Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Five: Captain R. G. M. Newton, 2nd Dragoon Guards (Queen’s Bays), afterwards Special Constabulary and Royal Observer Corps

1914 Star, with clasp (Lieut., 2/D. Gds.); British War and Victory Medals (Capt.); Defence Medal 1939-45, privately engraved ‘C./Obs. R. G. M. Newton, R.O.C.’; Special Constabulary Long Service, G.V.R., coinage bust (Chief Inspr. Ronald G. M. Newton), mounted court-style as worn, together with a Special Constabulary Reserve Drill Competition Award, gold and enamel, by Carrington & Co. Ltd., the reverse engraved, ‘R. G. M. Newton, Sergeant, “B” Division, 30th May 1926’, generally good very fine (6) £300-350

Ronald Gillett Marsdin Newton was born in Belgravia, London in October 1888, the son of Major John Newton, Royal Artillery, and was educated at Farnborough School, Hampshire. Gazetted to the 2nd Dragoon Guards (Queen’s Bays) as a 2nd Lieutenant in February 1908, he was advanced to Lieutenant in June 1910 and was still serving in that capacity on the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914.

Embarked with his regiment for France on 15 August, he probably saw action in the battle of Nery on 1 September, when the Queen’s Bays suffered heavy casualties, and again at Messines in October - on the last day of that month, 1,000 British cavalrymen faced six times that number of German infantry, the whole becoming embroiled in a desperate house-to-house struggle for the possession of the town.

Appointed to the temporary rank of Captain shortly thereafter, Newton was posted to 25th Division Headquarters, attached Army Cyclist Corps, in August 1915 and, from June 1916 to March 1917 was employed as Adjutant in the Territorial Force. His final appointment, from June 1917, appears to have been in the King’s African Rifles in the U.K., and he resigned his commission as a substantive Captain around July 1921. Settling in Chelsea, London, he joined the Special Constabulary, rising to the rank of Chief Inspector, in addition to serving as a Chief Observer in the Royal Observer Corps in the 1939-45 War; sold with brief research.