He was born on 12 May 1869 at Wellington, Madra Presidency, British India, the son of Major P. M. Rolland, R.A.[1] and educated at Harrow and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, before being commissioned into the Bedfordshire Regiment in November 1889.

[3] He was appointed a double company commander with the 1st Bombay Grenadiers on 4 February 1901, and appointed a Special Service Officer on the Staff of the Somaliland Field Force on 25 October 1902,[4] leaving Bombay via Aden for British Somaliland the previous day.

This they succeeded in doing, and when the officer in charge of the column (John Edmund Gough) arrived they managed to get the wounded man on to a camel.

[6] His VC is on display at the Lord Ashcroft Galley in the Imperial War Museum in London.

In November 1906, he was appointed the Adjutant of the Nagpur Volunteer Rifles, with whom he was serving when he died from a fall.