishing this assignment in May 1911 and made a CB in June 1913, was a member of
The Souls. In November 1913 he became an assistant adjutant general at the
War Office in
London. He served in the
First World War, being made an inspector of reserve units in March 1915 and retired from the army in November 1919. ==Works==