An interesting Great War pair awarded to Lieutenant E. O. Coote, who, having been interned in Germany in August 1914, was ‘exchanged’ in a deal struck by the Foreign Office in 1916 and served as a Field Agent for Military Intelligence in Italy, Salonika and Serbia: a long served member of the “F.O.” between the Wars, including time in Moscow, he was in touch with senior members of S.O.E. during the 1939-45 War

British War and Victory Medals (Lieut. E. O. Coote), mounted as worn, a little polished, otherwise generally very fine (2)
£100-150

Edward Osborne Coote was born in January 1894 and was educated at Winchester College and New College, Oxford. Fluent in French, German and Italian, he was working as a tutor in Germany on the outbreak of hostilities, where he was interned in Ruhleben prison camp, west of Berlin, one of several thousand male citizens of the Allied Powers to suffer a similar fate.

Back home, his mother wrote to all manner of influential friends to see if he could be exchanged, even though he did not qualify under the usual clauses, and, in March 1916, her efforts were rewarded, Coote being used to make up numbers in an exchange of diplomats. Having then enlisted in a Provincial Battalion, his fluency in several foreign languages came to the attention of Military Intelligence and, more specifically, M.I.6c and M.I.5f.

Duly commissioned on the Special List in 1917, he served as a 3rd Class Agent in Italy and Salonika in the following year, and was struck off the strength of the Army of the Black Sea in June 1919, for transfer to the British Military Mission - in fact General Bridges’ Mission in Serbia. Finally discharged in early 1920, he was appointed to the Foreign Office as a 3rd Secretary at Budapest, the first of a string of F.O. postings between the wars, among them 2nd Secretary in Vienna in 1923, 1st Secretary in Madrid in 1929 and Charges d’Affairs in Moscow in 1933. Returning to London in 1939, following another F.O. appointment in Sofia, he remained similarly employed until being appointed Charges d’Affairs in Mexico in 1944 - his time in London including some heated exchanges with Harry Sporborg of S.O.E. over clandestine operations in Norway. Having then been employed in New York, Coote died suddenly in August 1948; sold with a large quantity of copied research.